When we were last in Iceland I had one big regret – that we didn’t get to go horse riding on the amazing Icelandic horses. I mean, I am not a horsey person by any means, but have you seen those things?

Last trip it wasn’t quite Summer yet so most places hadn’t started up with horse riding tours, but this time – it’s summer, so no excuses right?

Back home in Perth I searched all the horse riding companies and chose one that sounded good. You can never tell though can you? I mean, Google reviews only mean so much. We chose the “2 hour Lava Fields tour”. I nearly just chose the “walk around the paddock” option but I think that was actually for children.

As the day approached- I will admit I started getting scared. I hadn’t ridden a horse since I was maybe 8 years old? Steve had never ridden a horse. They look cute from afar but up close, well they are still pretty cute but they are large wild animals.

We had breakfast and the morning to wander around Reykavik – our ride was at 2pm – about 20 minutes out of Reykavik. The weather was less than ideal. Cold and rainy and windy. I had so hoped for a nice blue sky day. So it goes.

We got to the stables nice and early and managed to buy some gloves as we didn’t have any. We sat in the waiting area and well, waited. After a while we all went to get some wet weather gear, boots, helmets etc and then we watched a short video on how to control the horse. Then we went out in to the paddock. Horses everywhere. I panicked a bit and got a bit scared. They assured me they were teaming me up with a calm, gentle horse – named Snowflake. Steve’s horse was named Herman.

Before we knew it we were up on the horses and riding out in single file in to the lava fields. Snowflake couldn’t wait and we ended up being first in line behind the instructor. I started feeling a bit more comfortable once we were off and walking.

At the half way point, the group split in 2, those that wanted to go faster and those of us who just wanted to walk slowly. Walking slowly was fine for me. The rain was holding off but the wind at points was gale force. I thought poor Snowflake was going to get blown over.

And then after about an hour or so we were back at the stables. Horse riding adventure over and not so scary after all.

To ease our weary muscles after horse riding, we stopped by the Reykavik pools for a soak. Good decision.

Then we had fish and chips for dinner and went to 12 Tonar for beers.

We spent ages rummaging through the vinyl records at 12 Tonar and ended up buying quite a few gems. We stayed at 12 Tonar until 11pm when they closed and kicked us out.