The Most Amazing Detours Off The Ring Road, Iceland
Driving around Iceland on a road trip is often a bucket list trip. We find many people plan on driving the ring road, but there are so many amazing detours off Route 1!
Ed and I were privileged enough to drive 1700 miles around Iceland. But this wasn’t because of constantly staying on route 1. There are so many small roads (F-roads), and smaller paved/stoned roads which lead to amazing views, glaciers, excellent (scary) driving, and away from all of the tourism.
The perks of doing a road trip is to have the chance to do what you want! On any road trip, I love using a map because a road trip isn’t about getting to the destination it is about the journey.
When reading the map, it is great to point out roads off route 1- especially a small F-road. We would then drive up, and since Ed loves driving (and is good at it, thank god!). We spent some time generally exploring!
There are so many F-roads and smaller roads across Iceland. Some which are tiny and not really advisable to drive on, but others – if you’re brave, are amazing! More away from tourists and explore the real Iceland.
What are F-Roads?
F-roads are basically the smaller roads, which are not paved, so very different from driving route 1. Well to say they’re not paved is probably an understatement.
They should only be driven on with a 4x4 as the holes in the road are often huge. They’re usually single-tracked roads and on some, you have to be quite a confident and skilled driver.
That being said, they aren’t all like that, but by looking at a map you wouldn’t know - paper or digital. We drove on single-tracked roads, 2-laned roads towards the puffins, and such varied terrain in between.
But, please just be careful. Be courteous to other drivers, and don’t be stupid
Often the bridges only allow one car one at once. If you see someone stopped don’t then carry on and overtake them as we saw. But driving on F-roads was probably one of our favorite things to do in Iceland and if you have time, then why not!
Driving Roads off Route 1 in The Winter
Ed and I travelled to Iceland and drove our road trip in the Summer. Many Brits travel in the winter, but many American's travel in the Summer
The issue with driving in the winter is that it is very cold, often dark, with ice and snow. If you're looking into driving in Iceland in the winter i would research it a lot first.
We can't speak from experience because we travelled in the summer. But many bloggers explained how it was hard to drive due to the weather and the lack of sunlight.
We would suggest driving roads off Route 1 is more of a summer activity.
Route 54 and Utnesvegur/574: Snaefellsness Peninsula
Snaefellsness Peninsula is a 1 hour and 35-minute (approx.) drive from Reykjavik and really is a beautiful part of Iceland. Basically, the sticky out part in the west
Driving from Reykjavik there is the Hvalfjordur tunnel on route 1 just after Grundarhverfi, and cuts off route 47 which adds about 45 minutes to an hour on if you went into the peninsula and back out again. Whereas the journey through the tunnel only takes 7 minutes.
Since September 2018 the toll has been free! Which is great. Ed and I didn’t have any money at all at this point as this was the first place we drove too, therefore we're happy to take the long way round.
Taking Route 47 and the long way around was good though, and the scenery is excellent, but this was the first part of Iceland we got to see, and really, was a small aspect of what was to come.
In the Snaefellsness Peninsula, it’s a fairly small area with so much to see and do!
Landbrotalaug Pool
Landbrotalaug is a free heated pool near an abandoned farm. It’s fairly easy to find but it isn’t very big at all. It is more well known these days than it was previously and therefore can be a little busy, but just take it in turns with other people and sharing is great!
There are no changing facilities here so go with your swimsuit already on underneath your clothes. We, on the other hand, did not do this but I just quickly got changed in the car and made sure no one as looking!
There were 2 other groups of people when we were there and it was nice. Just casual, and easy to relax with nature.
Raudfeldsgja Gorge
Raudfeldsgja Gorge is a deep gorge you can walk into and explore that cuts into the strange mountain of Botnsfjall. It is just off route 54 driving left (if going clockwise) onto Utnesvegur towards Hellnar
If visiting in the summer you can walk into the gorge where there are huge icebergs! During the winter months, it entirely freezes and you won’t be able to go near it at all but in the summer it’s pretty amazing
Ed walked further into the gorge than I did as it was pretty slippy so just be careful!
Driving towards Hellnar you can see it from the road on the right-hand side and you can’t miss it really! It has its own car park and you can then just walk up to it and explore.
Londgrangar
Obviously have to remember that Iceland is entirely volcanic! Londgrangar is an area of big lava fields with so much lava rock and strangely arranged large rocks
Puffins can sometimes reside along the cliffs here along with fulmars. One of the stacks of rocks is 75 meters tall and the other 61 meters! From a distance, they form what look like a castle made from rock
If you continue along Utnesvegur, Londgrangar is on the southwest coast of Snaefellsness peninsula
Saxholl Crater
This is one of the most popular craters in Snaefellsnes peninsula. For such views, you don’t have to walk very far, just up lots and lots of steps!
