Another of the stops on the Golden Circle tour in Iceland was the hot springs at Geysir. Comprising boiling mud fields surrounded by just normal mud – and lots of it getting stuck everywhere so be warned if you’re visiting – and active geysers it was the first hot spring to be described in print hence the name spreading all around the world to describe similar natural wonders.
Iceland is incredibly bleak and our trip to Geysir was under heavy, grey skies but that doesn’t stop the landscape looking awe-inspiringly beautiful. When you add a hillside with steam rising against a cold temperature and wind and a fountain geyser called Strokkur erupting every few minutes you end up with some fabulous sights and wonderful memories.
You only needed to wander off for a couple of minutes to explore a few springs or check out the wide vistas visible from Geysir before you could turn around again and wait for Strokkur to send another jet of hot water tens of metres into the Icelandic sky.
Despite the size and obvious danger that boiling hot spring water possesses it was possible to get very close to the Strokkur geyser. This gave us a good opportunity to see how the surface of the water would periodically recede bubble up into a dome just before everything erupted with a wonderful whoosh. I was also able to position myself so that what little sunlight there was backlit the geyser; this gave me a chance to capture some of the blues in the water with one of my photographs.
Away from the spectacle of the geysers at Geysir that landscape of Iceland offered up some immense views of empty, nearly colourless land and distant mountain ranges that, like elsewhere in the country, made you feel both big and incredibly small at the same time.
