Day 2: Ellie Dalton

We woke up fairly early at 7:30 after a good sleep and went downstairs for breakfast which was a great selection of fruit, bread waffles and croissants. After being filled up on food, we boarded our bus and headed towards our first stop which was the cathedral of Rekjavik. The cathedral was really different and simple. We also took the lift to the top where you could see the whole city of Rekjavik; it was nothing like the landscape of London!

We then travelled out of the city to the more rural areas of Iceland. We stopped off at the place where the Eurasian and North American plates are pulling away from each other. It was amazing to walk between them both knowing you are in the plate margin of two continents. After filling up on sandwiches we arrived at our next stop which was the caves! We were all full of excitement, knowing we were going to be exploring lava tubes from an actual volcano. Our activity leader Orri took us to a a medium sized whole in the ground and we all clambered through. The lava tube was roughly 400m long. We all really enjoyed the challenge of scrambling over the rocks and not knowing what obstacle you'd be faced with next! In the middle of the tube we were all told to switch off our head torches, so you couldn't even see your hand in front of your face! Orri then told us a traditional Icelandic story about troll which was really exiting and a bit scary. We then carried on through the lava tube until we reached the other end. We were all a bit confused as to where we'd come out of the ground, but the bus was already waiting for us and on we went to the geyser!

The geysers were really cool and despite the smell, I really enjoyed the anticipation of waiting for the geyser to blow. It went really high which caused some unfortunate people to get a bit wet but was amusing for the rest. Our last stop for the day was the waterfall Gullfoss, this was definitely the biggest waterfall I had ever seen!!! The sheer velocity of the water coming down into the gorge was amazing, it looked so strong and frightening  You had to watch your footing otherwise you would end up in the icy waters! After this we were all boarded the bus for the final time today, all a bit exhausted and still buzzing from the things we had experienced today! 

Ellie Dalton

Ellie standing at Pingvellir