Iceland - Day 8

Today we woke to a nice sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. It would have been nice if it was like that last night for the northern lights, thanks Iceland.

At breakfast Keith disclosed that he'd had an incident with his wash bag. His extra large bottle of Lynx shower gel had leaked in his wash bag covering everything. He spent 20 mins trying to clean it out and ended up throwing it in the bin. By doing this however he had filled the bathroom with bubbles, including the bin, floor sink, etc. The sink is still unusable as every time you turn on the tap it froths up. Keith is now known as Bubbles.

The others relayed to Mark how broken the car was, so we went out for a drive to warm up the engine so that we could diagnose the fault. It's not like we could fix it, but we could open the bonnet and scratch our chins like every good mechanic should. After a 5 min drive, the fault didn't show so we assume it's fixed now and it was all Martins fault for driving it in the first place. Clown cars have lasted longer than this one did once Martin had a go!

We had whale watching to do today, so walked down to the harbour. Some other people in our hotel were just getting in a cab as we left, and after our short 5 min walk we saw them at the whale watching place. I bet they wished they'd saved the £150 that taxi would have cost.

We checked in and we're given bright red waterproof warm outfits to wear, Keith and Stuart didn't like the idea of this and checked if they were mandatory or not as they were keen not to wear them. It was not mandatory but they wore them anyway.

We were 5 mins late leaving the dock as a couple of tourists were waiting for their friend who was late. Captain Ahab didn't want to wait any longer and as we were leaving the harbour we saw their friend running for the boat having a tantrum. We waved to her, but it didn't help her mood.

Disaster stuck Bubbles, his phone had stopped working and despite trying everything, he couldn't get it going again. He then spent the majority of the trip staring at his dead phone, we all mourned his loss.

It was pretty cold on the boat, but thinking about it, it is March and we're in the arctic circle out at sea, so it kind of made sense. On the way out of the fjord we were in we spotted some dolphins and way way way in the distance, Mark spotted a Minke whale briefly. We tried to find it again but it obviously didn't like us and had gone away.

After a couple of hours, all we'd seen was seagulls, in fact we'd seen so many it should be renamed 'gull watching tours' as it was all people were taking photos of. Most people had gone inside at this point and we'd turned to head back when Stuart and Mark spotted some more dolphins. We pointed and got up and a million people followed. Captain Ahab came to a halt and came out to ask Cederic what we'd stopped the boat for. FFS, they're meant to be spotting these things, and they ask us?

Another half hour and there was good news, Bubbles had got his phone working again, apparently it was just the brightness turned down. Mark called out to a Cederic to tell him the good news, but this shout alarmed everyone, who thought that he'd spotted something. So captain Ahab stopped the boat and everyone looked where Mark was looking to see what was going on. Just when Mark thought he was going to have to fess up, only a bloody whale showed up didn't it. Mark is now a whale spotting genius in most people's eyes.

We followed the Minke whale for a little bit until it got bored of us and then we shot back to the harbour. Obviously by this time it was raining again, we wouldn't want a day without some rain.

On the evening we thought that it was time to have a proper meal, so we found a nice restaurant except it was full as there was a massive queue. We drove around for a bit until we saw a place called "We Bloody Love Steak" and decided that was the place for us. Getting there involved going through some no entry signs and parking in a resident only place but it was for steak so it was allowed.

Great steak, good service and to top it all Cederic was very generous and paid for us all, thanks! Although at one point in the meal there was a burning smell, and we're not sure what that was but it's toast now. Cederic asked for salt and they gave us normal salt but also made us try liquorice salt too which was interesting.

After a long day of seagul watching we were all knackered, so time to sleep

Iceland - Day 7

Busy day today, nearly forgot to write the blog!

We were staying on a farm, so for breakfast Martin took the opportunity to drink fresh cows milk. Little did he know that it was bulls 'milk' really. Breakfast mainly consisted of cake, no one was that concerned about that, but it did give the Japanese tourists something to take another selfie of.

We had a day of sight seeing today, so went to fill up at the petrol station only to find that it was broken. We had a choice, drive a little bit the other way and get fuel, or crack on anyway. We had half a tank so cracked on, see how rebellious and risk taking we are!

On the way to our first stop we came across a road closed sign which meant that we wouldn't be able to do a bunch of stuff we had planned. Sad face.

