Car hire or organised trips in Iceland

[Rowdythree]

We're a family of 5 heading to Iceland for a week next month and I was wondering if we should hire a car, or book ourselves onto organised tours for the main tourist parts of the country. I'm assuming car hire will work out more economical for a family, but I'm worried about the weather conditions if we were to drive.

Can anyone offer any insights?

I am aware - which is why our 2 day tour has been cancelled. It’s been hideously cold and I was actually looking at going home early but didn’t want to put the OP off!! We haven’t hired a car, and very pleased to have experienced guides with us.

Yes, it was the warmest November for decades and then such a cold December! It's not normally like this. Usually in the south in the winter it stays mostly between 2 and -5 and there are a few days in the whole winter when it gets to -10 or so, but it's been an exceptionally cold month. I'm quite enjoying it and all the snow that brightens up the dark days.

The swimming pools were closed because of a failure in the Hellisheiði power plant that serves the capital, not because of the weather. Or at least I believe it was a coincidence though I never read any details about the failure anywhere.

All information is good, so thank you to all the contributors to this thread!

We will definitely take all the weather warnings seriously, and thank you to @Puffinshop for linking the travel website earlier.

I think the best thing for us to do is to play it by ear, and see how the weather unfolds and what's happening nearer the time. Despite all this, we're really looking forward to our trip, and if we can't do everything we would like, we'll still have a good time, and we'll just have to visit again in the future.

@Rowdythree
Do not worry about not staying at The Ranga. It isn’t great at all. We were very disappointed. It’s dated. We had poor weather in Sept 21 and driving was not easy one day due to high winds and snow. It was a Honda 4x4. It was useful for off road tracks. In January I’d check the weather and take it from there.

Hi @Rowdythree -
We went to Reykjavik last December but at the beginning of the month. It was my second time visiting but the first time for others in our group. We all had a wonderful time.
We hired a small standard car- Mazda maybe? Wasn't a 4x4 but the tires were snow tires with studs in them to help with grip. I did the driving - normally my husband would drive in those conditions- and I was absolutely fine. The roads were all clear but it wasn't super snowy or icy while we were there... the car hire company do prohibit certain roads and as we drove past them we could see why. Those are the roads that are quite cross country but you don't use them if you're doing the Golden Circle.
We basically followed a route that the tours do.. having our own car meant we could stay as long or as little as we wanted- one area we literally jumped out of the car, took a photo and moved on again because it was raining so hard! Maybe take a thermos flask of hot drinks!!

When driving, just go at your own pace- people overtake you and just let them. We got overtaken by a coach and we were doing the speed limit! I guess local drivers know the roads and their cars.. but you don't need to rush and take unnecessary risks.

Food is very expensive- we took snacks with us in our suitcases from England so we wouldn't have to buy them whilst there.

I would recommend getting some of those clip on ice shoe things you can get from outdoors places here... we walked down to some waterfalls and it was very icy! They'll give you a little extra grip and confidence!

We found having the hire car cheaper for the airport transfer but check if your hotel has parking available!

Aside from driving, I wanted to let you know about a little gem we found by chance that wasn't advertised but we highly recommend, and I'm not sure we'd have got to without the car-
It's called the Röstin Restaurant- The Old Lighthouse Cafe and it's about a 20 minute (I think!) drive from Reykjavik along main roads (all clear!)

Went there for a birthday dinner. The food was basic but very tasty and the very friendly lady who runs it gave us the keys to the lighthouse and let us go over, climb up it and stand out on the platform next to the light.... it was brilliant and had the northern lights been active it would have been the most incredible spot to see them from! We didn't pay to go up the lighthouse but think it usually is an inexpensive paid for thing.... but I highly recommend it. It's right out on a limb into the sea (as you'd expect!) and so quiet!

I've added a screenshot for you of Google map details.

Enjoy your trip. It's a beautiful place with very warm and welcoming people.

@Houseplantophile thank you for your post, it sounds like you had a wonderful time. Good thinking to pack some snacks with 3 teens that are always hungry!

I'll order the ice gripper shoe things too, I want to be fully prepared. I've just looked at the website for the cafe you mentioned, it looks great. I really like lighthouses and the cafe menu has something to suit the fussy eaters, we'll definitely add that to the itinerary!

Went in Januart

It was cold, snowy, windy

We went on a coach in the evening to see the northern lights

We went in a very small tour minibus for the golden circle tour

I would not drive there myself in the winter !

We really enjoyed the trips

We wore sensible winter clothes & walking boots

Definitely visit the hot pools

@Puffinshop
Yes, we were there last week.

We were snowed in at the blue lagoon for 17 hours on day 2
Then snowed in at the airport for 2 days.

Some people did say it was just a bit more snow than normal. However, the search and rescue teams, the police and the majority of people said they have never seen a storm like it. It was the wind that made it so bad. There were drifts of over 8 feet.

I thought they would have a disaster plan for weather like this. But no, we were abandoned by our original airline and had to spend £1400 on new flights.

We were not given any vouchers just one bottle of water. We were given blankets but this was after 14 hours.

