Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
a farmer. Bearing east directly opposite is
Route F225
, the four-wheel-drive-only track
to Landmannalaugar; Route 26 continues to parallel the river for 15km up to the
junction with Route 32 (which you can follow southwest to Þjórsárdalur), before
heading northeast across Sprengisandur as the F26.
ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE
HEKLA
Buses
Landmannalaugar and Sprengisandur buses stop at
Leirubakki
.
Destinations
Hella (3 daily; 45min); Hveragerði (3 daily;
1hr 25min); Landmannalaugar (2 daily; 2hr); Mývatn
(1 daily; 9hr); Reykjavík (3 daily; 2hr 20min); Selfoss
(3 daily; 1hr 15min).
By car
Route 26 is surfaced past Leirubakki, after which
it becomes rough gravel - though accessible to normal
vehicles in good weather. Note that the F26 across
Sprengisandur and the F225 to Landmannalaugar are four-
wheel-drive only.
2
ACCOMMODATION
Leirubakki
Route 26
T
487 8700,
W
leirubakki.is.
Year-round hotel and restaurant with Hekla's snow-
smudged summit as a backdrop. Comfortable but plain
doubles with or without bathroom, sleeping-bag
accommodation in bunk rooms, and a campsite with
access to showers and toilets. Guests can also use the
outdoor lava-block “Viking Pool”, lukewarm but with
superlative views of the mou
ntain. T
There's a fu
el pump
here too. Sleepi
ng-bag do
rm
5700kr
; camping
1100kr
;
en-suite double
24,900kr
Landmannalaugar
Thirty kilometres due east of Hekla via the four-wheel-drive F225,
Landmannalaugar
is
an astonishing place, a
hot springs
area set in a flat gravel plain between a glacial river
and the front of a fifteenth-century lava flow. The landscape oozes rugged grandeur,
with sharp-peaked obsidian and rhyolite mountains, brightly streaked in orange, grey
and green, rising to a snowy plateau. Despite its proximity to Hekla, the area has
provided summer pasture for sheep since medieval times, and was once a stage on
back-country routes to the coast when flooding from Katla had closed the preferred
coastal trails. Today, hikers have made Landmannalaugar a popular destination in its
own right, not least for its position at the start of the exceptional four-day
Laugavegur
trail
down to Þórsmörk, though an escalating number of campers simply come to enjoy
a hot soak amongst the wild scenery.
The hot springs
Your first stop at Landmannalaugar has to be the celebrated
hot springs
, which are in a
patch of green at the end of a boardwalk up against the lava front. A scalding stream
emerges from underneath the lava and merges with a cold flow; you simply wade up
the latter to where they mix, find a spot where the temperature is just right, and sit
down up to your neck. You have to keep shifting every time a fellow bather moves,
which alters the water currents and temperature, but you couldn't ask for a better place
to unwind. Be aware that some unidentified
parasite
in the hot pools has caused
paralysis in ducks; the effects on humans are unknown but locals certainly don't care.
FJALLABAK BUSES
Fjallabak
is an area covering two
old tra
c routes
which ran, quite literally,
fjallabak
- “behind the mountains” north of the Mýrdalsjökull glacier. Today, one of these has been
resurrected as the F208, which runs from Landmannalaugar to Kirkjubæjarklaustur (see p.301)
via
Eldgjá
, a deep, 40km-long volcanic canyon with a spectacular accompanying waterfall,
Ófærufoss
. From June until September, daily
Reykjavík to Skaftafell buses
(
W
bsi.is) cover
this entire route in just ten hours, though you'll definitely need to stop off along the way at
Landmannalaugar and the Eldgjá area to get the most from the journey.