We could however, get to Dettifoss which is the most powerful waterfall in Europe and used in the film Prometheus. We rocked up here just as a couple of mini vans of tourists did and we started hiking across the snow covered lava fields to the falls. As well as dettifoss, there was another large waterfall here and all of the tourists went that way so we went the other. 

The falls are big, Mark got brace and flew the drone along the canyon to the falls and over it getting some good footage while the others hung over the cliff edge whilst stood on snow covered rocks. No Heath and safety here!

As we were leaving the other tourists turned up and Cederic greeted them all with a friendly hello as they went past. Most ignored him, some acknowledged but one guy looked like the grumpiest human ever, who gave a Cederic such a look with his stupid grumpy head that he was told to 'go away' or something similar.

We moved around to the rear of the waterfall to get a different angle. Martin set his tripod up as close to the edge as he dared, and when he looked through the lens, two tourists had stood in front of his camera some how! 

On to the next waterfall which wasn't as big but probably the prettiest of the lot so far, the drone was used again, and whilst flying, Mark saw the others on the edge of the cliff and thought it would be fun to pop up out of the ravine and buzz them. This would have been fine, but it turns out that it was the wrong people and he scared the life out of some randoms. Good footage though!

On the way back, Cederic decided that he'd slide down a slope on his bum, this didn't work though and he just ended up with a wet arse. Some guys went past on a snowmobile which Mark really really wanted a go on but he didn't stop.

We then left the waterfalls and replotted a route, one that would hopefully go via a petrol station as we were running pretty low at this point. Luckily we found one and spend the necessary £80 or whatever filling up. We stopped by a large frozen lake which Mark went out and stood on, the others were pretending to take pics of the scenery but really they were waiting for Mark to fall through the ice so that they could get a good snap.

About an hour later we reached our next stop, another waterfall! This one was roadside though so no treacherous treks were necessary, Mark again flew the drone and wanted to fly under the bridge and then on to the waterfall. Disaster struck though when the drone lost signal about 1km away. Mark had a slight panic and was running around waving the controller in the air when it came back to life. The drone had sensed the signal lost and opted to fly home itself. Clever drone.

We went to the local cafe, but immediately lost Cederic and Martin as they'd spotted a photo opp and had legged it so Keith and Mark stoke their drinks.

We reached our final destination, Akureyri, and checked into the hotel. We chilled for a few minutes and somehow Keith fell off his bed. Twice! Obviously we didn't Mick him too much about this.

Out in town we found an awesome burger joint as we hadn't had burgers for about a day. It turns out that this place is a favourite spot of Eric Clapton, which goes to show that even Eric Clapton can only afford to buy burgers in Iceland.

Later on in the evening Martin, Keith and Cederic went aurora hunting while Mark slept. They went to where our Viking waiter from the burger joint said was a good place to see the lights which was a car park in a forest. You couldn't see the lights at all from there but apparently it's a cracking dogging spot. Onwards to another spot and again no northern lights to be seen, however the car did start smelling of burning rubber and there was hideous amounts of heat spewing out. That's right, Mark had driven 1500 miles, no problem, Martin drives for just 5 minutes and he's broken it.

Ignoring the broken car, they returned to the hotel and we'll worry about fixing it tomorrow.

Iceland - Day 6

Normally the day starts with a breakfast update, but there were incidents before that today. Mark woke up to something hitting his head, Martin was in the bunk above so he assumed it was his watch or something and looked around to find it. Confused that there was nothing there Martin explained that his iPod had dropped, but he'd caught the headphone and pulled it back up.

It was toast for breakfast n our apartment, devoid of an actual toaster, Mark was cooking it on the grill. However, the butter that we'd brought was of the unspreadable kind, in fact there are blocks of ice less dense. Marks solution was to briefly put it under the grill with the toast. Unfortunately the packaging set on fire (properly on fire). We didn't have any over gloves either so it was a case of using the tea cloth to rescue it! No one else opted for toast this morning.

We hit the road, heading northwest to the lakes and stopped occasionally for photos, at one spot, Mark launched the drone and was flying it back along the road when a car pulled up and told us off as he said he'd nearly crashed into it. He had a 4x4, no one was forcing him to use the road!

