Reykjavík Grapevine - 18.05.2018, Qupperneq 47

turns out to be a wave in the cor-
ner of my eye. It‘s a waiting game,
until finally...
Training wheels off
They say that progress should have
stopped when man invented the
bicycle. They’ve clearly never fall-
en off a fat bike into a snowdrift.
Situated between Lake My-
vatn and the geothermal area of
Hverir, Reykjahlíð—population
300—boasts the infrastructure of
a much larger town. Along with
several hotels, a school, nature
baths, and a municipal pool, the
villagers rarely get bored. That’s
partly thanks to the presence of
tour groups like Myvatn Activity,
who in their own words, get to “do
all the fun stuff.”
The fun stuff, it turns out,
includes ‘fat bikes’. These are
mountain bikes with wide tyres
and reinforced frames, specially
constructed with the goal of al-
lowing riders to basically cycle
over anything. Once in the saddle,
our guide Ragnar leads us through
the nearby lava fields—home to
an underground bakery, the My-
vatn Nature Baths, and Iceland’s
first geothermal power generator.
Pointing toward the lineage of
saunas and steam baths, Ragnar
explains that without geothermal
power it would be “impossible” to
live here.
The fat bikes handle the black,
steaming terrain with ease, but
on the way back, an overambitious
move sends me head-over-heels
into a snowdrift. “Are you okay?”
asks Ragnar, laughing. “Good
thing we got you to sign those li-
ability forms.”
Final flight:
chariots of fire
“If you’ve driven a car before, it’s
more or less the same thing,”
says Dori of Amazing North as he
hands me the keys to a bright red,
Mad Max-style monstrosity. With
a roar of the engine, we race down
into the rift valley, kicking up
clouds of black dust in our wake.
Life without a car can make
you feel powerless in this land-
scape. As you venture deeper and
deeper into the volcanic ridge that
stretches 60km from the ocean,
through Myvatn, and into the
Highlands, a 4x4 dune buggy gives
you an acute power over the land.
Behind the wheel, nothing can
best you.
The motorcar is, and perhaps
always will be, the undisputed
king of this island. It’s with this
bittersweet sense of scale and
freedom that my pentathlon
across the North came to a jud-
dering halt.
On his homeward train jour-
ney, Morris remarked on ‘what a
little way it is’ from Edinburgh
to London. “I thought the houses
and the horses looked so dispro-
portionately big for the landscape
that it all looked like a scene at a
theatre.” As I roll along the rails
back to London, like Morris, all I
feel is a sense of disproportion.
Release the buggies
Biking through the wilderness
Horses don't get flat tyres
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