Iceland Day 1

We arrived at Heathrow at about 10am wearing our 3LC t-shirts and hi-viz caps as instructed so we could be spotted. We quickly found Abi and Guy (Walk The Walk staff) near the Iceland check in desk. We were issued handbaggage tags, directed to check in and sent on our way to meet up again at the Gate.

It was nice to have some time to ourselves so we headed to a restaurant called Giraffe for some breakfast. The size of the knives you get in airport terminals always amuses me :) Had a really nice breakfast before wandering down to wait at our gate. There were around 90 of us going to Iceland all in a sea of white tops and hi-viz. The flight wasn't too bad, they had a TV built into the headrest in front so you could watch telly and pass the time.

Landing in (cloudy) Iceland we headed to two buses that were to take us to the Blue Lagoon for a soak in the geothermal spa. Having been there in 2011 we knew exactly what to expect. Fantastic hour soaking in the warm waters. The weather and air conditions meant that steam hung in the air limiting visibility and making what was a very busy pool (with 90 of us on top of the usual guests) seem quite deserted. I managed to get some silica mud face pack in my eye and could barely see as it irritated my contacts, just as well The Boy was with me! Because we wouldn't be getting dinner until late they provided us snack packs - my first encounter of the potential problems I might have with my intolerances in Iceland.

We continued our journey on to Reykjavik City airport to take an internal flight to Akureyri. 40 minute flight on a little prop plane with only 52 seat. Terribly bumpy landing! We had an hour and a half bus ride through North East Iceland to get to our Hotel at Lake Myvatn (pronounced Me-va). The scenery was absolutely stunning as we climbed up from the fjord at Akureyri. With no forests, tall trees and limited buildings we were passing through a green but barren landscape, flat views as far as the eye could see.

The group was split across two hotels (across the road from each other). We got Hotel Gigur so had to walk across to Hotel Sel for dinner. Dinner was our first encounter with the fabled "midges", they were slowly massing on the windows. We later learnt there were two flavours of "midge" the traditional midge like we get in Scotland only much bigger and then "black fly" which was even huger but just caused a nuisance rather than biting.

Dinner was nice and as we headed back to our hotel we had our first experience of the Midnight Sun as it just dipped behind the mountains casting colours across the sky.