One of our major stops was at a volcano, it was proper snow everywhere at this altitude but we made it up the track to the car park and then hiked to the top. The lakes up there were covered in snow too and it was quite pretty. There was smoke gushing from parts which we investigated only to find that a power station had been built over the vents to harness the power. Wouldn't want to work there when it all goes wrong!

Just as we were about to leave, our Japanese tourist stalkers also wanted to leave but got stuck in the snow because they'd hired a diahatsu shito instead of a 4x4. A recovery truck had to come and pull them out so we laughed at them and then drove off only to get stuck ourselves. We used 4x4 low range made in reverse and sorted it though, then sped off as though we meant to get stuck.

Next up was some mud geysers, sounds rubbish, I know, but it was pretty cool. Lots of small holes that bubbled and spat and then a few larger mounds that vented smoke like crazy. It properly stunk of rotten eggs though which everyone blamed on Keith's bum. Surprisingly, it was also muddy too, our boots were twice the size and weight than when we'd started so we had to spend just as long cleaning our boots as we had looking around!

Onwards to the next stop which was a cave that was used in Game of Thrones, the bit where John Snow gets all funky with Ygritte. There was none of that shenanigans while we were there but we did climb down in there to look around. Keith managed to smack his head on a rock, there were no helmets or any of that nonsense. He was ok though so we opted not to leave him behind.

We moved on and stopped at a cafe near our hotel for lunch, we didn't eat though as they wanted a block of gold bullion in exchange for a sandwich. So we opted to just grab a drink and then ate left over crisp sandwiches from the boot of the car. Keeping it classy.

Our final point of interest to visit was a volcanic crater. It was huge, and to get there meant off-roading it down this pot holed track. We parked at the bottom and started to hike up the one side. About one third of the way up we passed some people coming down, they had high vis on, spiked boots, snow shoes on their back and spiked sticks. We'd basically just got out of the car and started walking so we were a little concerned. It was hard going and very steep, some scrambling was involved at one point as it was very slippy on the ice but we made it in the end.

The views from the top were great, both of the inside of the crater and the surrounding area. Going down was tough too, Keith slipped at one point and went on his arse, and Mark's foot near the edge gave way too. Martin however lept down like a mountain goat and gave us plenty of encouragement like 'come on'.

Back at the car park, Cederic wrote an amusing note in the dirt on someone's car. On the drive out of the car park and up the potholed track, some stalker tourists were coming the other way in diahatsu shitos , as we passed them, Mark accelerated hard throwing a wave of water out of the pot holes over the cars. We laughed a lot. Up ahead was another group of tourists, but stood outside their car, as we approached you've never seen anyone get in their car so quickly! We laughed more.

We checked into our accommodation which was a couple of small cabins, tiny, but practical and chilled out for a while after our busy day. Just as we entered our cabins though, the phone in Keith and Cederic's cabin rang and someone tried to sell them double glazing, you can't get away from them anywhere!

We went for food at a local bistro in town, the main course was good but we fancied dessert. We hadn't seen the waiter for about 20 mins despite there only being two other tables with customers. We gave up waiting, paid and left with the plan of getting something from the supermarket. The shop had closed an hour before though so our dessert consisted of hobnobs and custard creams.

We chilled out again waiting for it to get dark so that we could hunt the northern lights again, and at about 10:30, Cederic burst in announcing that he could see them through his camera but not with the naked eye. By the time we'd all got warm clothes on and got outsidevtyerecwasca bright white strip across the sky. We dashed to the car to get away from the light pollution and nearly ran over half a dozen Japanese tourists who were stood in the car park oblivious to the car. Cederic shoved them out of the way and off we went, however on the single lane track out of the complex, another tourist had set up his tripod blocking the road. Genius. Some words were exchanged and somehow we got through, we won't go into details here for legal reasons.

We went to the caves and saw the light in full glory, the way they moved was majestic and the guys with proper cameras got some great shots, it was hard to get a decent pic with my phone. It then started to snow so we gave up for the night and went home. It was then that we noticed that the carvthat Cederic had written in earlier was our next door neighbour!

Iceland - Day 5

Our wannabe mom prepared us breakfast this morning, however the other guests ate most of it before we got up, bloody tourists! We had to make to with three pieces of toast between us and some cornflakes but no milk. There were chocolate biscuits still available though for some reason.

