Bruarhlod Gorge

The draw is the water. The Hvítá runs milky blue-grey here, and it passes through a slot barely wider than the river itself. The rock is dark and broken into ledges and knobs, and the walls stand close enough that the current fills them from side to side.

The canyon is short. There is no rim trail to walk and no long approach, so the whole stop takes minutes. What holds people is the colour of the water and the fact that nothing else nearby looks like this. Tour groups use the river through the gorge; one visitor watched cliff diving from the rocks. The view straight down from the bridge is the one most people come away with.

• No facilities: there are no toilets, no café and no shelter at the gorge.
• Mud: after a spell of rain the ground around the viewpoints turns muddy; wear boots.
• Riverside path: the path along the water is blocked with barbed wire, so views are from the bridge and the rock above.
• Winter: snow can cover the rock and the vegetation, and there may be little left to see.
• Small site: the visit takes minutes, not hours; plan it as a stop between other places.

Access is by car, and the car park sits at the gorge itself. From there the water is a couple of minutes on foot over uneven, unpaved ground, with no climb. A bridge crosses the gorge and gives a view straight down without going any further, which is the whole visit for many people. The path that runs along the river is blocked with barbed wire, so the rest of the viewing is done from the rock above.

Better: autumn. The vegetation turns red and orange, and it sits well against the green and the dark rock.

Avoid: deep winter, when snow covers the rock and the plants and there can be almost nothing to look at, and the days right after heavy rain, when the ground is muddy.

The gorge is narrow, so direct light reaches the water only around the middle of the day. Earlier and later the river sits in shadow and the milky blue reads greyer.