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Three days of chasing Icelandic tráil gold with MTB adventurer Dan Milner

- Dan Milner

Swooping around a natural berm of volcanic stone and dust

The English novelist and poet Philip Larkin once wrote, "depression hangs over me as if I were Iceland," possibly, and inadvertently, winning the award for the harshest Tripadvisor review ever. But now, looking out across an unforgiving, sinister landscape, I can see where he was coming from. Barren and inhospitable, this really is a godforsaken place. I feel like we're standing at the edge of the underworld. Ahead of us a tiny trail winds onwards, skirting a vast jagged outcrop before tiptoeing almost apologetically along a ridgeline. It's a wild place, perhaps the most untameable landscape I've ever seen. I can't imagine living on this terrain, trying to call this place home - so what the hell are we doing trying to ride bikes here?

Iceland's landscape is notoriously besieged by moody skies, powerful, incessant winds and long, dark winters. But there's beauty here, too; jaw-dropping, breath-taking beauty that pours from the lichen-encrusted outcrops, steam-belching volcanic fissures and dark, jagged pinnacles. That's why we're here, as part of our ongoing 'search for wow' - those trail moments that elevate mere trifles into grand legends. Often, rainstorms. Tupperware-grey daylight or an uninspiring, featureless trail conspire to wreck such hopes, though. And sometimes - luckily not often - we even return with nothing at all. Given Iceland's notorious weather, it certainly has that potential - especially seeing as we have just 72 hours in the country.

Emerging into the Icelandic summer's 24-hour daylight

It's oh so quiet