We didn't have a lot of plans for today, it was to be a semi chill day albeit with a decent length drive to our destination on the far east coast of the island. We stopped occasionally for photos but had yet to see any reindeer, so Martin demanded that as Mark was the driver he should find some. Literally one corner later there was a herd of reindeer. Stuart was not impressed and demanded that Mark found some without a fence in the way; Martin then added that there should be a good landscape in the background and some puffins or something too. Within two minutes Mark pulled up 10 meters away from reindeer with mountains in the background, next to a lake full of geese. Martin demanded lottery numbers! Unfortunately thus is the only pic of them got the blog as the proper cameras footage isn't easy to transfer to the iPad and Mark couldn't be bothered getting out if the car to picture them.

Onwards we went and found another nice area to picture. Mark got out and launched the drone to get a nice video, JUST after launch he heard 'excuse me', to find two Japanese tourists holding a map asking directions. Mark pointed them to a Keith who told them what road they were on (there is only one road on this side of the island) and which way to go and sent them on their way. Bloody tourists!

Along the way there was a geyser in the sea that we went to find, unfortunately it wasn't signposted so we couldn't find it and just went for an unplanned walk along the coast instead. On the way back, Keith had a call if nature so went for a wee, however he hadn't calculated the wind correctly... so without going into too many details, the sea geyser is now renamed to sea geezer.

Back in the road we ascended into the mountains where it was white sky, snowy mountains each side, and then it snowed. The 4x4 actually coped ok with this well, although to be fair , a Nissan Micra would have been fine with the amount of snow we had. We stopped for pics however.

We arrived at the town where we were staying but too early to check in, we went for lunch and ate our normal array of crap which involved burgers fries, fried chicken, all that good stuff.

We then went for a drive around the lake which was a 50km drive, they gave big lakes here. Legend has it that there is a Loch Ness style monster in this lake and there were 'sightings' just a few years ago. Needless to say we didn't see anything, however, we're sure the local gift shops will sell us some tat about it.

We checked in to our apartment which is actually really nice, it's on the lake edge so has amazing views and there's plenty of room for us all inside. We went shopping as we thought we'd cook our own dinner but ended up having crisp sandwiches.

Late on the evening we went hunting for the northern lights but the cloud cover was too much, the lights were definitely there, just the other side of the clouds which was very frustrating. Martin got up at 4am to see if the situation had improved, but nothing. Maybe tomorrow.

Iceland - Day 4

Today's breakfast was a bit better as although we were in a cheapo hotel,it shared the restaurant with a four star. This meant that they had sausages on tap amongst other goodness. With breakfast over we rolled out, only for Martin to meet his doppleganger working there.

Not long out of town we pulled over for some pics and Martin walked off so far that we think he went back to the hotel, Mark sent the drone looking for him but he was too far out of range.

We then made our way onwards stopping approximately every 400 yards to take photos. It was Stuart's turn to fall over today, while walking through the snow, which was 2-3 inches deep, his one leg found a bit that was as deep as his knee and over he went. Mark and Keith were back at the car some distance away and still heard him swearing.

We've noticed that whenever we find somewhere to stop, we pick a nice quiet spot, yet 10 seconds later about 200 hundred Japanese tourists armed with selfie sticks turn up and photobomb every picture. To combat this we've turned all of our GPSs off so that they cant track us. We've gone dark!

We've been doing a lot of miles but even so, we've been using ALOT of petrol. In fact, we'd probably use less petrol if we just cut a 2 inch hole in the bottom of the fuel tank and pissed it all on the floor.

As we were reaching our first destination of the day, the blue sky's did one and it started lashing it down. We were rendezvousing with a firm that was taking us on a tour of some ice caves in a car park, sounds dodgy but was actually legit. It just happens that this car park was next to a lagoon full of icebergs which was gorgeous. It would have been even better if it wasn't raining and sub zero temperatures, but we didn't let that stop us.

We met with our tour guide who was going to take us to the ice caves and he pointed us to the monster truck that we were using to get there which was a Ford Transit on some steroids that a Russian athlete would be proud of.

It was about a 30min ride to the caves, most of which was off road, Mark had bagged the front seat but after a couple of mins on the rough terrain, one of the American girls on board was sick so she had to be moved to the front. Stupid selfish attention-grabbing yank. Cederic quizzed the guide if he'd ever been to the caves before (?!?), to which he'd replied that he'd been once before. Today. And another 200 times earlier this winter.

