Bathing outside in naturally heated water is part of Icelandic life. Icelanders are expert at capturing hot water, either in hillside hot pots (little pools sunk into the ground, made from anything – stones, concrete, repurposed agricultural tubs) or in outdoor pool complexes with water slides.
My holiday mission is simple: to travel around the country hunting down volcanically heated water, for me, my husband Tim and our two water-loving boys (Jack, three, and Eddie, two) to immerse ourselves in.
The materials for our expedition are considered and gathered as if we are going on a mountaineering trip: base layers, dry bags, thermal jackets and Gortex, as well as swimming nappies and float vests.
The trip begins at the hot spring area at Hveragerdi in Iceland’s milder, easier south, 26 miles from Reykjavik. It’s a land of thundering waterfalls and steaming hills, where water spurts as well as forming pools. The hills are patchy with grass and bare iron-red earth. A pony drinks from a hot stream and Tim has his first dip.
Two of the south’s best pools are also among the country’s oldest. At the Secret Lagoon in Flúdir, (adults about £12, children free), built in 1891, the changing rooms are swish modern Scandi, but the pool edges are raw and grassy. A small geyser nearby blows with regularity, and pots of bubbling mud are partly obscured by steam.
Seljavallalaug (free entry), which dates from 1923, is more basic. Set in a valley and backed by a cliff, with a snow-capped glacier beyond, it occupies one of the most stunning swimming pool positions on Earth. The water, at a family-friendly 36C, is a deeper green than any water I’ve been in. The afternoon’s swimming starts with the parental instruction that there will be no jumping – I didn’t like the idea of that green water going up the boys’ noses. There follows two full hours of jumping. We emerge with wrinkly fingers, while a more recent arrival performs somersaults to assembled applause.
It is a regular feature of our trip that places which on first sight seem daunting become precious havens. En route to Heydalur, in Westfjords, a peninsula in the north west that is geothermally rich but remote, we feel out of our depth. We are on a gravel track and have been driving for a long time. Crossing a mountain pass, we feel very vulnerable in our little hire car, with just a bag of snacks to sustain us. For two long hours no one on the back seat says “I want to get out”.
Eventually the hotel Heydalur (doubles from £59) appears, a hillside of random outbuildings. Our family room is wall-to-wall single beds and mattresses, but over the next few days, thanks to its talking parrot and orphaned arctic fox, warm welcome and fantastic home-cooked food, we come to really like the place. Fresh fruit and vegetables are still rare enough here that on the flight from London an Icelandic woman told me where I could buy them on our travels, but at Heydalur they are plentiful with our meals. The boys appreciate the lasagne and burgers served every day, which makes for an easy life – children are always welcome in Iceland, but when it comes to food they are not always catered for.
Heydalur has various hot pots, a swimming pool surrounded by cherry trees and roses, and saddles hanging inside a big shed, but at 6.30am I get out of bed for a more solitary experience at a nearby hillside hot pot. To reach it I have to cross a river before it becomes too high to ford (more snowmelt comes downstream during the day, even with the midnight sun). It is a one-person pot surrounded by round stones and dripping moss and it is perfect: with the voo-voo-voo calls of unseen ground-nesting birds, snow-capped mountains on one side, a fjord on the other, and bubbles of gas coming up through clear water.
Across Iceland, outdoor pools are often signposted – for swimming pools it’s a man’s head above three rippling lines; for hot pots a thermometer is added. Up here in Westfjords, many hot pots are more private, and the protocol is to ask at the neighbouring farm before you jump in. There are hose pipes pumping hot and cold water, allowing bathers to vary the temperature to their liking, and all come with some kind of shed (the wind can be bone-chilling).
We stop at fjord-side pots in Strandir, on rocky beaches strewn with giant pieces of driftwood from Siberian trees bleached by the elements. At Mjoifjordur the stripes of seaweed follow the contours of the shoreline in bright colours – lilac, red and gold. At Drangsnes the wind blows strong and wild.
Then we leave the peninsula and continue our journey through northern Iceland, back to civilisation, where there are houses actually next to each other, and service stations serving hot dogs. We drive through horse country, passing wild ponies, and in shops boxes of horse shoes are lined up at the cash till next to Durex and chewing gum.
We’ve booked all our accommodation, whether hotel or guesthouse, through Icelandic Farm Holidays, thinking that the combination of space and occasional animals will make accommodation child-friendly. Broadly it works – at Draflastadir, a stunning new lodge, the boys are even given rides on a tractor.
For our last three days, we do a northern triangle of hot spots – whale watching at Húsavik, swimming at Hofsós infinity pool and the volcanoes of Mývatn.
Húsavik comes as a relief: it’s a pretty clapboard port with humpback whales and dolphins out in the bay, pizzas and cappuccino in town. We spend an afternoon in a converted cheese tub on a cliff, surrounded by lupins, surveying the sea for the tail of the humpback whale.
At Hofsós, while the boys play on a mini slide next to a hot tub full of older people, I swim just a few lengths. (It’s too hot for more: one of the surprises about swimming around Iceland is that it’s often too hot for much actual swimming.)
We spend many precious moments doing things that are an adventure for all of us, not just the children. One night Eddie lies in bed trying to remember and count his swims on his chubby little fingers: “Rocky swim, eggy swim, swimming lesson. No! Eggy swim, rocky swim…” At the hot river Jack draws his first pictures: Humongous Rock, Humongous Rock II (as an adjective “massive” is abandoned as not up to the job), and Iceland (lots of red and black). Despite the daily pulling of toddlers through the roll call of highlights – Digger! Troll bridge! Hay bales! – we come home less tired than we started.
At Mývatn we have one last experience to tick off: to swim in a volcanic crater, where the water is an alluring turquoise. But swimming at this Viti crater (there are two it transpires) is prohibited, and at the other one the temperature can often be too hot, so we go for the nearest volcanic swim we could find, Mývatn Nature Baths (entry from £15 adults, 12-15 years £5, under-12s free) north Iceland’s equivalent to the famous Blue Lagoon near Reykjavik. The boys run down to the water’s edge in their float vests and plunge in, keener than on the day we started.
With his chin skimming the surface, Eddie sets off. “This one’s a bit eggy mummy,” he says, independence and contentment on his face, and with that he swims on. Iceland, I feel, has been swum.
Great swims we missed
The bathing places mentioned here are among those listed at outdoorswimmingsociety.com. These are the swims I’m going back for …
• Krossnes swimming pool – dramatically situated above the icy Atlantic in Westfjords.
• Landbrotalaug – a perfect one-square-metre, one-person dipping pot on a farm on the southern side of Snaefellsness.
• Landmannalaugar – a large pool in a hot river in a highland area famous for its hiking trails (it’s almost too popular, though, with more than 100,000 visitors a year).
• Laugarfell – a large pool below a glacial ridge and built of turf and stones.
• Pollurinn – with breathtaking views, “the Puddle” consists of three small shallow pools and is popular with locals.
• Hrunalaug – a hot pot with a dilapidated changing hut in a grassy dell a few kilometres from Flúdir.
• The trip was provided by Promote Iceland, (visiticeland.com) and Icelandic Farm Holidays (+354 570 2700, farmholidays.is), which has a range of self-catering and hotel accommodation across Iceland. Flights were provided by WOW Air (0118 321 8384, wowair.co.uk), which flies from Gatwick to Reykjavik from about £140 return
Kate Rew is author of Wild Swim (Guardian Books, £7.49) and founder of the
Outdoor Swimming Society
