Road to Iceland

In February 2018, Nomadic Road ran the Road to Iceland expedition, a six-day, 1,200-kilometre winter overland journey across Iceland. The route mixed tarmac, packed snow and glacier terrain, working around the south and southwest of the country during the heart of Icelandic winter. February delivers Iceland at its rawest: short daylight hours, near-permanent wind, regular snow, and the kind of weather windows that open and close without warning. Iceland is a small country built on large geology. The route worked past frozen waterfalls, geothermal fields steaming in the cold air, and glacier tongues spilling down from the inland ice caps. Several days included drives onto sections of glacier itself, with the convoy moving carefully across surfaces that look solid but always demand respect. The black-sand beaches of the south coast, with their basalt columns and Atlantic swell, gave the trip its visual contrast to the white interior. Daytime temperatures hovered around freezing, with night-time lows pushing well below. The convoy spent evenings in small Icelandic guesthouses, with their tight communal spaces, hot showers and the local food that comes with winter travel here: lamb stew, pickled fish, the occasional bowl of skyr. Several evenings the Northern Lights showed up, which always reorganises the night's schedule. The February 2018 Road to Iceland expedition was Nomadic Road's first proper European winter overland trip. It set the template for the cold-weather, glacier-focused style that Nomadic Road's later Iceland editions would build on. For Nomadic Road, the February 2018 Iceland trip set the template for what would become a recurring winter route, mixing glacier-edge driving, geothermal landscapes and the kind of dramatic weather that defines a real cold-weather expedition.