Once we arrived at the ice cave the American made a full recovery, how convenient. So we pushed in front of her and entered the caves. They were stunning, the roof had a blue glow to it where light was shining through the glacier, and the whole place was just jaw dropping with fantastic ice formations. Obviously as soon as we'd arrived a coach load of Japanese tourists somehow arrived and plastered the ice walls like cheap wallpaper. 

We spent about an hour in the caves before going out and trekking up the glacier, Keith found it impossible to fit the crampons over his giant clown like feet, it took three people in the end to get them on. It was cold on the glacier, and our planned snowball fight was impossible as it was just solid ice. So we tested smashing ice on our helmets instead.

We headed back to the car park and drove down to the beach, it was still raining but this beach had icebergs crashing into it, so it was very pretty. We managed to not get soaked this time and only about a dozen Japanese followed us so it was quite a nice stop.

The day was getting on so we gunned it to our accommodation which was a guest house run by this lovely lady who just wants to mother us. Stuart sat down with her and listened to her stories while Mark plotted ways to take advantage of this. I shit you not, 5 mins after we got there a Japanese couple turned up!

We were starving, so we chose one of the five restaurants in town and had a corking meal. Keith and Martin took advantage of us being in a fishing village and ordered fish, but this still cost the same as the national debt of a small country.

After dinner we had an important planning meeting to figure out where and when to see the northern lights and where to go on our journey tomorrow. Keith and Martin had an in depth conversation about the visibility of the northern lights, with Martin using satellite and Live data from NASA whereas Keith was using his Yahoo! weather app.

Iceland - Day 3

After much snoring we all awoke, packed and went to breakfast. Now knowing how slow the toaster is, we had a system in place to maximise its usage while Keith inhaled all of the chocolate croissants.

Suitably full we jumped in the car and started the road trip. From here it's a tour of the island stopping at wherever is worth stopping at.

Leaving Reykjavik the car started its normal antics and told us that the 'tire pressure system needed servicing', we pressed ok and carried on.

We were soon surrounded by snow, white landscape, white sky and 20m visibility, we were getting aquaplaning in the turns so obviously Mark enjoyed himself driving!

Martin had found a great waterfall to go to so we spent 45 mins going there to find that it wasn't a waterfall but it was a town named after a waterfall. We decided to carry on.

After another 45 mins we arrived at our first waterfall of the day, it was a biggun too.

We got pretty close to the waterfall, in fact, we got soaked. This wasnt good enough for Mark who went behind the waterfall and was drenched.EditThere were more smaller waterfalls too, so Mark got the drone out while the others took pics until some birds decided to take an interest in the drone!

Keith decided to go into one of the smaller waterfalls and got covered in mud, nearly slipping over in the process but he got some good pics so it was worth it!

We moved on towards, you guessed it, another waterfall. This one had some steps to the top, we ascended these which took a while and proved how unfit we were, only to find that the view was a bit rubbish, so we went back down again and took pics from the bottom instead.

We'd finally had enough of waterfalls for the day so moved on. The car was showing negative fuel now and we worked out that this may actually be genuine. So with the emergency fuel light on, we checked and was 30km from the nearest petrol station, uh oh. Mark gunned it to make sure we got there quickly so that we didn't run out of fuel and we made it, just. Fuel is expensive here, so much so that both of Keith's credit cards got flagged up by husband banks as potential fraud and he had to call them up to get them activated again!

We did however, find somewhere cheap for lunch, so we scoffed that pronto and moved on.

Next was a bit of a trek, we'd heard of a plane wreck on a beach, but you couldn't drive there, so it was a 3km walk to get to it. Cederic's knee was bad, so he stopped in the car and drank vodka. It started off rainy but soon cleared up and was really sunny by the time we arrived at the plane crash site, it was crazy windy though.

The wreckage was pretty good so we checked it out for a bit then walked back. This time though we were walking into the wind and it was much stronger, it was hard to stand up at times, at least it dried us off though. Great views mind, with the glacier in the background.

It was towards the end of the day now, but we wanted to stop on the black sand beach, and we were glad that we did. Not only was it a unique place, but the waves were crashing like crazy and it was so windy that a flock of geese that were flying into the wind were flapping away but not moving forward.

