FACTORS TO BE AWARE OF ABOUT DRIVING AND CAMPING IN ICELAND:

If you are considering driving on a camping trip to Iceland, you should be aware of several important factors, both in your planning and when you are there:

• Government Tourist Tax:  in addition to campsite charges listed in the above charts, the Icelandic government requires campsite owners to levy a tourist residence tax of 333 ISK per tent or campervan

• Icelandic weather:  Iceland's weather can be very fickle, depending on wind direction: one day the sun can be shining, and you'll be barbecuing in shirt-sleeves; the next day, with change of wind direction to the north, you'll need layers of Arctic standard clothing and waterproofs, even in mid-summer. Iceland is also prey to constant North Atlantic winds. You may be an experienced camper, but you will never have experienced winds like this, so fiercesome that you'll have difficulty opening a car door safely. We constantly witnessed naively ill-prepared, ill-equipped and totally inexperienced tourists struggling to erect their tents in the teeth of Icelandic gales! It is vital regularly to check weather forecasts (wind speed and direction, temperatures, and precipitation) for the area where you plan to camp. Two essential weather forecast web sites are the Icelandic Meteorological Office, and the Norwegian Meteorological Office for Iceland (search on locations in Iceland).

• The overwhelming and malign impact of mass tourism:  Iceland is now utterly overwhelmed by mass tourism; tourists are effortlessly flown in from all over the world, pick up hire-cars or hire-campervans, and set out to 'do the Ring Road in a week'. This means that campsites close to the Ring Road (Route 1) all around the country are totally swamped with tourists all through the year. With time limits on what they can achieve in their limited holiday, combined with Iceland's long daylight hours during the summer period, this means that tourists will arrive at campsites very late in the evening. In today's world, when ill-manners and lack of any consideration for others has become the behavioural norm, this fact means that you will be subject to constant late night slamming of car doors and loud shouting from late arriving tourists, making sleep impossible. This was a constant irritation at all the campsites close to the Ring Road all around the country, but particularly along the South Iceland coast. Here also, the seemingly insatiably unending tourist demand tended to lead to greed-driven extortionate prices and complacently low standards.

• Driving in Iceland:  Iceland is a very mountainous country and, outside of urban areas, the standard of roads inevitably differs considerably from what the majority of visitors are used to in their home countries. Instead however of adjusting their driving habits to Icelandic conditions, regrettably many tourists continue to drive in ways and at the levels of speed they are accustomed to at home. In addition therefore to the natural hazards of mountainous terrain, the greatest hazards for driving in Iceland, particularly on the Ring Road, are created by tourists, driving carelessly at excessive speeds with aggressive tail-gating and hazardous overtaking. We were told that the worst offenders were Americans and Chinese.

• Unsurfaced roads:  leaving aside the F-roads of the interior passable only in 4WD, high clearance vehicles, many roads, particularly in the West Fjords and Northern Iceland are still unsurfaced. The Icelandic Roads Authority web site provides an invaluable map showing the road network with asphalt roads in blue and unsurfaced roads in brown: Roads Surfaces Map. Most unsurfaced are passable with normal vehicles (we drove many miles on Iceland's gravelled roads in our VW camper) but they do require particular care. Accidents regularly happen when drivers fail to slow at the transition from paved to unsurfaced road with resultant loss of control. The end of asphalt and beginning of sections of unsurfaced roads is indicated by Malbik endar road signs (see above right). The other constant concern was approaching tourist cars constantly failing to slow as they passed, resulting in windscreen threatening showers of stones.

• Road Safety in Iceland:  the Icelandic Roads Authority and Icelandic Search and Rescue Team both publish worthwhile advice on safe driving in Iceland. Headlights should be turned on at all times of day or night. Livestock on the road (horses, cattle, and particularly sheep and lambs) are a constant hazard to be aware of. While it is tempting to glance around at spectacular scenery, Icelandic roads require constant attention to driving conditions. Again a frequent cause of accidents are tourists blithely distracted by rubber-necking attractive features, or stopping on a busy road to take photographs. Single-lane bridges occur regularly on Icelandic roads indicated by the Einbreið bru road sign (see right), even on the main Ring Road, and are a frequent cause of accidents as tourists hurtle across regardless of approaching traffic; single-lane bridges courtesy gives priority to the closer car, but in any case slow down. The nature of Iceland's terrain frequently results in blind summits on roads indicated by the Blindhæd road sign (see right); the resultant absence of visibility requires reduction of speed and exercise of care on approaching a blind summit, particularly with the high likelihood of a speeding tourist in the middle of the road in the opposite direction! All of this advice could of course be summed up by use of common sense, but our experience of almost 5 months driving in Iceland shows that tourists leave their common sense at home; the result is that driving in Iceland requires ultra caution!

• The Aurora Borealis:  during September in all parts of Iceland, you will regularly be able to witness the wonderful atmospheric phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis. For this you will need a combination of clear sky without any cloud cover, a clear line of sight to the horizon unimpeded by trees or high ground, and the absence of light pollution. The Icelandic Meteorological Office web site includes an worthwhile Aurora Forecast