Routes

Driving Iceland’s Ring Road: a realistic seven-day plan

July 24, 2026 844 words

The Ring Road can be driven in five days. The mistake is doing it. Seven is the number where you stop being someone who drove around Iceland and start being someone who saw it.

Route 1 goes all the way around Iceland in a single loop of roughly 1,330 kilometres. You cannot get lost, which makes it one of the easiest great drives in the world to plan. The hard part is resisting the urge to do it too fast.

Five days is enough to complete the loop. It is not enough to see it, because everything worth stopping for is a detour off the ring itself.

Day 1 — Reykjavík to Vík

Around 190 kilometres, but plan the whole day. This is the busiest stretch of the route and the one with the most stops packed together: Seljalandsfoss, which you can walk behind, and Skógafoss half an hour later.

Vík is a small town with a black beach and basalt columns. Arrive in the afternoon and walk out to Reynisfjara before dinner.

Day 2 — Vík to Höfn

Around 270 kilometres and the day the landscape changes most. You cross the Skeiðarársandur, an enormous flat plain of black sand, then the glaciers begin.

Jökulsárlón is the stop everyone comes for and it deserves it: icebergs drifting in a lagoon and washing up on the beach opposite. Give it two hours rather than twenty minutes.

Day 3 — Höfn to Egilsstaðir, through the Eastfjords

Around 250 kilometres, and the slowest driving of the trip. The road winds in and out of every fjord, so distance and time bear little relation to each other.

This is the quietest part of the Ring Road. Fishing villages of a few hundred people, reindeer on the hillsides in autumn, and long stretches with nobody behind you.

Day 4 — Egilsstaðir to Mývatn

Around 165 kilometres. The detour to Dettifoss is the point of today — Europe’s most powerful waterfall, reached down a road that feels like it is going nowhere.

Mývatn itself is geothermal: steam vents, mud pools and a lake full of birds. The nature baths there are quieter and cheaper than the Blue Lagoon, and better for it.

Day 5 — Mývatn to Akureyri and on to the north

Around 100 kilometres to Akureyri, Iceland’s second city, which takes about ninety minutes. Use the saved time for Goðafoss on the way.

If you have an extra day anywhere, spend it here going up to Húsavík for whale watching. It is the best in the country and it is a short drive north.

Day 6 — Akureyri to Snæfellsnes

The longest day, around 400 kilometres, and mostly transit through the north-west. Break it at Hvítserkur or Kolugljúfur if you need a reason to stop.

The Snæfellsnes peninsula is sometimes called Iceland in miniature and the description is fair: a glacier, black beaches, lava fields and Kirkjufell, the most photographed mountain in the country, all within an hour of each other.

Day 7 — Snæfellsnes back to Reykjavík

Around 180 kilometres, two and a half hours. An easy last day, which is what you want before a flight.

If your flight is late, the Golden Circle — Þingvellir, Geysir, Gullfoss — fits into the afternoon. It is the busiest part of Iceland by a distance, so it works better at the end of a trip than the beginning.

Practical notes

Weather changes fast and closures are real. Check road conditions each morning; in the north a road can shut for wind alone.

Fuel stations are far apart in the east. Fill up when you are at half a tank rather than a quarter.

Gravel roads are common as soon as you leave Route 1, and most rental insurance excludes gravel damage and sand-blasted paint. Read the policy before you sign it.

Afterwards

On paper the loop is 1,330 kilometres. In practice most people drive closer to 1,700, because every detour is an out-and-back. Exporting your location history when you get home and watching those seven days play across a map shows it clearly — and the thin branches running off the ring turn out to be where the trip actually happened.

Driving it the other way round

Clockwise or anticlockwise? Most people go anticlockwise, south coast first, which puts the crowded stretch at the start while you are fresh and leaves the quiet east for later.

Going clockwise has one real advantage: you reach Jökulsárlón and the glaciers on day six rather than day two, and by then you have calibrated your expectations. The scenery peaks late instead of early.

What people underestimate

Two things. The first is wind — it can make a car door hard to open and it closes roads in the north. The second is how long stops take: every waterfall on this list involves a walk, and those walks add up to hours across a week.

Plan around 200 kilometres a day rather than 300 and the trip becomes noticeably better.

Budgeting the days

Two hundred kilometres a day rather than three hundred is the single change that improves this trip most. Every waterfall involves a walk, every viewpoint involves parking, and those add up to hours across a week that the map does not show you.