Cederic had brought a kite with him, just for this moment so we got it out and flew it, with the occasional crash, it was too windy for it really which sounds crazy, but he had fun while it lasted and the string got tangled. Mark opted to help at this point and while holding the strings, the wind caught and ripped the nylon strings which cut through his gloves and took a layer off his fingers. Luckily it was too cold to feel pain at this point.

Martin and Keith made a black sand castle, and whilst Martin was taking pics of the sea, a wave snuck up and soaked him up to his knees filling his boots with black sand and water.

We cracked on to our hotel in Vik, a tiny town but quite picturesque. After a quick shower we ate at a truck stop across the road to keep costs down and used the money saved to book what promises to be an awesome breakfast tomorrow.

After dinner, Martin and Cederic ventured our for some night photography, it's not northern lights tonight, but it is a clear sky. As they both have proper cameras though, they're shooting in raw format so it's not easy to transfer to the iPad to upload here, imagine what pics from Hubble are like though and it's practically the same...

Iceland - Day 2

We all woke up fairly early so we went to breakfast when we could. It consisted of bread, a toaster, choc croissants and sliced egg, but it was only £12 each so what did we really expect. The problem was that the toaster took forever so we had to hog it for about an hour, and then stuffed our faces with croissants while we waited. The plan was to eat so much for breakie that we could skip lunch and therefore save ourselves £500 each.

On the road, someone cut Mark up, so he politically incorrectly called the other driver a Joey, much to Keith's amusement. Keith googled and found that Joey Deaken died in 1981 so it really was a blast from the past.

The car is still shit, the problem where the tire catches on the arch has got worse, in fact the inner arch has now been ripped off in one place. The fuel guage continues to move faster than a wheel of fortune so we've no idea what fuel we have at any time!

We visited a national park and went for a walk over a hilly thing where there a partial path, this led up to a viewing area where there were a million Japanese tourists all armed with selfie sticks. We'd rather have faced a zombie hoard I think, but we made it out of the carnage alive.

We then went to a nearby waterfall where Cederic had to tell several people off for getting in the way of his camera shots.

Heading back to the car, Martin was cleaning his boots before getting in the car when he slipped on some ice and properly went arse over tit and landed on his butt. The others obviously found this highly amusing and mocked him accordingly.

Driving to the next location the amazing car cut out while turning a corner, this cut the power steering which made the car difficult to control to say the least. Being an automatic, you couldn’t just restart it either, you had to shift to Park, etc and then turn the key.

Whilst parking at the next place, the car cut out again but this time we figured out what it was, because we're so cramped, Mark's knees are on the dashboard and if he moves his right knee 2 inches to the right it knocks the key which turns the car off. What a great design. No one ever buy a Jeep.

We went to view a Geyser which was surrounded by hot springs. Surprisingly, it was bloody cold though. The geyser was pretty cool, it would erupt every 5 mins or so blowing boiling water 15 meters into the air.

This area is tourist central with coach loads turning up constantly. The shop was rammed and I'm sure that more money changed hands in that souvenir shop that in a Las Vegas casino on fight night!

Onwards to the next stop which was another waterfall, this time a big one, kinda Niagra scale falls. As it was cold last time out of the car we opted to wear our full ninja outfits, which was hats, snoods, hoods etc. Except Martin who for some reason wore a gimp suit instead.

The falls were stunning, but it was a good job we'd ninja'd up as there was a full on hail storm which hurt like hell if it hit your skin. Keith and Mark did the team thing and went back to the car leaving Martin and Cederic with all their camera gear.

Back at the car Mark decided that it was time for the maiden flight of his drone which only turned up the day before we left, so no time to practice. He didn't have the bottle to fly it over the falls so just had a practice flight over some grass land. It was incredibly stable in the high winds and didn't crash horrendously which was a bonus!

Time to move on so and as we hadn't seen a waterfall for 10 mins we decided to find another one.

This was a medium sized secluded one, Mark was happy with this as no tourists meant he could play with the drone more. However, whilst setting it up 100 cars arrived out of nowhere. He flew it anyway and nearly took out Cederic in the process.

It was now time to head back to base which was a 90 drive in our 2x4 car.

Back at the hotel we chilled out for a few mins before heading out for food. We'd had some good recommendations for burgers so that was the plan.