Sleeping on a airport floor for 2 days was not fun.

@uggmum that sounds extreme! Which airline were you flying with?

It will take more like an hour to drive from Reykavík to the tip of Reykjanes. If you like lighthouses, you could come and see Grótta in Seltjarnarnes as well. It's not possible to go up the lighthouse except on special occasions and you have to watch out for the tide because the tip of the peninsula becomes an island at high tide. But it's a very beautiful spot and there's a nice restaurant called Ráðagerði just next to the edge of the nature reserve. Look out for the geothermal foot bath by the sea.

@uggmum Was it Icelandair? It was ridiculous how it was handled at Keflavík. I felt so bad for everyone stuck there, seemed like people were being treated very badly. It's always windy when there's a storm fgs, with more ploughs it wouldn't have needed to be such a shitshow. Sorry you had to go through all that and I hope you will come back some day in the summer time. It really is a great country but best enjoyed at times other than mid-winter.

@Rowdythree @Puffinshop
We flew in on Play. Great flight there.
We checked in for the flight home and were in departures when the flight was cancelled.

We had to leave departures and collect our luggage. At this point all play staff disappeared and we were left on our own. They couldn't offer us an alternative flight back.

We re-booked with icelandair. They could only offer us a flight to Heathrow when our car was at Liverpool. But it was the only flight they had (the next day).

This was hours later. We were then let back into departures. Where we stayed for 2 nights. We were not offered vouchers or drinks. There were no staff. Just a few security staff who did give us blankets.

We then had to queue for 4 hours to book alternative flights as our 2nd flights were cancelled.

We ended up flying back to Manchester on the Thursday (should have flown on the Monday)

The police allowed people to leave the airport on the weds and we were lucky to get a hotel room for one night.

However. I will say that all the Icelandic people that we saw were lovely.

Really friendly. The country is beautiful. The landscape is stunning.

We were just unlucky.

We did book our hire car with Sixt. Great value. Excellent upgrade. Without it we would be in a ditch somewhere.
There is a courtesy bus to pick the car up but it is also walkable from the main airport exit.

The trouble with some of the organised coach trips is that they are big buses, with a lot of people arriving at the same time for limited facilities. It's worth paying extra for a small minibus tour.

It was years ago but when we got a car 4x4 was a necessity- lots of unpaved roads. We memorably got stuck in a stream at one point and I had to push the car out- this was midsummer and there was nobody else around!

I really don’t think I’d fancy driving around in winter in potentially bad weather when it’s really very dark. I’d choose some good day trips with some mooching time in between. They were (are) expensive but very well organised and good. If you got stuck in the snow I’m sure they would have a rescue plan for starters.

We were there last week and are also a family of 5 with teenagers. We booked tours which worked well for us. We would have found it very stressful navigating a country we don’t know in extremely challenging weather conditions. We fortunately made it to our hotel in Reykjavik before the road closures but this did mean we were tied to the city when tours were cancelled. However, we made the most of it. There’s plenty to explore, lots of places to eat and mine still loved the novelty in playing in snow! They’d never seen so much seeing as we live in the south of England! I’d absolutely recommend booking tours and being flexible when things change. Often tours can be rebooked when conditions improve.

I took this out of the front window of our coach today to show you the state of the roads. I wouldn’t want to drive here at the moment!!

But that is nice, almost completely level ploughed snow with great visibility. Might look intimidating if you haven't seen it before but it's honestly no big deal with winter tyres. If you don't want to then of course don't but those are excellent conditions and nothing to worry about. OP they would never let you out with a hire car that didn't have winter tyres. If you can drive, you can drive with winter tyres on a level layer of snow.

I grew up in southern England and never drove in snow before I moved here and I just did it, found out it makes hardly any difference and you just drive as normal, but slower and more gently. I'm not an excellent driver, it's just honestly not difficult. Deep uneven snow is different but you can see that's very shallow and compacted.

This was our residential road yesterday, which is never ploughed, still not a problem for a rubbish old hatchback with all season tyres, but that is the kind of snow you have to go much slower in.

Thank you for sharing the photos, it looks beautiful. I can't wait to see all that snow! @Puffinshop your posts have been super helpful, thank you!

This is the kind of snow you'd get stuck in unless you had a serious vehicle. Then you have to wait for the ploughs to finish if you have an ordinary car.

We will definitely avoid those types of road!

@Puffinshop my daughter is really keen to see Icelandic ponies and I was wondering if this will be possible being based in Reykjavik?

Well that day we saw 6 accidents so not something I would personally want to drive in on unfamiliar roads but each to their own as I said. The snow was up to my thighs and the cars were falling off the sides of the roads as the visibility was bad so you couldn’t see where the road ended. Have a great time!

We saw lots. In fact a great gathering of them on the Snaefellsness peninsular - a sale we thought! However they are just living in the countryside but on an organised trip you may not stop. In a car you can but they may not be close. Don’t forget you cannot feed them. Just look.

We rode some - something like the eld hestar stables. We went from there to the golden circle tour.