A nEU dawn - Friday, 24th June

At 7am I woke up to a barrage of messages on my phone that either said 'shit' or 'fuck' or both. The excitements of the evening meant that I'd completely forgotten the fact that a referendum was on and that now it was likely that it had gone the wrong way.

'Farage declares Independence Day' read the first notification. 'Cameron Resigns after Brirain votes to leave the EU' read the second. Oh fuck. Oh shit.

I didn't really have time to digest this news as I was due to meet Bernat at the edge of Reykjavik by a motorway. I managed to get a ride to the edge of town almost immediately. The kindly, middle aged driver owned a business that imported goods from the UK. He was delighted by my news that the pound was at its lowest level in 35 years.
"You can now form a union with Norway and Iceland." He beamed
'Oh, well that's just fan-fucking fantastic!' I very nearly blurted out.

Bernat and I had determined our hitching point using a website called wiki hitch. It places markers where previous hitchhikers have managed to get a lift. The person who chose this particular point must have been either a sadist or Cara Delevigne. It was on a slip road where only someone attempting suicide would stop their car.

Without much trepidation, we decided this was a stupid spot and went to the nearest petrol station. After bothering a few people we managed to get a lift from a fisherman. "Sorry, but I really hope we beat you at the football on Monday." He said hesitantly.
"Oh, I hope you beat England. They don't deserve to win anything for quite a while."
I replied.

I asked Bernat what he thought about the referendum. "I really don't give a shit."
"Trust me, you will."

I thought about explaining how dependent Spain was on British tourism but I could tell from his rather pinched expression that he didn't want to hear more on the matter.

We were dropped off at a petrol station and soon found a lift with an Icelandic man called Oscar. His teeth were blackened by years of Snus tobacco abuse and his face looked not unlike a well exposed cliff face.

He had worked as a radio operator on the Vestman Islands when the Elfell volcano famously and abruptly shot its load in January 1973. 5000 people were evacuated and no one was killed - nothing short of miraculous.

Only one unfortunate soul was killed in the aftermath as he tried to break into the town bar and pilfer some booze after the eruption. Unfortunately a great deal of heavy, highly toxic gasses had poured into the cellar, waiting for a thirsty victim. It was, quite literally, dying for a drink.

We had heard that there was some decent weather in the east of the island so had decided to go as far that way as possible and find a camp for the night. There's only one main road in Iceland that covers its entire circumference and conveniently called Route 1.

After a few more hitches we ended up with two very sweet German girls. They were both chemistry students from and neatly conformed to all of the usual German stereotypes. Although they were at least very self-aware of these stereotypes and we poked fun at them together.
 

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The four of us went to a few waterfalls and a two beaches. One beach had black volcanic ash for sand and the other had grey basalt pebbles. Hardly the Caribbean but I guess that's not really the point of coming to Iceland.

Each natural attraction near the road was rammed with American and Chinese tourists. After the financial crisis, Iceland desperately needed to realign its economy and realised that the only thing it really had to sell (apart from fish and wool) was itself.

Consequently, Iceland has been a bit of a village bicycle for tourists around the world. Almost 1.5 million people will visit Iceland in 2016. That is shit loads when you consider that their population is 350,000. Or 1 x Bradford to you and me.

So, I'm not exactly reinventing the wheel by going here. But it seems worth seeing what all the fuss is about. So far I wouldn't say I'm exactly frothing over for it. I'm not a big fan of tourists. And there's whole sodding battalions of them here.

The weather had decided to go from grim to unrelentingly awful so it was also hard to fully appreciate the beauty of the island when most of it was shrouded in fog. That was sort of Iceland's trump card. And it had been trumped.

We made it to a town called Vik, one of the southernmost points of the mainland, 200kms east of Reykjavik. One of he girls had noticed that there was an exciting looking road that led north from Vik into the mountains to a place called Pakgil. So we made our merry way there.

It turns out that when a road is labeled as open to use by all cars in Iceland they really mean cars like the one Top Gear used to get to the North Pole. As the new rental car began to shake itself apart, the sanguine blonde German had a slight sense of humour failure. Which is a bit of an oxymoron, being German and all that.

At several points the car very nearly succumbed to the road and I could see the brunette German's face contort as a seemingly endless stream of rocks peppered her poor, expensive rental car.

It was worth it when we got to the campsite. A flat, grassy plain presided over on all sides by verdant, almost vertical mountains and nestled next to a babbling river. It felt like we had stumbled onto the set of Lord of the Rings.

Sadly our new German friends had a party in Reykjavik to go to and soon departed. Bernat and I wasted no time and set off for a hike at 8pm with a packed dinner. The great advantage of hiking here in summer is that the trails are pretty much 24/7. Even when it's cloudy.

Until this point I had convinced myself that Iceland was basically just Scotland with worse architecture, higher prices, more tourists and even further from London. I was wrong.

Within an hour we were in the midst of scenery that was heart achingly beautiful. The proportions and angles of the valley we walked along defied imagination. It was an absolute dream.

At the top of the glacier the weather decided we'd had enough fun and closed in. Unfortunately we were standing on a giant sheet of ice and soon couldn't tell our arseholes from our ears.
 

The scene was now beginning to feel like a reconstruction of a fatal accident from a low budget National Geographic documentary. Thanks to blind luck, we stumbled across our own footprints and decided to let brevity be the soul of wit and turn back to camp.

Once safely back at base, we settled into a hot dinner in a candlelit cave replete with a barbecue and the other happy campers. Once again the conversation turned to Brexit and Bernat's face twisted so visibly that we moved the conversation on quite swiftly.

Soon it was time to crash, although knowing when to crash isn't exactly easy as the sun doesn't really set here. 'Brexit tossers' I whispered and sailed into a deep and tranquil slumber.