Icelandic Glaciers

A few years ago I took a flight to Iceland from Bristol Airport, aboard an old WOW Air Boeing 737. Alas, the service no longer exists, but as the weather has become a little colder in the UK, I’ve been recalling the adventures I had in that most magical and mystical of all islands.  

My long meanderings in a four-wheel-drive included an exciting snowmobiling adventure one day that took me to the top of the spectacular Mýrdalsjökull glacier, where you can - if you are lucky - enjoy breathtaking views.

I have never been anywhere else like it. The place is vast and indistinct and it would be very easy indeed to get lost up there in that lunar landscape of ice and crevasse.

Snowmobiles are easy to drive but I was very glad indeed that I had a guide because there are deep crevasses everywhere and much of the vast ice-cap is amazingly featureless so it would be easy to get lost. 

Like every Icelander I met, the guide was a wonderful and friendly chap who spoke perfect English - though I began to wish he didn’t when, at the very top of the glacier, he told us the whole thing was sitting on a live volcano that was more than 50 years overdue blowing its top.

He said when it did the 900 feet of solid ice would melt in just two hours and the resulting explosion would be far, far, worse than the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull which stopped Atlantic flights.

We drove up to the glacier in this remarkable old four-wheel-drive Mercedes lorry - and then it was a day spent blasting about at high altitude on the snow-mobiles. A lot of fun - as long as the volcano doesn’t blow - if it does you’ve had it. There’s not much warning apparently - I certainly wouldn’t want to live in the Icelandic villages directly under that bomb waiting to happen.