Hjólað í kringum Ísland

When we woke up in the morning the wind was even stronger then yesterday. We did not much feel like leaving this nice hut but the trip needed to be continued. We were ready to go at 11:30 in the morning. Only 2 km down the road we needed to wade the first of many rivers this day. Most we could bike but others we needed to wade.  But we hardly needed to use our feet. The wind was our engine. In fact we made most use of our hands holding the breaks. If this would have been a paved road we could easily have done 50 km/h but this was a rough road and the most we could do was 15 km/h. On those occasions where we tried going faster something broke on the bikes and we needed to use time to fix the problem. Three times we needed to do minor repairs to my bike and twice to Gudjons bike. Our max speed this day was 31 km/h and we travelled 57 km in 5h and 53m with a still time of 1h 51m which was mostly wading rivers or fixing the bikes. Towards the end of the day the temperature dropped and the we were getting cold. About 2 km from our destination Gudjons bike had a flat and mine had a minor breakdown. We walked the last 2 km. It was difficult to find a place to put up a tent at the Versalir, a closed hut at the end of the mountain road. The terrain was very rocky and the wind was blowing like never before. In the end we put the tents on a wooden porch in front of the hut using nails we found lying around as pecks for our tents and a stone for a hammer. The next task was to create shelter for our stow so we could cook. It was a cold and difficult night. Temperature went close to 0°C and we were wet after all the wading we had done in the rivers.

Woke up to the hurling wind at 7:00. I decided that we would stay put for the next hours in the hope that the wind would come down. At 9:00 I made us breakfast after which we started taking down the tents and packing. The wind was much stronger than before (probably 15-20 m/s) and we decided to bike to a hut that was supposed to be some 8 km away and seek shelter there. We never found that hut and just continued onward against the sandy slopes and the wind. After 21 km we were exhausted and had to make camp in the middle of this vast sandy desert. But not before we had crossed one cold river on foot.  There are three types of rivers in Iceland: glacial with temperature of 0°C, pluvial with temperature close to the air temp (6-9°C) and spring rivers with temperature in the highland of Iceland between 2-3°C. All the rivers we crossed were of the first and third kind. Our tents were literally sitting in the middle of nowhere with no shelter and no vegetation to be seen as far as the eyes could see. The dinner that night was pasta with tuna and sand. Very grinding on the teeth. Trips statistics: we biked 21 km in 4h and 14m. We rested for 2h. Our max speed was 19,3 km/h but our moving average is 5,1 km/h. Total ascent was 643 m. We have now 47 km to go to Nýjidalur if this weather continues it will take two more days to get there!