Mark drove into town to avoid horrendous taxi charges and we found the burger joint of choice. The problem was that like most restaurants in Iceland, you can only fit 3 people in the entire place, so we moved on to the next on the list.

It was a strange one this, out the back of a posh expensive looking bar was a dirty burger place, so we ordered our burgers with our fussy requirements and sat in the bar waiting for them.

When they arrived of course two of them were wrong, Keith sent his back but Martin was so hungry he just tucked in. The guy who served us was so upset that he'd got it wrong that he gave us 4 vouchers for free meals. So that was about 2 grands worth of freebies, we'd better guard those with more care than our passports!

After dinner we went to a place called Yo Yo which was an ice cream parlour that Cederic had spotted. It was a strange but cool place where you just helped yourself to as much ice cream, sprinkles, sauces etc as you liked and then it was just weighed at the end and you took out a second mortgage. Nice though.

Back to the hotel afterwards for a planning session with vodka.

Today was Martin's turn to lose everything, with his phone, headphones and ipod going missing.

Blogging software has gone to shit, will add pics when possible 

Iceland - Day 1

It's holiday time again, this time Mark, Martin, Keith and Cederic head to Iceland (the country, not the shit supermarket where Kerry Katina lives).

It was an early start for Keith and Stuart getting up at 4:45 in order to get to Birmingham. Mark had organised the timings with military precision in order to get there on time. Martin then collected everyone from Marks place and before you knew it we'd been in a car, on a train, a monorail and was at the airport.

In fact we were so early the airport wasn't open and we had to sit around for a while until we could check in.

Going through security was a doddle, until it came to Keith who got searched, body scanned and anal probed. He now walks with a limp.

The flight was on time, and we even left a few mins early, the pilot then gunned it and we arrived in Iceland 40 mins early. Result.

We were due to meet someone from the hire car place at the airport, and there were lots of people holding up signs. Could this finally be the moment that Marks life had led to where they'd be someone holding a sign with his name on it? That life ambition was looming, tension was high. But no, the guy was late and he just had a generic sign. Dream shattered.

The weather in Iceland was rainy and grey. Being Englanders we were used to this, in fact, we were in our element.

We picked up the hire car, but was given a substitute car as ours was having its headlights replaced?!

We headed off and immediately had a challenge, the road that the satnav had chosen for us to get from the hire car hire place to the motorway was a dirt track through a quarry! This obviously was done at full throttle to ensure that there was less time for anything to go wrong!

On the motorway we learned the full extent of how bad the car is. Firstly, despite being the largest car ever, there is no room, Mark gets pain if he has to move his foot onto the break, Keith can't sit up straight and Martin's head sticks out of the sunroof.

All of this would be fine if the car was in good working order but unfortunately the engine warning light is permanently on, another unknown warning light comes on occasionally, the fuel guage goes from full to empty and back every 30 secs and when on full lock, the tyres scrape on the wheel arches. I'm sure it'll be fine, it's not like we're doing 2000 miles in a snowy hostile environment in the middle of nowhere. Plus we may have chosen to not go with any of the insurance /breakdown options.

Anyway, we made it to our accommodation easily, it was a large hostel where we had a private room to ourselves. Unfortunately there were bunk beds and a double bed, so after a brief argument we settled on the sleeping arrangements.

It was time for a beer so we called a cab and headed to the city centre. The taxi was a 4 min journey and cost £20 but it was raining a lot and we had no idea where we were going.

We'd been recommended places to eat and drink but the map had screwed up and we couldn't be arsed standing around in the rain figuring it out, so we went in the first place we found.

The food was pretty good, and the beers were welcome, we even had dessert. Cederic ordered some "stuff that's better than vodka" which the waitress called "black death " which he necked. On to the pub!

Found a decent underground pub which had a few people in, so we ordered some drinks and holy fuck... 3 beers and a vodka cost £60!

So after nursing the drinks, savouring every drop and licking out the glasses, we moved on.

We stocked up at the supermarket where the prices were equally extortionate and got a cab back to the hostel.

It was time to nail the duty free, we had 3 litres of vodka and now we had mixers we could have a good go of it.

Keith managed to lose everything, so far today he's lost his car keys, phone and medication, and he hasn't even unpacked yet.