Cycling: Iceland Ring Road Reflection

on cycling

A reflection and retrospective on my Iceland cycling tour.

Reflection

I cycled 1668km over 14 days. When I started, I weighed in at 79.4kg and on return to Berlin, I was down to 76.4kg. I circled around Iceland and seen most of the popular tourist sites but there were many more still unexplored.

This is a must-do bikepacking journey for anyone into the sport. However, it is only for the experienced in my opinion. Only if you have past experience with handling difficult elevation and terrain, heavy traffic, unpredictable and extreme weather, can you comfortably do this trip.

It was also an expensive trip, relatively for cycling trips, so to people attempting it I would suggest to prepare a large budget in order to do it comfortably. When cycling, I feel it’s important not to scale back on the budget as that can increase the risk of failure (leading to bad campsite options, poor nutrition, missed sightseeing events, etc).

Things I think I would try to do differently if I had a second try:

  • Start from Keflavik to try have better luck storing the bike bag for free at a hotel instead of using the bike bag storage service.
  • Packing proper waterproof hiking pants to avoid another rain disaster.
  • Packing shoes that can dry fast.
  • Packing merino wool socks to keep the feet dry and clean.
  • Packing less t-shirts (every cubic cm counts!) I found a good merino wool t-shirt can be reused for many days.
  • Wearing a high visibility cycling jersey/jacket or cycling vest instead of needing to wear a normal workmans hi-vis vest that isn’t very aero.
  • Schedule more time in the itinerary to experience more things such as detours in the highland.
  • Buy souvenirs at the airport instead of in Reykjavík

If I had a chance at another tour, I would love to spent time in the highlands. That would be a real challenge, far off the main road and in a real remote area.

bike

I was very satisfied with the bike setup for this trip. It was stable and light. Since the weight was low, I could push up hills that other people typically had to dismount and walk. And I could fit on it all the gear I needed to survive 14 days (albeit constantly resupplying for food). The carbon frame was a concern and it was easy to see no one else was risking that (with their steel bike frames) but I had confidence in the Canyon Grizl for this trip and it held up without an issue. Gone Grizlin’ Iceland was a success!

If I could change anything, I would consider a more featureful handlebar bag that could fit addons as I felt I wasn’t optimising that area. I would also want a bigger frame bag, possibly switching away the inner bottle with a water bladder that can store more water. This would make better use of the empty space in the frame.

And that’s it. Thanks for reading! I read through many blogs out there, enjoying others Iceland bikepacking stories, and now here’s mine. I hope this helps someone else out there planning their trip to Iceland.

Good luck out there. Ride safe.

More

This recap is broken down into multiple posts. Follow the links below to read through the series.