Go with the floe It feels like the middle of nowhere, but people in

"DID you see what that sign said?" asks Kristjan, our driver, as he swings the giant jeep off the snow track out into the white blue yonder. My Icelandic is nonexistent but I think understood the universal symbol for road closed. "What road?" says Kristjan with a laugh as he ploughs into the candyfloss landscape.

He's right, there is no road. Furthermore, there are no trees, no rocks, no houses, no features in the landscape at all - just miles and miles of unmarked snow. It's white, white and more white until your eye reaches a far-off pencil mark that distinguishes where the land ends and the blue sky begins.

By leaving the road, we've come off the line at the edge of the back of beyond and plunged into the blank part of the map of nowhere at all. But somehow, as we slipslide our way through nothingness to white infinity, we feel safe. There's the reassuring presence of our driver, Kristjan, whose relationship with ice and snow is so intense, so lifelong, that he's called his son after the stuff. There's a satellite-navigation system blinking away on the dashboard, showing a route mapped across the snowscape in the past and beneath us there are those tractor-sized tyres, now drastically deflated to give our vehicle a wider footprint and better traction on the snow.

The Ford is one of those enormous four-wheel drive affairs mounted on the biggest balloon tyres you've seen this side of a quarry truck. Think Tonka toy meets JCB digger - in black, with tinted windows and a heated, leather-lined interior. At night, it could double as a hearse for Herman Munster but its day job is totake up to seven people on a snowtour of Iceland's glacial landscape.

Ever since Kristjan pulled up in the hotel car park and whisked us away from our roast lamb lunch, I've been in awe of the big black beast. In a tough driving environment - we managed to leave the underside of a hire car behind just by mounting a pavement - this is the king of rides.

Leaving the precincts of Reykjavik, a cluster of utilitarian architecture, we dwarf other standard four-wheel-drives on the road. "My other car is a Micra, " says Kristjan in all honesty above the purring sound of the engine.

We must be travelling at the rate of one North Sea oilfield per traffic light so I come over all Jeremy Clarkson, as boys do, and ask about cubic capacity and fuel consumption "Gallons? Let me see, " says Kristjan as he punches a few buttons above the interior mirror. "Currently, eight miles to the gallon, " he answers in that crisp, airline English that everyone on this far-north island appears to have easily mastered.

When it comes to global warming, few Icelanders take a guilt trip. All along the fjordside road we're driving on are the steam pipes that transfer the geothermal power of the island into heat and electricity for the 280,000 inhabitants, half of whom live in the capital.

Although the sat-nav shows no features for miles, everyone we meet on this island argues that Iceland is the centre of the world. It's right on top of the North Atlantic ridge, where the Earth's tectonic plates scrape against each other and earthquakes and volcanos are commonplace. It's a mid-Atlantic meeting point in other ways, too. This is where Gorby and Reagan ended the Cold War. It's a nation that has, thanks to unbroken genealogical records and some entrepreneurial science, the biggest DNA database in the world and it's home to some of the most rapacious venture capitalists in Europe who have been buying into the British high-street chains with their bulging bags of kroner.

But the landscape, which is what a visit to Iceland is all about, is the most staggering thing. Thermal springs, geysers, glacial lakes, volcanos - it's got the lot. In a few days, or even a few hours in a giant 4x4, you can sample it all. In binocular terms, this is a birdwatchers' paradise and one of the best places in the world to go whale-watching, although bear in mind that they eat them too. When the lights go out, from October to March, and you get lucky, the curtain of the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, put on a cosmic light show.

Thermal power doesn't make Iceland immune to the effects of global warming. The edge of the Langjokull glacier we're approaching in our giant van has shrunk back by a shocking amount during Kristjan's lifetime. Several hundred metres back, he pointed out where the iceline began when he was a child and where it has retreated to now. All along the way, he's highlighted geological features, sources of legends and even the place his father set up Iceland's first softfruit greenhouse.

Most of the endless white wilderness we're entering would be completely off-limits to the average human being were it not for the giant truck tours that leave the capital on a regular basis. It's a busy day up on the glacier, with four-wheel-drives, skidoos and skiers all out in the snow. Up on the glacier, its hard to discern where the horizon ends and the sky begins - there's just a blue hue that seems to stretch forever. Somewhere out there is an icecave, that sounds like something out of Icelandic saga but our vehicle, it turns out, is a machine and not a living monster. A small oil leak is causing the engine to overheat slightly and, caution being the watchword in this beautiful, dangerous place where human beings shouldn't really be, Kristjan says it's best to cool it.

