After our preparations and shoeing we could start for the ride and as usual, if everybody is wearing raingear, the raining just stopped as we started the tour!
The first two days we rode a lot along bigger roads and crossing several rivers on bridges. It’s every time a challenging ride when you have to keep the horses away from the streets and cattle fences. But everything went well and we spend our night relaxing in our guesthouse in Laugarvatn Village. In the evening we got spoiled, like every day of the tour, with a fantastic dinner from our Maid of all work Sjöfn, not only a wonderful cook, but also every time in place when you need her with the car, fence or as a driver.
The 4th day we got a special tour first by car & our own feet and in the afternoon with the horses, going down to the tourism center of Þingvellir valley. Our tourguide was the fantastic Einar Saemundsen, director of the national park, that gave us a really interesting tour through the valley where he added a lot of anecdotes to the historical and geological facts, so it became one of our best history lessons so far. Cheers to the guide! We stayed overnight at an old place for Landsmot called Skogarholar, having a nice time far away from the cities and even with the glow of the erupting volcano in the sky.
On day 6 we started our last ride from Fitjar farm following a nice trail along the lakeside. We were surprised by a real Icelandic forest, shown on the other side of the lake, with big Coniferous woods. Another little adventure hunting the herd, when they just completely turned around cause of a quad in front of us. But the miraculous guides caught them again soon, so that we could start again.
We just had a wonderful time riding down the trail to Heggstadir farm, where the horses could recover from the last week.
It was a wonderful tour and Iceland showed a lot of its wonderful and so different sides combined in these trails within a week.
Text by: Melanie Brunen
Pictures by: Melanie Brunen & Einar Saemundsen
