Iceland's Ring Road: Driving the Entire Country in Ten Days
Route 1 circles Iceland for 1,332 kilometres, passing waterfalls, glaciers, geysers, and lava fields in a loop that takes most drivers ten to fourteen days. It is one of the world's great road trips, and it is entirely doable without a guide.
Iceland is a country that rewards the road trip format more than almost anywhere else on Earth. The Ring Road — Route 1 — circles the entire island for 1,332 kilometres, and driving it gives access to a landscape of such geological variety and raw beauty that it is difficult to believe it all belongs to a single country. Waterfalls, glaciers, geysers, volcanic craters, black sand beaches, and the northern lights are all within reach of the main road.
The classic Ring Road itinerary takes ten to fourteen days, starting and ending in Reykjavik. The south coast is the most dramatic stretch — the Seljalandsfoss waterfall, which you can walk behind; the Skógafoss, which falls 60 metres into a pool of mist; the black sand beach at Reynisfjara, where the basalt columns and the crashing Atlantic surf create a landscape of gothic intensity; and the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon, where icebergs calved from the Vatnajökull glacier float in a lake of extraordinary blue.
The east fjords are the quietest section of the Ring Road — a series of deep inlets flanked by mountains that plunge directly into the sea, with small fishing villages at their heads and almost no other tourists. The Eastfjords are Iceland without the Instagram crowds, and the driving here — narrow roads that climb over passes between fjords — is some of the most dramatic on the island.
The north coast is dominated by the Mývatn lake district, a geologically active area of lava fields, pseudo-craters, and boiling mud pools that is one of Iceland's most extraordinary landscapes. The Dettifoss waterfall, 45 kilometres from Mývatn, is the most powerful waterfall in Europe — 193 cubic metres of water per second dropping 44 metres into a canyon of black basalt — and the roar of it can be heard from a kilometre away.
The Snæfellsnes Peninsula, a detour from the Ring Road on the west coast, is often described as Iceland in miniature — a 90-kilometre peninsula that contains a glacier, a national park, lava fields, fishing villages, and some of the finest birdwatching in the country. The Snæfellsjökull glacier, which Jules Verne used as the entrance to the centre of the Earth in his 1864 novel, dominates the western tip of the peninsula and is visible from Reykjavik on clear days.
The northern lights are visible from Iceland between September and March, and the Ring Road offers some of the best viewing conditions in the country — away from the light pollution of Reykjavik, on a clear night, the aurora can fill the entire sky. The forecast apps (Vedur.is and the Aurora Forecast app) give three-day predictions of aurora activity, and the most important factor is cloud cover — Iceland's weather is notoriously unpredictable, and a clear night can become overcast within an hour.
The best time to drive the Ring Road is June to August, when the roads are clear, the days are long (up to 24 hours of daylight in June), and the highland roads are accessible. September and October offer the northern lights alongside autumn colours and fewer tourists. Winter driving is possible but requires a 4WD, winter tyres, and a willingness to change plans when the weather closes in — which it will.
