Eastfjords Coastal Road from Höfn

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Höfn

   Höfn is a fishing town that has spent decades staring at a glacier, and the glacier has finally started to answer back. It sits at the mouth of the Hornafjörður on Iceland's southeast coast, a small town of fewer than two thousand people on a low peninsula, with the vast white dome of Vatnajökull, Europe's largest ice cap by volume, filling the northern horizon. On a clear day, the tongues of ice that spill down the mountains look close enough to walk to, and at sunset they glow pink and gold. The name simply means harbour.

   Read the complete Hofn write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Höfn is where the day begins. Next is Djupivogur.

2. 2. Djúpivogur

   Djúpivogur is a fishing village on the south-east coast of Iceland, tucked into a bay on the Berufjörður fjord, and it has the sort of quiet confidence that comes from knowing exactly what it is. Behind it rises Búlandstindur, a steep, pyramid-shaped mountain just over a thousand metres high, which dominates the skyline and gets its share of folklore. On the waterfront, there is a line of large stone eggs set on little plinths in the shallows, a sculpture by the artist Sigurður Guðmundsson that represents the nesting birds of the area, and it is the kind of public art that gets you smiling before you have taken off your helmet.

   Read the complete Djupivogur write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Djúpivogur comes up about 103 km into the recorded legs. Next is Breiddalsvik.

3. 3. Breiðdalsvík

   Some places announce themselves and some just happen to you. Breiðdalsvík is the second kind, a handful of houses by a wide, shallow bay at the mouth of the Breiðdalur valley in eastern Iceland, with a harbour that still works and a population you could fit in a village hall. The valley behind it opens out between mountains that are some of the oldest rock in the country, laid down by volcanoes more than ten million years ago, and geologists have been coming here for decades because the layers are so clearly exposed. A small geology centre in the old co-operative building keeps that tradition going, which is an unusually serious thing to find in a place this size.

   Read the complete Breiddalsvik write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 163 km into the recorded legs you reach Breiddalsvik. Next is Seydisfjordur.

4. 4. Seyðisfjörður

   Seyðisfjörður lies at the end of a long, narrow fjord in the east of Iceland, hemmed in by steep mountains and cut off from the rest of the country by a high pass that closes with the first serious snow. That isolation has shaped it. In the late nineteenth century it was one of the richest towns in Iceland, a herring port with Norwegian merchants who built tall wooden houses in a style found nowhere else on the island, and in 1906 the first telegraph cable from Europe came ashore here. The old buildings survive, painted in cheerful colours, and give the place the air of a small Norwegian port that has wandered a long way west.

   Read the complete Seydisfjordur write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Seydisfjordur, late in the day. Next is Egilsstadir.

5. 5. Egilsstaðir

   Egilsstaðir is the capital of east Iceland in the way a village can be a capital: it has a population of about two thousand, an airport, a supermarket, a swimming pool and a good reputation. It sits on the flat shore of Lagarfljót, a long glacial lake that stretches south-west for about twenty-five kilometres and is said to be home to a monster. The Lagarfljót worm has been reported since the Middle Ages, and a few years back a farmer even filmed something floating in the water, which the locals prefer to leave unexplained. The lake is murky grey-green with glacier silt, so a monster would have no trouble hiding.

   Read the complete Egilsstadir write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Egilsstadir. That is the ride.