Iceland Westfjords Road Trip + Map: 5 Days Around Iceland’s Wildest Peninsula
Estimated reading time: 17 mins
Most people who fly to Iceland turn left out of the airport, do the Golden Circle, drive the south coast, and go home very happy. Fair enough. But the Westfjords sit up in the top left corner like a hand splayed out into the North Atlantic, and hardly anyone bothers with them. Which is why they’re the best driving in the country.
I’ll be blunt about what you’re signing up for. The roads are slower than anywhere else in Iceland. Fjords do that. You’ll drive twenty minutes to cover what looks like four hundred metres on the map, because the water is in the way and the road has to go all the way round. Petrol stations are thin on the ground. Weather changes its mind constantly. And the reward for all of that is a coastline where you can pull over at a bird cliff taller than the Shard, sit down two metres from a puffin, and not see another human for an hour.
Five days is the honest minimum. You could stretch it to seven and never run out of fjord, but five gets you the big ones: the Latrabjarg cliffs, the red sand at Raudasandur, Dynjandi tumbling down the mountainside like a bridal veil, the little harbour town of Isafjordur, and the strange, half-abandoned Strandir coast on the way home. Plus more hot pots than you’ll have time to sit in.
This route starts and finishes in Reykjavik and uses the Baldur car ferry to skip a long dull inland stretch on day one. You need your own car, no argument. Buses barely exist out here and the good bits are all between the towns. I’d sort your Iceland car hire early, because the fleet is small and the decent vehicles vanish first. If you’re still deciding which corner of the country to give your week to, my Iceland destination guides lay out the alternatives.
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Iceland Westfjords Road Trip: Quick Facts at a Glance
Start: Reykjavik
End: Reykjavik (full loop, no backtracking)
Best length: 5 days (7 if you want to breathe)
Total distance: Around 1,150 km (roughly 715 miles), plus one ferry crossing
Best for: Second-time Iceland visitors, wildlife people, anyone allergic to coach parties
Driving difficulty: Moderate. Mostly paved now, with gravel spurs, mountain passes and steep unfenced drops
Car type: 4x4 strongly recommended, and non-negotiable outside high summer
Best time to go: Mid June to early September. Many roads and half the businesses shut outside that window
Puffin season: Roughly May until early August at Latrabjarg, then they leave for the open sea
Main route: Reykjavik → Stykkishólmur → ferry → Patreksfjörður → Látrabjarg → Rauðasandur → Dynjandi → Þingeyri → Ísafjörður → Bolungarvík → Súðavík → Hólmavík → Drangsnes → Reykjavik
Hiring a car for the Westfjords: This is the one trip in Iceland where the car really matters. Gravel spurs, steep passes and long gaps between fuel stops mean a tired little hatchback will make you miserable. Compare car hire in Iceland with DiscoverCars and pay the bit extra for a 4x4 with gravel and sand cover on the insurance. I've never regretted that upgrade up here.
The Route: What to Expect
The shape is a big anticlockwise loop with a shortcut built in. You head north from Reykjavik along Snaefellsnes, catch the Baldur ferry across Breidafjordur, and land on the southern edge of the Westfjords with a full afternoon still in hand. From there you work west to the bird cliffs, north over the mountain passes to Isafjordur, then east and south down the Strandir coast and back to the capital.
Skipping the ferry is possible. You’d drive round the head of Breidafjordur instead and add roughly three hours of not very much. I’ve done it that way once, in bad weather, and spent most of it wishing I’d booked the boat. The crossing costs money but it buys you an entire afternoon at the far end, and Breidafjordur with its thousands of little islands is genuinely lovely from the deck.
