So I know this isn’t exactly rock climbing, in that it wasn’t rocks that I climbed. It was a glacier. And also, you know that time that I forced you to sit down and read about my holiday to LA? Well you never learn do you, sit down, you’re going nowhere. I’m going to tell you about Iceland.
And, before we move on. I promise you that the last bit of this article does not go the way you expect it to. Unless of course, you’re expecting it to be a story about how I proposed to my fiancée. In which case, you have an eerily good ability at guessing. (Please send me 6 random numbers off the top of your head and a bonus ball).
I booked two tickets to Iceland, one for myself and one for Kymberley, a few days after the boat trip. We were buzzed up in the early honeymoon phase, and perusing through ✓ Project Bucket List, I figured that Iceland was a near guarantee for the Northern Lights. I’d been told that March was a good time of year to see them. And so, tickets were booked, £151 for each return, and it was added to diaries – an exciting thing to look forward to.
Fast forward 10 months, and we’re up at 4:30am to catch flights (I bet you wondered why the flights were so cheap, huh?), landing in Keflavik, a short drive away from the capital, Reykjavik. We rented a campervan through CampEasy, £800 for 9 days. The thing came with heating in the back, a big purple sticker on the front, and a little camp stove in one of the drawers. After getting lost twice on our way to the rental place, we collected our van and set off for a week of adventure.
Now, I won’t be the first to say this, and unless something horribly catastrophic happens to the world in the time it takes you to read the next few paragraphs, I probably won’t be the last. Iceland is so alien. It’s remarkably different than anything I’ve ever experienced.
Vast open landscapes that break your mind’s perception of space lay blasting out either side of the open road ahead of you, interrupted by gorgeous sprawling mountain ranges. The country is built on postcards of places that I still don’t really believe exist outside of National Geographic magazines.
Occasionally, the road will split off, gravelly trails heading far into the distance, seemingly to nowhere. You’ll find points on the main ring road that travels around the entire country (imagine if the M25 was bigger and if it wasn’t the bane of my fucking existence), that run directly alongside some of the most beautiful waterfalls you could ever imagine. We marvelled as strong gusts of wind swooped across the plains, leaping underneath the waterfalls and taking the water directly upwards into the sky.
I am not well enough equipped with the English language to fully communicate how breathtakingly beautiful Iceland is, and how awe struck one feels to travel around it, and I’m not one for trying to convert it into song, so instead, I’ll share some photos.
After our first few days, something happened that absolutely nobody could have expected to happen in Iceland in March.
The snow hit.
Arctic winds shook the van as snow battered us. We crept outside into the evening light, covering every inch of skin we could against the sting of ice and snow. My first real snow storm, and my God – it hurts. We woke up the next morning to a view of the country covered in the purest powder snow you could possibly imagine.
Now, as part of the trip, we had a hit list. Not of people, but of places, and things that we wanted to do. And pretty damn high up on that list was the highest of places we’d go during our trip. Falljökull glacier, one tongue of Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe. Booking through a company called Arctic Adventures, we were placed into a group with a tour guide, Ola.
After fitting us with crampons (shoes for your shoes, with spikes), harnesses, helmets and an ice pick each, we all shuffled aboard a bus unlike I’d ever seen before. Imagine if a school bus and a monster truck had a baby, and that baby decided it was going to leave home and live in the mountains. If you’re imagining it, that’s great, because I forgot to take a picture.
We arrive at the foot of a looming mountain of blue ice, reaching far into the air above us. We’re parked next to a large lake at the foot of the glacier, which Ola explains comes from the ice itself.
As we make our way up the rock, the ground beneath us begins to change, becoming ice. We stop, putting on our crampons, and take our first steps onto the glacier.
For those unaware, glaciers are massive formations of slow moving ice. They form over centuries, where snow accumulates year round, burying piles on top of piles on top of piles to produce amazingly compressed ice. Under the pressure of it’s own weight, the glacier begins to move downwards. They’re an incredible feature of nature, and something that, at this rate, won’t last forever. They literally rely on consistency.
We climbed further and further up, stopping and starting to receive information about the glory of nature surrounding us. The tour was light-hearted, everything felt accessible, and we both felt safe in Ola’s hands. When the hike became a little more dangerous, we were warned to follow exactly in her footsteps, and often we would find small sets of steps carved into the ice.
A peculiar thing happened on the side of that glacier, which was that I started to feel quite at ease with temperature. Those that know me well will have heard me claim that October 17th at 7pm is always the perfect temperature, and I can tell you that, March 3rd at 12:30pm on a glacier in Iceland is a pretty close second.
The dry air sits in such stark contrast with the wet damp cold we get in England, that I found myself walking around sans gloves, and with an open coat. It wasn’t exactly hot, but everything felt cool and fresh. The air was clear and neat, and I could take deep breaths, each one feeling like a reward of sorts.
At one of our highest points, we passed through a crevice in the ice, emerging out of the other side with an open expanse ahead of us. We took some time to rest here, and Ola pointed out another crevice nearby. “For the photos” she explained.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet, but a major inspiration for me is the 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. At a pivotal point during the final part of the story, Walter takes a call while he climbs the Himalayas. It’s a curious contrast as the protagonist tells the eHarmony agent to close his account, the very thing that he cared about at the start of the film. He has superseded his need for the dating app.
Hiking up that glacier (with a name I cannot pronounce) felt like that moment. It’s a powerful contrast to look back at the place where you started – whether it be the bottom of the hill, or the very start of this Bucket List, and see a difference. Gazing across the snow and ice, and thinking back to before all of this, a thought crosses my mind like a bullet whipping through grass.
The man I was at the start of this is not the man that I am now.
We had plans to go to Diamond Beach after the hike. It was getting late, so we high tailed it east out of Skaftafell. Diamond beach is so appropriately named because it’s parked right next the Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon. Chunks of ice break off from the glacier and float lazily out to sea, where these bright icebergs get washed onto the black sand shore. It’s beautiful, and I’m sure you’ve seen photos of it at some point during your life.
Lines upon lines of photographers stand with tripods pointing at interesting ice formations as waves crash around them. Kymberley and I walked through the crowds, heading to quieter area so we could get a photograph on one of the chunks of ice.
There’s a phrase that I’ve heard a lot since Kymberley and I started dating. “When you know, you know”. Parents, friends, colleagues have all said it, and they’re completely right, when you know, you absolutely do know.
And so, on March 3rd 2025 at 17:58, I asked Kymberley Cochrane to be my wife.
I won’t tell you what I said to her, I’ll be honest, I think I blacked out and can’t remember it word for word, but she leapt up and down for 24 seconds before crying out “Yes!”
It’s an incredibly feeling to find the person that you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. I can tell you now, from experience, it’s like standing at the top of a glacier.
Next in the Iceland Pentalogy > ✓ Explore a Cave in the Dark