Digital Wanderer

We're halfway through, so it's about time I did a quick rundown of my sources and other useful info.

Campsites

I looked for campsites in three places.

The most useful of them is the official Icelandic tourist site. It has a ton of other helpful info, too. Another solid idea is to drop by the infocenter in Reykjavík, they have tons of brochures there. Campsites, as I wrote before, cost around 5 Ls ($10) per person. In the wild places where there are no utilities, they charge another 2.5 lats for electricity per device, and the same amount for a five-minute shower. At campsites, aside from Landmannalaugar and Thingvellir, there usually isn't any way to wash and dry your clothes. You can also only buy gas or groceries in Landmannalaugar.

visiticeland.com/

The famous Google Earth program came in super handy; I drew the route there, and campsites with hotels are visible there too. I saved all the campsites I found as POIs in my GPS so things would be easy later. As you remember from the last part, things turned out far from perfect, maybe because I plotted the campsites from the site above by eye, since they don't list their coordinates.

https://www.google.com/earth/index.html

The third source for campsites is a paper map by Ferdakort, bought on British Amazon. No complaints about the map, it's good. Except that only the deepest river crossings are marked, while the shallower ones don't even count as crossings. You don't necessarily have to order the map online, it's easy to buy at the infocenter in Reykjavík, though the price won't make you happy either way.

Culture

As for info on interesting routes for cyclists, Google immediately brings up the best sites. There's plenty of information there. My favorite sites are these

https://www.masterlyinactivity.com/ivan/iceland.html

https://members.ziggo.nl/erens/icecycle.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20120812044419/https://www.fjallahjolaklubburinn.is/content/view/112/104/

If you need a detailed guide to Icelandic culture, history, and every interesting place individually, then the classic Lonely Planet Guide will do just fine. I've even uploaded it for you, so you don't have to suffer trying to find it. Useful reading.

Download Lonely Planet Guide Iceland

Routes

I mapped out the routes in Google Earth.

Here they are, thoughtfully uploaded for your reuse.

Download Iceland cycling route plans

And here are the files of how we actually rode. Those who read the previous parts will get that you shouldn't follow them to the letter, otherwise you might bite off more than you can chew in terms of kilometers and difficulty.

Download Iceland route tracks

If you're in good physical shape, aim for 60-80 km a day on asphalt, and 30-50 inland, depending on the wind and road conditions. A Norwegian guy we met was doing 80-100, but he described himself like this: “I’m pretty hardcore”. Besides, you also want to take a walk at your final destination and zone out staring at your surroundings.

Maps

I've promised so many times to explain how I make and use maps, and finally, I've gotten around to it. I'll keep it brief though.

I use a Motorola Defy+ phone because it's waterproof, but any other Android will do.

My favorite navigation app is  OruxMaps.  I could talk about it forever, but the main thing you need to know is that it has a million features, and among them is offline map support, meaning when you don't have internet access.

Maps are uploaded into the /mnt/sdcard/oruxmaps/mapfiles folder. But where do you get them?

Download them using MOBAC, thankfully it has been able to save directly to the OruxMaps format for a long time . But even here things aren't simple: due to issues with who owns the maps and how they can be used, MOBAC no longer lets you download maps from Google and Bing, which sucks. If you replace the right little files, everything works, so out of the goodness of my heart I'll just upload the version that can do it for you. Here it is.

Another option is simpler, but I only found out about it later. OruxMaps can download maps itself, but it also lacks Bing and Google, for the same reasons as above. To make them appear, it's enough to  delete the OnlineMapSources.xml file from the /mnt/sdcard/oruxmaps/mapfiles folder; sometimes you have to do something slightly trickier, as written on the forum. If you do this, the Map Downloader item will appear, which has Google and Bing, and you'll be golden. You'll be able to download maps of any part of the world, as long as Google's and Bing's maps of it are decent.

Google and Bing maps aren't always enough, though. In Iceland's case, I found a much better source — the national cadastre, which has an absolutely gorgeous topographic online map with the cute name Kortasjá.

The question arises, though: how do you get this map for personal use?

And the answer is simple: am I a programmer, or some random schmuck? You write a script, download separate parts of the map as images, stitch them together into one (which is no easy task when their size is over a gigabyte), and use GlobalMapper to tie them to a datum and projection. Then the maps are converted into the OruxMaps format using OruxMapsDesktop.

This is all quite a hassle, but since I've already done it, you won't have to. I'm only uploading the maps in OruxMaps format, though; I don't have time to mess with the others right now. The whole country is there at a scale up to 50k, with only the southwestern part, where we were riding around, being more detailed. The map has been field-tested and is surprisingly accurate, although if you open it in Google Maps it doesn't align for some reason, probably conversion issues.

Download Iceland topographic map

If anyone stumbles upon this post on Google, and you need the maps in a more accessible format .png, and GlobalMapper PGW+PRJ), write to vlad@@@@izvne.com.

If you have any other questions, ask away, but I won't answer anytime soon, because I'm flying off to Copenhagen to get drunk in clubs see the Little Mermaid and the “Louisiana” Museum of Modern Art.