‘I don't think you'd ever see anything like it again' – Kevin McCloud has grand designs on Iceland

Irish Independent

2 days ago

Kevin McCloud tells how he ­discovered endless joy in the country's extreme north – off the beaten track, where dining out is an expedition in itself.
What's your favourite destination and why?
Akureyri. It's Iceland's second city, which means it's the size of a small town in England, and it's in the extreme north.
It sits at the end of a fjord and it's a long way from anywhere. As a result, it feels like you're entering the 1940s. It's a sort of time warp as well as a place warp.
You can drive there, or you can get a flight, though in winter you'd be lucky to get there in a car because the roads are often shut or they're ice. You need a 4x4.
When was the last time you were there, and who were you with?
It must have been five years ago now with my wife and a great friend, Ned, who speaks Icelandic (everybody speaks English).
It was winter, when you need to be with people in search of a particular kind of atmosphere or calm.
They need to accept that driving for three hours to go to lunch might mean the restaurant is shut, and then driving home in the dark at three o'clock in the afternoon can constitute a really satisfying day.
There's so much to see on the journeys – they're an adventure, which is very special.
Covid put paid to a lot of travel plans, but I still remember it so fondly and I know it won't be long before we go back.
Where do you like to stay?
Some little modern plywood cabins, named Sunnuhlid. They're super contemporary cubes sitting in the snow and they rock slightly in the wind.
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They're just big enough for a week's stay. I found them on booking.com and I was struck by the fact it's not the usual offering.
If you go along the south of Iceland, there's all these expensive hotels with thermal spas where you can just hang out in a white dressing gown with people who've got more money than you. But these three little wooden huts are the closest thing to camping you can do in Iceland without freezing to death.
What were your favourite meals?
On a drive to Husavik, which is about two-and-a-half hours from Akureyri (which was probably the shortest journey we did between where we were staying and going to a restaur­ant), we sat at the harbour and had fresh seafood. It was magnificent.
On a trip to Stykkisholmur, we went into this little guesthouse and were offered lunch after a coffee. We sat down with six other people. We had lamb that was reared on their grass; we ate bread baked by them, made from flour grown by their friends; and geothermally grown vegetables.
Everything in Iceland is so sustainably grown and makes for amazing quality food.
I can't find it on Google Earth, but ChatGPT tells me it's called Narfeyrarstofa and says I've got great taste!
What would you do if you had only 24 hours there?
I would make an adventure out of a six-hour car journey, just to go back and find the restaurant in Stykkisholmur.
And also because it's got the most amazing church, which is beautiful. It was designed by a man named Jon Haraldsson and it looks like it's from the 1960s – it's a sort of futurist shape. But it was only consecrated in the 1990s and it's got this great big sweeping bell tower that's shaped like a whale's vertebra, and inside it's a beautiful space.
It just proves you can go to the most outlying place, and it happ­ens to have a near-­Michelin star restaurant that's open in the ­middle of winter.
What's the one unmissable thing you recommend doing?
Seeing the waterfalls. I don't think you'd ever see anything like it again, particularly when they're in full speed in late winter.
The one called Godafoss is an entire ring of waterfalls flowing into a huge circular pool, and then you realise it's not a pool, it's a lake, and the falls are 90 metres high and the whole thing is beyond your comprehension – and so is the noise.
Where do you like to chill out?
It gets dark very early, so we stayed in looking out the window, discussing what went on in the day, maybe watching a movie, but usually I would sit there and edit my shots of the waterfalls, which were wobbly because the wind was so strong. You pass the time.
The one thing you would bring home as a souvenir?
One day we got excited and went down to the harbour and booked three places on the whale-watching in the morning and saw a whale, which was very exciting.
As a result, in the shop we bought pairs of Icelandic hand-knitted mittens. Since then, Ned has given me a hand-knitted pullover he ordered directly from the knitting ladies of Iceland.
Your favourite beauty spot?
Wherever you look, there's some extraordinary thing happening in the sky.
It's not anything to do with the static stuff on the ground, but everything to do with ­atmospherics. Of course there are the northern lights, but in winter the sky moves with such ferocity and the clouds so dynamically that it looks as though it's a dragon.
Any building you would like to live in?
I have no desire to own any more buildings, thanks.
The funny thing about Iceland is its remote location and the fact that it remains this kind of world in which the last thing you'd think on holiday is: 'I'd love to live here.'
Grand Designs is sort of partly predicated on that ­romantic notion of wanting what we haven't got and to express ourselves in places.
But the thing about Iceland is the welcome is so great, but it's also so different in character to any of the usual points of reference that I don't have any ambition to live there.
Do you have a top wellness tip for the area?
There are thermal springs everywhere in the whole country, so take your pick.
Get out of town, head for the mountains. In the wildernesses of Iceland, you don't need a spa. What you need when you've been traipsing through metre-deep snow is a hot shower.
If you want to, in Akureyri there's a tunnel through the mountain – it's a major fishing port two hours along the coast, and this tunnel is around 5km.
In the middle it's boiling hot because of the geothermal capacity of the island.
People do yoga in the lay-bys, and then go to the edge of the tunnel and throw themselves in the snow. Then they stand underneath the hot shower, which is sourced from a hot spring that runs out and pours into the fjord.
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