Two things about the drive times below. They’re all conservative, because the Westfjords punish optimism. And they don’t include stops, which is where the whole day actually goes.
| Day | Route | Drive time | Vibe |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reykjavik → Borgarnes → Stykkishólmur → ferry → Patreksfjörður | ~3 hrs driving + 2.5 hr ferry | Bakery stop, island crossing, first fjord |
| 2 | Patreksfjörður → Látrabjarg → Rauðasandur → Patreksfjörður | ~3.5 hrs | Puffins, red sand, gravel roads |
| 3 | Patreksfjörður → Dynjandi → Þingeyri → Ísafjörður | ~3 hrs | The big waterfall, mountain passes |
| 4 | Ísafjörður → Bolungarvík → Súðavík → Hólmavík | ~3 hrs | Arctic foxes, sea cliffs, long fjord drive |
| 5 | Hólmavík → Drangsnes → Búðardalur → Reykjavik | ~4.5 hrs | Witchcraft, roadside hot pots, drive home |
Iceland Westfjords Road Trip Road Trip Itinerary
Day 1: Reykjavik to Patreksfjörður via Stykkishólmur and the Baldur ferry
Driving: Reykjavik to Borgarnes is 75 km (1 hr). Borgarnes to Stykkishólmur is 100 km (1 hr 15). The ferry takes about 2.5 hours. Brjánslækur to Patreksfjörður is 65 km (1 hr).
Leave Reykjavik early, because you’re on someone else’s timetable today. The drive up through Hvalfjörður and over to Borgarnes is pleasant enough, and Borgarnes is the standard Icelandic road trip pit stop for good reason: there’s a bakery by the roundabout that has fed half the country at some point. Push on across Snaefellsnes to Stykkishólmur, a proper little harbour town with painted timber houses stacked up the hill and a lighthouse on a basalt island you can walk out to in fifteen minutes. Then you and your car get loaded onto the Baldur and pointed at the Westfjords. Two and a half hours later you roll off at Brjánslækur, and everything immediately feels emptier and older and better.
The run from the ferry to Patreksfjörður takes about an hour and there’s a hot pool on the way at Flókalundur, right at the water’s edge, which is a slightly ridiculous way to start a road trip. Do it anyway.
Things to do:
- Stop in Borgarnes for coffee and a cinnamon snail (30 minutes, and take one for the ferry)
- Walk up Súgandisey island and lighthouse in Stykkishólmur (give the town an hour before boarding)
- Stay on deck for the crossing through the Breiðafjörður islands rather than sitting inside on your phone
- Soak at Hellulaug, the little stone pool beside the sea at Flókalundur (20 minutes, bring a towel you don’t love)
- Arrive in Patreksfjörður with enough light for a wander round the harbour
Check this first: Book the Baldur ferry with a car space as soon as your dates are fixed. Sailings are limited, the car deck fills up in summer, and the schedule thins right out in the shoulder seasons. Turning up hopeful is how you end up driving the extra three hours round the fjord.
Where to Stay in Patreksfjörður
Day 2: Látrabjarg cliffs and the red sand at Rauðasandur
Driving: Patreksfjörður to Látrabjarg is 60 km (1 hr 15, mostly gravel). Látrabjarg to Rauðasandur is 45 km (1 hr 15). Rauðasandur back to Patreksfjörður is 50 km (1 hr). Call it 3.5 hours behind the wheel.
This is the day people come to the Westfjords for. Látrabjarg is a wall of rock fourteen kilometres long and up to 440 metres high at its tallest, hammered by the Atlantic on the western edge of Europe, and it is absolutely stuffed with birds. Puffins, razorbills, guillemots, fulmars, all of them nesting on ledges and popping up at eye level while you lie on your stomach on the clifftop grass. The puffins here have a reputation for being unbothered by people, which makes for the sort of photographs you usually need a long lens for. The road out is gravel and slow and you’ll rattle over cattle grids and past a lighthouse that looks like it was posted there as a punishment. Take your time.
Then double back and drop down to Rauðasandur. The descent is a steep, hairpinned gravel track that will get your full attention, and at the bottom is a beach ten kilometres long in shades of pink, gold and rust, which is not what Iceland is supposed to look like at all. There’s a little café in a converted farmhouse and a lagoon full of seals. I’ve spent three hours there doing essentially nothing and considered it a good use of a day.
