Prior to arriving in Iceland I had talked to a few people who had already been. The most common responses was that the weather and landscape was always changing. Day one didn’t disappoint in that respect. I was also told that the environment can seem somewhat alien, as in you’re on another planet, not alien as in you’ve lived all your life in a big city and suddenly find yourself in a rural setting.

I’d have to say that aside from the lava-fields everything felt a little familiar. For quite a bit of this day the scenery reminded me of places I had visited in Britain – the moors and Scottish highlands mostly. Even the distinct absence of trees couldn’t shake this notion and although excited to be here I wasn’t too impressed with Iceland thus far.

The day started very grey, wet and windy but the sun soon broke through the clouds to give us blue skies and rainbows. I was taking in the scenery much of the day rather than seeking something good to photograph and was happy enough to go for a walk every now and then. Highlights were the sulphur springs for their pungent eggy smell and a waterfall simply because it is a waterfall.

Although seemingly uneventful, day one helped ease us in to our journey. It is not often you get to see a rainbow or a waterfall and the hot water in Iceland has the same eggy smell of the geothermal sulphur springs. Little did I know at the end of day one that these would be regular features for the days to follow.

Landing at Keflavik airport, my first thoughts were ‘cold, very wet and very windy. Surprisingly though the weather cleared after an hour and because of the sunshine and intermittent showers, we were treated to some very spectacular views and rainbows.

Sometimes it takes you a while to realise why a place feels so different from what you are used to. It wasn’t until the wind had stopped howling in my ears, in the shelter of a weird wind-carved rock formation, that I understood why Iceland can feel so eerie: it was the deadly silence. 

In the midst of the barren lava-fields of the Reykjanes peninsula - the first that most visitors to Iceland see of this astonishing land - the landscape is unearthly and alien. Not a tree grows anywhere, so there are no birds to sing, and away from the airport no planes fly overhead. There is no distant motorway to provide a background sigh, and no railway for trains to clatter along. All there is are you, the landscape, and the silence.

Kleifarvatn lies about 20km to the south of the capital conurbation, which consists of Reykjavík, Garðabær, Hafnarfjörður, Mossfellsbær and Kópavogur. The water level is extremely sensitive to weather conditions, and varies considerably, to the extent that the lake is used by some locals as a rain gauge. It is surrounded by barren, black rock and lava, dusted with little more advanced than moss and lichen. At the south end of the lake, near the tiny settlement of Krýsuvík, an area of geothermal activity assaults the nose with a pungent sulphurous smell which I would liken to a cross between boiled eggs and Marmite. The intense heat triggers chemical reactions in the soil creating red, yellow and grey mud which seethes and boils endlessly.

We drove through Reykjavík, stopping briefly for something to eat, and headed inland towards Þingvellir, the Parliament Plains, where the first Icelandic parliament was held in the early 10th Century, making it the world’s oldest democratically elected parliament. There is geological significance, too, as Þingvellir is also where the tectonic plates of North America and Europe meet, moving apart slowly to create a vast low-lying plain between mountains to the south and tall cliffs of lava to the north. Over these cliffs the river Öxará flows, creating the Öxarárfoss waterfall, from where the water makes its way down two more, smaller waterfalls before flowing into Þingvallavatn, one of Europe’s largest inland lakes.

As the sun set we paid a brief visit to Geysir, before a long drive through driving rain and pitch darkness to our first overnight stay at Hotel Dyrhólaey, near Vík, Iceland’s southernmost town.

Hot showers in the morning meant waking up to the smell of rotten eggs. It’s actually not that bad once you get used to it. However, experiencing it for the first time means you are either shocked into full consciousness or end up fainting. Wide awake then we set off on what was to be a spectacular day.

Sun and blue skies throughout helped us get over the patchy weather yesterday. It wasn’t this that made the day special. We covered a lot of ground and at every turn we saw some breathtaking scenery. Today was definitely picture postcard day. We got to see waterfalls, rainbows, mirror lakes, snow covered mountains with glaciers and waves crashing against ice on an ashen beach.

Pick of the day for me was a lighthouse on-top a cliff edge at Dyrhólaey. We were there initially to visit a natural arch in the rocks but ended up the wrong side of it for the time of day seeing it only as a silhouette against the bright morning sun. The light was magnificent though and turned the dead grass around a wonderful golden brown. The lighthouse, and a smattering of outhouses, with nothing else in sight for miles gave me a sense of remoteness and planted a seed in my mind that would inform the rest of this photographic journey.

One thing that surprised me after driving halfway through the night then retracing our steps a few miles back the next morning, was that there were no trees. Driving the previous night, I could have sworn blind we were driving through forest, I saw no lights on the horizon, just the odd light of a farm here and there. Drive in the UK and you see the glow of the next town or village from miles away, if you don’t, you’re probably driving in a forest.

The black mirror-like effect of the lake at Dyrhólaey was enchanting and mesmerising. The ¼ inch of water on the black sand gave a perfect mirror-like finish. Fantastic! We then visited Skogafoss waterfall, the sun was low enough in the sky to grace us with a complete half rainbow in the spray of the falls.

Over midday, we drove across the front of Vatnajökull glacier to Jokulsárlón, a glacier lake connected by a short iceberg filled river to the sea. The evening light shining through the icebergs with a gorgeous green-blue aura.

The rain from the first day gave way on day two to uninterrupted sunshine. And in Iceland that means one thing: rainbows. The waterfalls in Iceland are beautiful enough on their own, but at the right time of day and with the right weather, the sun is low enough in the sky to produce the most spectacular rainbows in the spray, and today was no exception as the giant Skógafoss afforded us a complete arc.

Much of day two was spent in wonder at the astonishing distance from which the peak at Hvannadalshnjúkur was visible. At 2119 m (6952 feet), Hvannadalshnjúkur, part of the rim of a volcanic crater called Öræfajökull, is the highest point in Iceland and is visible from as far away as Vík, approximately 150km (90 miles) distant. The road from Vík leads through Eldhraun, an enormous expanse of lava covered with moss, before passing through the small town of Kirkjubæjarklaustur, from where it crosses Skeiðarársandur, an area of gravel and rivers where water from the great Vatnajökull ice cap melts and flows towards the sea. The remains of an iron bridge, destroyed in 1996 in the jökulhlaup (glacier burst) have been left as a monument to the power of nature.

Past Hvannadalshnjúkur we drove to a place where the Vatnajökull glacier meets the sea, at Jökulsárlón. Here, icebergs calved from the glacier stretched as far as the eye can see in a wide lagoon, drifting slowly towards the sea. On the shore itself, where the sand was jet black, chunks of ice lay melting in the sunset, as clear as glass, while larger icebergs that survived the journey were pounded by the waves just offshore.

We watched the sun set over Öræfajökull, turning the mountains to the east blood-red, before heading off to the farmhouse that was to be our accommodation on the second night.