To escape the madding crowd I set off on foot, away from the buzzing snowmobiles but walking into the blue yonder proves impossible. I trample less than half a mile through thigh-deep powder snow before becoming exhausted.

But there are plenty of badweather alternatives here - the spectacular Gulfoss waterfall; Pingvellir, the site of Iceland's ancient parliament and the rift between the European and North American plates that form the earth's crust, and Geysir, the original, sulphur spewing, hotwater jet that all other geysers are named after.

The clouds close in, on the glacier so we make our way back down. Where we discover we have a puncture in one of the giant tyres. You'd think these things would be impossible to repair but, in the middle of nowhere, you'd wait a long time for the AA. So Kristjan, armed with a sharp screwdriver, some glue and a rubber plug, sorts it out in seconds and we're back on the road to the city.

Daytime Reykjavik is best described as compact, and will most likely be your base on a short trip. Flight and hotel packages represent the best value on short breaks and guest houses are good.

In summer, you should take a tent. There's not a great deal to detain you in downtown Reykjavik, although the Culture House has medieval manuscripts to rival the Book of Kells in Dublin. There are more offbeat attractions, like a Phallological Museum (they come in all shapes and sizes), but the place has a bigger reputation at night. It gets dark early, but nightlife starts late, presumably after everyone's got tanked up at home. The drinking scene is meant to be legendary and there's no language barrier, so meeting people on the city-centre pub crawl is easy. But there's something sobering about lager that comes over the counter at about pounds-5 a pint.

Two things keep a body warm in Iceland. One is the windbeating 66 Degrees North's clothing range, the kind of fleeces that mark you out from the flock back in Scotland. The other is brennevin. Standing on the edge of a volcano crater, hopefully a dead one, with the afternoon light fading, is not the time to be introduced to Icelandic poteen.

Brennevin is a potato spirit made barely palatable by caraway seeds and I wouldn't be quaffing it with such abandon except that I've sent my taste buds into trauma after stupidly chewing on a dice- sized piece of fermenting Greenland shark that has been flavoured by burying it under manure for six months.

Harmlessly described as a 'delicacy', hakari smells and tastes like a cross between a school chemistry class and half a dozen skate left out for too long. When Kristjan took the lid of a small plastic box and the noxious ammonia smell filled the entire bowl of the volcano, I should have known better.

For a brennevin or beer detox there are plenty of options. You may have tried thermal baths before, but the mother of all steambaths, Blue Lagoon is one of those must-do destinations that lives up to the hype.

There's nothing natural about the pool. It's an artificial lake that formed in black lava blocks next to a thermal power station. But swimming through the milky hot water in a fog of steam is a supernatural experience. The place is popular with Icelanders, but there's plenty of room to find your own spot in the waist-deep water and just soak. Pawfuls of white mineral silica mud are available from open wooden cases to give yourself the facepack of a lifetime. The sandy cleanser doesn't so much exfoliate as scrape away several years worth of skin. They provide towels but, top tip ladies, you will need tons of moisturiser and hair conditioner to replace all the gunk that's been cleaned away. They sell all their own-brand toiletries at a price.

More cleansing than a fire sacrifice on an iceflow, the Blue Lagoon is almost worth the trip to Iceland on its own - in fact, it can be taken in as a brief stopover on an Icelandair flight from Glasgow to the US. Icelandair's Glasgow flight arrives at Keflavik in the morning and the onward flight doesn't depart until late afternoon. The airline business lounge I can recommend, but a far better way to fill the time is to take the airline's free trip to the Blue Lagoon.

But the endless snowfields, the glaciers, the incredible vast beauty of the landscape makes the middle of nowhere a compellingly attractive place to be. You might want to stay longer.

NEED TO KNOW

How to get there

Icelandair flies from Glasgow to Iceland up to five times a week from pounds-163 including taxes. Visit www. icelandair. co. uk for the best fares or call 0870 787 4020.

Where to stay

Icelandair Holidays offers three nights in central Reykjavik from pounds-389 per person, including return Icelandair flights from Glasgow, taxes and B&B accommodation.

Further information

A 10-hour off-road supertruck trip over over glaciers and desert highlands, past waterfalls and geysers, pounds-145 per person.

Copyright 2006 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.