Laugavegur & Fimmvörðuháls

Bus into Landmannalaugar, a soak in the natural hot river because starting clean is traditional, then the climb through steaming rhyolite to the obsidian shelf at Hrafntinnusker hut, 1,050m. Sleep smells faintly of sulphur.

Across snow patches and steam vents, then off the plateau edge — the view over Álftavatn's green valley arrives all at once, like a curtain pulled — to the lakeside hut. First ford before dinner as a rehearsal.

The Emstrur stage: two proper fords, then kilometres of black sand and pumice under Hattafell's ramparts, with Mýrdalsjökull's ice cap growing on the left. Emstrur hut hides in its gully like something hiding from the landscape.

Over the Markarfljót canyon's rim — 200m of grey gorge — then a slow warming descent into Þórsmörk's improbable birch forest, ringed by three glaciers. The hut has showers; civilisation reasserts itself gently.

The big one: 1,000m up between the ice caps, across the still-warm craters of the 2010 eruption — Magni and Móði, named like Thor's sons because Iceland — to the pass hut at 1,116m. Weather decides everything today; we hold if it says so.

Down the Skógá river's staircase of twenty-five falls, each arguing to be the best one, to the sixty-metre curtain of Skógafoss and the coast road. Bus to Reykjavík; hot dogs at the famous stand are obligatory and correct.