There are two ancient, long and famous Highland routes that go through the heart of the Iceland. One is Sprengisandur (F26) and then there is this one here - Kjalvegur (also known as the Kjölur route).
Comparing to F26, Kjalvegur has always been considered the more "friendly" and "softer" route. That is because there are no unbridged river crossings on Kjalvegur and there are much more huts and things to see on the road. Sprengisandur is a long lonely drive with just Nýidalur hut in the middle, but of course this isolated journey is an experience on its own.
Now back to Kjalvegur - it used to be an official F-road, but it isn't anymore. So there are still a lot of sources on the Internet calling it "F35" and even the road signs still say it's "F35", but actually it isn't. So yeah, it's an unpaved road, but it isn't very rough or doesn't have anything particularly difficult (like huge rocks, potholes or as mentioned above, unbridged rivers). A small portion in the South is actually already paved and there has been discussion in Icelandic media about paving the entire road. However, there is still no winter service and it is accessible only during the summer months, but usually this route is one of the first ones to open up in first half of June. Since it's being used a lot, it gets lots of corrugations and the middle section of it felt like driving on an actual washboard.
35 offers access to many smaller roads, but the main ones are F347 that leads to Kerlingarföll mountains and then 735 that leads to Hveravellir geothermal field. I will upload a separate video of F347 (& Kelingarfjöll) in the near future, but I included Hveravellir in this one, as it's only couple of km from Kjalvegur. As mentioned above, Hveravellir is a geothermal area that has natural hot springs and also some really hot and smoking puddles to check out. There is also accommodation and even a restaurant.
Sadly at the end of our drive on 35 we hit a pretty thick fog, so there isn't very much to see. Luckily we were lucky with the weather for the main part of the route.
#Iceland #Kjalvegur #Kjölur #Hveravellir #Froads
Chapters:
00:00 Map of the route
00:22 Road 35 (Biskupstungnabraut, until start of Kjalvegur)
01:00 Road 35 (Kjalvegur)
24:18 Road 735
25:15 Hveravellir
27:06 Road 735 (back towards 35)
28:10 Road 35 (rest of Kjalvegur)