Three months on the island.

Overland as far as Hirtshals, then three days of North Atlantic: the ferry calls at the Faroes, with half a day in Tórshavn on the way, and puts you ashore in the east of Iceland. That detour is what turns the trip into a journey — fly in and hire a car and you start at Keflavík and never see the east at all. On the island itself it came to 68 stops in eleven weeks, anticlockwise, with runs up into the highlands.

217 kilometres a day sounds like a lot for an island this size, and the figure is misleading: a third of that distance is the run up and back through Scandinavia. On the island itself we stood still more than we drove — thirteen days at Mývatn, and several stops of three or four days besides. That is the real lesson of this trip: in the north, photographs come from time spent standing still, not from mileage.

We drove the F-roads, and up there four-wheel drive is not an attitude, it is a requirement — the highland tracks are closed to vehicles without it, and the first few kilometres show you why. The road to Landmannalaugar runs through a ford. Anyone driving into it wants a snorkel and axle breathers on the vehicle: not because the water is deep, but because an engine that has drawn water in once has ended the trip.

At 58 of 90 logged stops the record says rain; at six of them, clear skies. Coldest stop 6 °C, warmest 21 °C, 13 on average. In June the sun in the north barely sets, and 24 hours of light means you can photograph at two in the morning and sleep at ten. Your rhythm shifts on its own, and it is better to let it.

Iceland is the country where reputation and law sit furthest apart. Under the Nature Conservation Act (No. 60/2013) a camper, a cabin or a caravan may only spend the night outside organised campsites and built-up areas with the landowner’s permission — there are exemptions for tents, none for vehicles. In practice that means campsites. There are plenty of them, and they are the reason you rarely have a place to yourself on this island.

Slower still. Ninety-nine days sounds like plenty of time, and the lesson is the same as after every trip: stay longer in one place and open that region up properly instead of starting on the next one. Not more kilometres — a wider radius.