Kirkjugólf (The Church Floor)

Kirkjugólf is a sheet of stone hexagons set into the grass, flat and level with the ground around it. Each hexagon is the worn-off top of a basalt column. The lava cooled and cracked into a colonnade, erosion took the tops off, and the rest of the columns are still down in the soil.

No church ever stood here. The name comes from the pattern alone, which looks like laid tiles. There is no building and nothing else to work through: the floor sits in open meadow and the stop is over quickly. What makes it worth pulling in for is the angle. Columnar basalt is usually something you look at side-on, in a cliff or a sea stack; here you look straight down onto the ends of the columns.

• The walk — five to ten minutes from the car park, slightly uphill, and about fifteen minutes there and back.
• Ice in winter — the path was icy and slippery in December. Wear boots with grip.
• No toilets — there are none at the site.
• Keep expectations flat — only the tops of the columns show above ground, and most visits last about ten minutes.
• Children — the site works with children: the walk is short and the ground is open meadow.

The approach is by car, with the car park right beside the site. From there the walk to the floor takes five to ten minutes, slightly uphill, or roughly fifteen minutes there and back. The last stretch is on foot across open ground. In winter that short climb ices over, so allow more time than the distance suggests and put proper footwear on before you set off.

Best: the snow-free months, when the hexagons are clear and the walk up is dry.

Avoid: a hard freeze in midwinter — in December the path is icy and slippery.

The floor faces straight up and there is no wall or ridge to throw a shadow across it, so it reads as well under flat cloud as in sun. Rain is not much of a reason to skip it either, since the whole visit takes about ten minutes.