Journey to the centre of the earth

Just kilometres outside Reykjavík the traffic dropped off, and a few hours later when we reached the Snæfellsnes peninsula, there was barely a soul to be seen, never mind other cars or people with tell-tale rucksacks and cameras. Nowadays it seems pretty difficult to be alone anywhere - that's definitely one of the magical things about Iceland.
We took the coastal road anti-clockwise around the peninsula, which is 100kmlong . The north coast was rocky and mountainous, and also the more densely populated, though by Spanish or British standards the villages were minute.
Like everywhere in Iceland, there were lots of benches and picnic facilities placed in idyllic settings for eating even the most humble sandwich with great satisfaction. We stopped off at the town of Stykkishólmur, which is the kind of place you visit for a couple hours and wish you could stay for a week. It is by far the biggest town in this region and the harbour is full of buildings dating back to its heyday as an important port 100-150 years ago. In fact it's still very much a working fishing village today. We climbed the little basalt island connected with the town, called Súgandisey.This had views over the thousands of tiny islands dotted along the coast. The road around Snæfellsnes bridges some fjords and winds round others.

The south coast seemed softer and greener and was lined with beaches.

The tip of the peninsula including the glacier is Iceland's newest national park. In fact, the icecap was the setting for Julio Verne's Journey to the Centre of Earth. Our guidebook told us that it was fairly easy to reach the crater so long as we had crampons and a couple ice axes, but we decided to give it a miss.