Mr. Barrett, Mrs. Enevoldsen and Mr. Abbott took 25 members of the 6th form to Iceland over February half term. The group spent 4 days having a guided tour through south and central Iceland, taking in Iceland’s most impressive geographical features.

Iceland is a magical place. It is one of the newest countries in the world, formed by a separation of the Eurasian and North American plates in the mid-Atlantic. This means that Iceland has more than 20 active volcanoes. It is not only the volcanoes that we wanted to see though, as most of the highest peaks in Iceland are covered with ice caps and glaciers, and there are thousands of waterfalls, geothermal areas and geysers.

On the first day we visited a Geothermal Power Station to see how the Icelandic’s use their natural resources to generate hot water and electricity in a cheap and sustainable way. Whilst we were there we met Iceland’s President, who was there on a private visit – it was Waddesdon’s official welcome to Iceland!

After that we went to Geysir, the original geyser and Gulfoss or The Golden Waterfalls. These are two of Iceland’s top tourist attractions and they did not disappoint. At both locations there was lots of ice on the ground, making access to the waterfall impossible, but we all had lots of fun ice-skating in our walking boots!

Iceland notoriously changeable weather then closed in on us and it was unfortunate that the rain really picked up whilst we were at Pingvellir – the location of Iceland’s first parliament. This is a beautiful location at the site where the plates split in the centre of the country, but most of us kept our heads down, to stop the stinging rain hitting our eyes!

Days 2 and 3 were spent travelling along the south coast of the country, looking at some impressive waterfalls, but I think that most people were blown away by the Solheimjokull Glacier. This ice tongue is about a mile wide and flows from Myrdalsjokull ice cap. We were the first school group that made it to the ice tongue this year, as the road to the glacier had been blocked off by snow and ice. The ice was a rich blue colour and it gave a real sense of silent power. It was a shame that we had to leave.

Our third night was spent in a really remote hotel on the southern most tip of Iceland. If we travelled south from here, we would have not hit land until we reached Antarctica. The next day was spent travelling back towards Reykjavik, although there were plenty more stop offs on the way, looking at outwash plains, coastal features and even a trip to an earthquake simulator in a post office! In the evening, we all went to one of Reykjavik’s outdoor, but geo-thermally heated swimming pools and it started to snow. This made swimming outdoors and very surreal experience.

Our last day in Iceland was made extra special by the snow that had fallen over night. Although we had expected it to be cold, the cold weather that we had experienced in the UK before the trip meant that we were all quite acclimatized to the conditions. The snow brought us what we wanted, and although we visited some geothermal areas and volcanic craters, most of the time was spent throwing snowballs! Before getting to the airport, we spent a couple of hours at Iceland’s biggest tourist attraction, The Blue Lagoon. This is a geo-thermally heated spa, with blue water and silica based face pack mud, which we all duly covered ourselves with. After a relaxing couple of hours in the spa, we had to hot foot it to the airport to catch our plane back to Heathrow.

We arrived safely back at Waddesdon just before 10 o’clock in the evening. All were tired, but we had had a memorable experience!