But the views from the crater are amazing. We managed to get some great photos with our drone which we actually decorated a wall at home with
The crater also has its own car park and it's further along the Utnesvegur road
Kirkjufell
If you have googled Iceland ever before, then you have seen Kirkjufell and Kirkjufellfoss before. Kirkjufell is one of the most iconic images of Iceland and you can see why
To get to Kirjufell you must use roads off Route 1. It was different from how we imagined and there is the road in the middle with the mountain on the left of the road and the waterfall on the right, but from the right angle, they look right next to one another
Kirkjufell was used in Game of Thrones in a scene north of the wall when a mountain was described as an arrowhead.
Route 574: Snaefellsjokull
We just happened to notice, by chance, that there was a sign pointing up to Snaefellsjokull! The mountain! It was too much temptation and we had to drive up to it
It takes around 30 minutes or so to drive up and is excellent! You can even walk on the snowy mountain in the summer. The road was very bumpy but generally easy to drive on.
Although it was summer, we started to see snow on the ground around 3/4 of the way up, and once we got near the top, we couldn’t drive anymore because of all of the snow!
Once we got to the top, we had a bit of an explore around and then could drive back down the other side. There is a beautiful waterfall by the side of the road, which we then had all to ourselves
Route 82: North of Akureyri
We drove on Route 1 to get to Akureyri but driving to the campsite, we had to include in roads to drive off Route 1.
We only drove up this way due to visiting a campsite at the top of the road, but the road felt so desolate it felt prehistoric. The roads were very bumpy and certain aspects of it had been redone but other parts were extremely bumpy.
We stayed at the Dalvik campsite further up north of Akureyri before whale watching the next morning
Route 848: Skutustadagigar
Instead of staying on route 1, you can turn off onto route 848 and visit Skutustadagigar. It's an area which is surrounded by craters!
They were formed by water under the ground of the earth, which then bubbled and erupted forming craters. You can spend a lot of time here walking around the different areas.
The only issue we had here was that there were a lot of midges around the lake, and to be honest, they were horrendous and all over you!
But as long as you don’t spend too much time near the water, you’ll be fine! If you visit in winter too, it also won’t be half as bad! However much more difficult to drive on F-roads in the winter due to their terrain.
Route 93: Over the mountain towards Seydisfordur
When driving on route 1, we made a turning at Egilsstadir onto route 93. We stayed at a campsite which was at Seydisfjordur. During the drive to Seydisfordur on route 93, we drove up to around 1500ft and there was a viewing point at the top.
You could see probably about 40-50 miles in either direction across the Lagarfljot river, which is basically a fjord. The pictures we got from the top just didn’t do the view any justice at all.
The drive then down the mountain on the other side towards the campsite was amazing! We didn’t know this know at the time as the fog was extreme and couldn’t actually see the drops either side of the road. We only noticed this on the way back up the next morning on our way to the puffins.
Route 94: Eastern Fjord Puffins
Back towards Egilsstadir, there is another turning for route 94, this is the perfect little town to do a little stock up of fuel, food and other supplies. The road was towards Borgafjordur Eystri and just a little further beyond this small town is one of the largest puffin colonies in Iceland and the world!
Hundreds and thousands of puffins are just sitting chilling on the side of the rocks and you can get so close!
Please please please whisper to others if you need to speak and be courteous to the puffins. We could not believe the number of puffins that are there.
We had never seen a puffin in real life so to see this many was absolutely astounding. Well worth a visit if you’re over in the east of Iceland
F985 up Joklasel Glacier: South Iceland
This was one of our favourite drives. We actually stumbled across this with my amazing map reading… We hadn’t planned too but wow to drive up such a challenging road and walk on a glacier at the top was such an experience.
I would only drive up this road if you feel like a confident driver and experience, and of course, in a 4x4.
The road was extremely windy, rough, and very thin in parts with immediate drops of a few hundred feet with no barriers. I had my eyes closed at certain parts, obviously, I was not driving…
Driving up the mountain towards the glacier you could see meandering rivers below and all the way to the sea and views like this you can’t put into perspective.
The scariest times of driving up to Joklasel, was when someone was coming in the opposite direction while we were on a single tracked extremely vertical road, but just take your time, be sensible and it’s so worth it!
Once you get to the top you can actually go and walk on the glacier, I immediately fell over flat on my face and struggled to stand back up… but, it was amazing!
There is so much more to Iceland than just the generic ring road that it seems the majority of people take, missing out so much more of the amazingness
Majority of the roads that we found was due to the map that we use which can be found here. We circled lots of areas we wanted to see before we went and also using our favourite guide book (lonely planet) we planned and circled more roads, routes and things to see! We wouldn’t have found the puffins otherwise.
We visited Iceland in the summer and by doing so we're able to see as much as possible
It is much harder to drive around Iceland in the winter, especially with shorter days and much smaller roads outside of the capital.
Although we want to go back to Iceland in the winter, just to see the difference, we are so glad we went in the summer so we could see as much of these amazing landscapes
In the summer you're able to travel much more, drive more, see puffins, go whale watching, and generally do more exploring!
