We spent our first full day in Iceland driving the Golden Circle, a 300km circular route starting from Reykjavik.

Our first stop, around an hour away from Reykjavik, is the Thingvellir (Pingvellir) National Park.

The Thingvellir park is one of the key stops on the circle route and it’s importance to Iceland’s history cannot be understated.

Back in 930AD this location was where the first national assembly took place making it the world’s oldest sovereign ‘parliament’.

The park is also a UNESCO world heritage site, the only one in Iceland.

It’s third claim to fame is that this is one of the places that the Mid Atlantic Rift appears splitting apart the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates at a rate of 2cm a year.

You can walk along a path where the fissure sits and if this really grabs your imagination, there is a place nearby where you can snorkel (wet-suited!) along a underwater fissure in the translucent glacier refined water, literally swimming between tectonic plates!

There is nice short trek up to a couple of quite impressive waterfalls and then back down passing by an old church.

The water is so clear that what can seems to be reflections are actually the rocks under the water and not actually a reflection at all!

It’s a fabulous park and a great introduction to the wonders of Iceland’s varied and quite stunning uniqueness.

Our next stop was Geysir, a geothermal area with one of the pools named Geysir, from which the common term geyser was derived.

You can see the steam plumes in the distance as you approach.

Some of the pools here are dormant yet still bubbling away but the Strokkur geyser erupts every 8 mins or so, to the delight of the visitors trying to capture the moment on their smartphones.

Below Strokker erupts, timing a photo of this is tricky, a 3 second eruption every 5-8mins or so needs patience!

Iceland manages to utilise geothermal power for around 70% of its energy needs, heating nearly 90% of its homes and businesses and the rest is used for electricity.

That makes Iceland a global leader in green energy.

Our penultimate stop for today is the Gullfoss waterfall.

We have been privileged to see some of the most impressive waterfalls in the world and that naturally means you can get a little underwhelmed by the less impressive ones. Clearly not all waterfalls are equal!

But this is impressive, its scale, setting and raw power make it well worth checking out. The area is well managed too and importantly, you can get quite close (and wet)!

Fed by a glacial river it’s 100 ft plus drop sends spray out to those getting close by.

Our final stop of the day was a visit to a 6,000 year old volcanic crater known as the Kerio Crater.

There is a nice walk around the crater so apologies for showing it at every possible angle along our trek, it’s never easy to choose your best photo when you took 100’s!

The colours of the water and crater itself are stunning, Iceland knows it’s colour pallet well…

Well that’s our first day complete,

I am already getting the sense that Iceland is going to keep on giving, let’s hope that’s the case. It is certainly going to up my daily step rate!

Next we head east along the southern coast with plenty more miles to cover, I suspect more waterfalls await too!