Gullfoss

Gullfoss, the Golden Falls, sits on the Hvita river as it descends from Langjokull glacier and drops 32 m in two stages into a right-angled canyon. It became a symbol of Icelandic environmentalism in the 1920s when Sigridur Tomasdottir, daughter of the local farmer, walked barefoot to Reykjavik to protest a foreign hydroelectric scheme and eventually helped kill it. Her memorial stands above the falls, and the whole site has been protected as a natural monument since 1979. It is the second stop on almost every Golden Circle tour after Geysir.

There are two viewpoints. The upper car park by the cafe leads to a fenced clifftop platform with the classic head-on view down into the canyon. From there a set of steps descends to the lower path, a gravel walkway along the rim that finishes on a small promontory almost at the level of the water; the mist here is soaking and constant. In winter the lower path closes when it ices over. The upper cafe is famous for its lamb soup, which is refillable and roughly ISK2600.

Come at 8am or after 5pm; between 10 and 3 the two car parks overflow. Gullfoss pairs with Geysir 10 km down the road and with Thingvellir to form the Golden Circle, doable as a self-drive day from Reykjavik. Book the ice cave in Langjokull or a snowmobile ride if you want to go beyond the viewpoints. There is a filling station at Reykholt 20 km south; do not count on the small kiosk at Geysir.

The numbers explain why the two viewpoints feel like two different waterfalls. The river drops 11 m over the first ledge, then 21 m over the second into a gorge that is 70 m deep and runs 2.5 km downstream, so from the upper platform you are looking down onto the top of the water and from the lower promontory you are looking up at it. Average flow is around 109 cubic metres a second, but spring meltwater and autumn rain can push it several times higher, and that is the difference between a photogenic waterfall and a physical one. If the Hvita is brown and loud, do the lower path first before the spray closes in; if it is running low and clear in late summer, the head-on view from the clifftop is the stronger of the two.

Two roads reach the falls and both take about an hour and three quarters from Reykjavik. The straightforward one runs east on Route 1 over Hellisheidi to Selfoss, 57 km, then north on Route 35 through Reykholt and past the Geysir turn-off, 115 km in all and paved the whole way. The anticlockwise alternative leaves town on Route 36 for Thingvellir, cuts across on 365 to Laugarvatn, then joins 37 and 35; the same driving time, and the better choice if you want Thingvellir early and Gullfoss at lunch. At the site the signed access road splits into the large lower car park and the smaller upper one beside the cafe. Drive up. No year-round scheduled public bus reaches the falls, and Straeto's rural routes from Selfoss stop some 20 km short at Reykholt and Laugaras, so it is a hire car or a coach from BSI.

Nothing at Gullfoss itself has a price on it, so the real cost is how you arrive. A 230 km round trip from Reykjavik burns roughly ISK5000 to ISK6000 in fuel, on top of a small hire car from about ISK8000 a day off season and considerably more in July. A seat on a large-coach Golden Circle day tour from BSI runs roughly ISK11,000 to ISK15,000, while small-group minibus versions start closer to ISK25,000 for the same three stops. At the upper cafe the refillable lamb soup is about ISK2600, coffee and cake around ISK2000, and the toilets are free. Snowmobile trips onto Langjokull from the Gullfoss side are the big-ticket add-on at roughly ISK35,000 upwards, and the glacier ice tunnel lands near ISK30,000. Skip the gift shop trinkets; the soup is the only purchase here worth making.

Timing matters more than season. Coaches leave Reykjavik between 8:30 and 9:30, hit Thingvellir and Geysir first, and land at Gullfoss in a rolling wave from about 11:00 to 15:00; before 9:30 and after 17:00 you can have the clifftop platform to yourself. May and June bring peak meltwater and light until 23:00, which makes an evening visit the single best combination of the year. September is quieter, with autumn rain topping the river back up. February and March give you frozen canyon walls and blue ice on the ledges, but the lower path is usually shut and the daylight is short: in late December the sun clears the horizon around 11:20 and is gone by 15:40, which is precisely why winter tours crowd the middle of the day. Late October and November are the grim window, dark and windy with ice but no snow cover.

For families the upper platform is easy and properly fenced, three minutes on gravel from the upper car park, and small children can see the whole thing without being carried. Wheelchair users and anyone unsteady should stay up top: the route to the clifftop viewpoint is manageable with a push, while the steel staircase to the lower path is a hard no and the gravel promontory is slick with spray. Teenagers will give it fifteen minutes and then want the snowmobile. On a rainy afternoon the falls are better, not worse, since high water is the whole point, but bring waterproof trousers rather than an umbrella, which the canyon wind will destroy. With only an hour to spare, park up, walk to the platform, look, and drive on to Geysir; half an hour genuinely does it.

Fold in more of Route 35 rather than racing back to town. Geysir and Strokkur are 10 km and ten minutes south, with eruptions every few minutes. Faxi, a broad low waterfall with a salmon ladder, sits just off the road a further 12 km on and takes ten minutes. Bruarholl, a narrow rock-walled section of the Hvita, is worth a five-minute stop by the bridge. Fridheimar's tomato greenhouse near Reykholt serves tomato soup for around ISK3500 and must be booked ahead. Efstidalur II on Route 37 does farm ice cream over a cow shed for about ISK1000, Skalholt cathedral is a fifteen-minute detour, and the Secret Lagoon at Fluoir or Fontana at Laugarvatn will take roughly ISK5000 for a soak. Kerio crater, closer to Selfoss, charges around ISK600 and takes twenty minutes.

The honest caveats: 32 m is not a tall waterfall, and photographs taken at high water in a wide-angle lens oversell it, so a low-flow afternoon in late August can feel smaller than expected. The famous rainbow needs sun behind your shoulder and generally appears late morning in summer, not on demand. Spray coats lenses and phone screens within seconds on the lower path, and the clifftop wind regularly gusts hard enough to tear car doors from your hand, which is why the car parks post warnings. There is no visitor centre, no museum and no accommodation here beyond the cafe, and the F35 Kjolur route north over the interior is a summer-only 4x4 road, closed roughly October to June. Winter aurora hunting at the falls is a bad idea: unlit, unstaffed and icy after dark.

Hours & entry

Free entry; parking free

Viewpoints open 24/7 · Upper cafe daily 9:00-21:30 summer, 10:00-18:00 winter · Lower path closes with ice, usually Nov-Mar

What to see

• Upper cliff platform — Fenced viewpoint 200 m from the top car park
• Lower promontory — End of the gravel path, reached by the steel staircase
• Sigridur Tomasdottir memorial — Stone plinth on the path between upper and lower viewpoints

Tips from the ground

• Skip the massive lower car park and drive up to the upper one; the cafe view is better
• Lamb soup at the upper cafe is refillable — one bowl feeds two hungry hikers
• Sunrise in winter (around 11am) throws a spectacular pink light across the canyon