Today was a driving day, the long way round from Landmannalaugar to Þórsmörk. We could have gone straight, but the straight way runs through rivers we did not want to take, so instead we looped out on the highland roads and came at Þórsmörk from the Ring Road side. It turned into a day of volcanoes, one after another the whole way, and we spent a good part of it counting how many of Iceland’s big ones we had seen.

We left Landmannalaugar early and drove out on F208 North, back the way we had come in, under a clear sky this time. The lake, Frostastaðavatn, sat still and blue just north of the camp, with the small crater cones standing around it, red and black against the water. The road runs past them and on through the crater country until it meets F225.

There we turned left onto F225, the Landmannaleið, and the character changed. This is an old track through the reserve, and it is narrow, sunk down into the pale rock so that in places you drive along a road sunk into the ground with hills rising on both sides. The tuff is soft and light-coloured, and the road cuts through it rather than over it. High hills stood around us the whole way, and the country was rough and empty and good. We took it slowly, met almost no one, and came out at the junction with Route 26.

We aired the tires back up there and stopped for lunch, with Hekla out in front of us across the land. Hekla was on our left side for the last part of this road.

Sitting there looking at Hekla, we started counting the big volcanoes of Iceland, the ones everyone knows, and how many we had seen. There are six or seven that matter most, and we have now seen four of them.

The first was Snæfellsjökull, weeks ago, seen across the water from the Reykjanes peninsula, the white cone on its far arm of land. It is the one Jules Verne used as the entrance to the centre of the earth. Then Eyjafjallajökull, the one whose 2010 eruption shut down the skies over Europe. We had stood at its farm a week ago and seen nothing, the whole mountain shut in cloud, but today the weather gave it to us, and we could finally see the glacier that sits on top of it, white and clear against the sky. Then Hekla, in front of us now at lunch, one of the most active in the country, called the gateway to hell in the old days. And the fourth we can see from tonight’s camp, in a way. Básar sits between three glaciers, and one of them, Mýrdalsjökull to the east, is the icecap sitting on top of Katla, one of the most dangerous volcanoes in Iceland. We cannot see Katla itself, buried under all that ice, but we can see the glacier that covers it, and that is about as close to Katla as anyone gets.

That leaves two of the big ones. Grímsvötn, the single most active volcano in the country, sits under the Vatnajökull icecap far to the east, and we do not expect to see more than its glacier, if that. And Askja, a great caldera with a crater lake out in the northern highlands, which we have hopes of reaching in the next few weeks.

We drove south on Route 26 with Hekla on our side the whole way, the long snow-streaked ridge staying with us for miles. Where 26 meets the Ring Road we turned, and there was Eyjafjallajökull again, clear this time. A week ago we had visited its farm, Þorvaldseyri, the one evacuated in the 2010 eruption, and the mountain had been buried in fog the whole visit. Today we could see it plainly, the glacier bright on top. The clear-day return we had hoped for had come.

Then we turned onto F249, the road into Þórsmörk, and this is where the driving got interesting. The road fords one river after another on the way in, and we lost count of how many. None was big, but each one had to be read on foot first, picking the shallowest line before taking the truck across, and then back into the cab and on to the next. It is slow going, one crossing after another, and it is the reason Þórsmörk stays as quiet as it does. We forded them all and reached the campground at Básar in the afternoon. Gorgeous days, both of them, with sunny skies, and tomorrow looks the same. Now we just have to decide which trail to walk.