In July 2021, we joined 4 other Bliss Mobil rental Overland Trucks on an expedition lead by Overland Travel to Iceland. We had planned this as our first taster of overlanding and an opportunity to try-before-you-buy for an overland truck.
We flew in and stayed in Reykjavik in the midst of the COVID pandemic, Iceland being one of the few “green list” countries we could travel to at the time. We met Kevin Kooijman our guide and the owner of Overland Travel and assistant Timon, the next morning and were shown to our Mercedes Atego based 13ft Bliss Mobil overland truck. We were given the “Run Book” for our travels for the next 10 days around Iceland and then told to provision our food for the next few days. It was quite a crash course in truck driving on the other side of the road in a left-hand drive truck with very tasty drum breaks in central Reykjavik, but we returned safely without injury to pedestrians, truck or street furniture.
The format of the trip was that some days we would all travel separately at our own speed, sightseeing where we wished on the way, when the going was easy or we were on tarmac. Other days we travelled in convoy with Kevin and Timon in the lead and all 5 trucks following for route finding and so we were there for each other for recovery. Iceland has a strict policy of no-off road driving, as it protects some of unique landscapes and flora / fauna created on this high volcanic and seismic island.
However, a vast portion of its road network are F-roads, effectively pistes / gravel tracks, some of which are covered by relatively recent lava flows and multiple river crossings as well as black sand deserts making Iceland something of a overland Mecca. We were also fortunate to get to go off-road on some private farm land, where it was permitted, due to a special arrangement Kevin had made with the farmer. On the farm, we got to visit a puffin colony up close, travel down rivers, along beaches and vast black sand plains on land which was where the vikings landed in Iceland.
We travelled over 1800km in the 10 days, sometimes travelling for 12 hours in a day. It was pretty physical in the ex-army Atego, being bounced around, our fitness trackers were recording record days on our Move goals, despite spending most of the time behind the wheel. However, that enabled us to get a very privileged view of the extraordinary beauty of Iceland, visiting some of the remote centre of the island, bathing in hot springs, visiting active volcanoes, geisers, waterfalls, experiencing sand storms and also unusually clear sunny days to see some of the magnificent views.
We also got some really invaluable overlanding driving experience over lava fields, river crossings, sand, rock, corrugated gravel, soft gravel etc. we got to air-down and air-up tyres for off road driving, participate in changing truck tyres. Several tyres in the group were damaged (not ours, thankfully 😰!) on the sharp jagged lava, including on one occasion when the walls of both the front and back tyres were slashed on one truck in a single incident. One truck got bogged down on the beach and recovered. We also got to try all combinations of low range gears and engine braking to negotiate the terrain. In short, it was a crash course, with the ever patient and hugely experienced Kevin and Timon there for support throughout. Kevin was also kind enough to let Kevin drive his HX60 support truck down one trail, which he absolutely loved.
We loved our first experience of overlanding and were keen to do far more. However, at that stage, we had a luxury 9.2m motorhome, which was about as far away from overlanding as it was possible to get. It was chosen at a time I had spent 20 years living in hotels out of a suitcase and was really not ready for camping, but now after some valuable home time in the pandemic I was ready for more adventures. We did not realise then the lead time and sheer variety of overlanding trucks out there and that it would be 3 years before we got one of our own. However, undoubtedly our Iceland experience was invaluable in making that selection.
In for a Penney 