Things to do:
- Walk the clifftop path at Látrabjarg (allow 1.5 to 2 hours, longer with a camera)
- Stop at Breiðavík on the way, a wide pale beach that nobody expects
- Look for the wreck of the Garðar BA 64 beached near Patreksfjörður (15 minutes, right off the road)
- Drive down to Rauðasandur and walk out across the sand at low tide (2 to 3 hours here easily)
- Finish in the hot pot at Pollurinn above Tálknafjörður, one of the best free soaks in the country
Watch out: The clifftop at Látrabjarg is undercut in places, so the grass you’re standing on may have nothing underneath it. There are no fences and no barriers. Stay well back from the lip, lie down rather than lean over for photos, and keep a proper grip on children and dogs. People have died here doing exactly what you’re about to be tempted to do.
Where to Stay in Tálknafjörður
Day 3: Dynjandi, Þingeyri and on to Ísafjörður
Driving: Patreksfjörður to Dynjandi is 100 km (1 hr 30). Dynjandi to Þingeyri is 60 km (50 min). Þingeyri to Ísafjörður is 50 km (45 min). Around 3 hours in total.
Today you climb. The road over Dynjandisheidi lifts you onto a high, bare plateau of rock and moss and meltwater, and it feels a very long way from anything. Then you come round a bend and Dynjandi is just there, a hundred metres of white water fanning out down the mountain like something poured rather than fallen. It’s the biggest waterfall in the Westfjords and the walk up from the car park takes fifteen or twenty minutes past six smaller falls, each with its own name, before you get to stand right under the main one and lose the ability to hear anything.
Carry on north to Þingeyri, a tiny place with an outsized café in an old timber house that does Belgian waffles, and a rough track up Sandafell for one of the easiest big views on the whole trip. Then it’s over one more pass and down into Ísafjörður, the capital of the Westfjords, which sounds grander than it is. Think a few thousand people, a harbour full of working boats, mountains rising straight off the water on three sides, and a restaurant scene that punches well above what a town that size has any right to.
Things to do:
- Walk the full stepped path up to Dynjandi and back (45 minutes to an hour, plus staring time)
- Detour to Bíldudalur for the Sea Monster Museum if that sounds like your kind of nonsense (it’s mine)
- Coffee and waffles at Simbahöllin in Þingeyri (30 minutes, and it’s the last good stop before the pass)
- Drive or hike up Sandafell above Þingeyri for the Dýrafjörður view (allow an hour)
- Wander Ísafjörður’s old timber quarter by the harbour before dinner
Tinker’s Tip: Everyone photographs Dynjandi from the bottom, then walks up, then leaves. Walk up first while the car park is quiet, then take your photos from the middle terrace on the way back down. The perspective is better and you get the smaller falls in the frame too.
Where to Stay in Ísafjörður
Day 4: Ísafjörður to Hólmavík via Bolungarvík and Súðavík
Driving: Ísafjörður to Bolungarvík and back is 30 km (35 min round trip). Ísafjörður to Súðavík is 22 km (20 min). Súðavík to Hólmavík is 155 km (2 hrs 15). Roughly 3 hours all in.
Start with the short hop through the tunnel to Bolungarvík, where a restored turf and stone fishing station called Ósvör sits on the shingle looking exactly as grim and practical as life here used to be. If the cloud is off the mountain, drive up to the viewing platform on Bolafjall, which juts out over a 600 metre drop and makes your legs go strange. Then back through Ísafjörður to Súðavík for the Arctic Fox Centre, a small research station and museum where you can usually see rescued cubs. Iceland’s only native land mammal, and they were here before people were.
After that comes the long, slow, beautiful drive along Ísafjarðardjúp. Fjord after fjord, hardly any traffic, sea on one side and scree on the other. Break it at Litlibær, a two hundred year old turf farmhouse that now serves waffles and coffee to whoever happens along, with seals hauled out on the rocks below. Then up over Steingrímsfjarðarheiði and down into Hólmavík on the Strandir coast, which is a whole different mood again.
Things to do:
- Visit the Ósvör turf fishing station in Bolungarvík (45 minutes)
- Drive up Bolafjall for the platform view over the Arctic (an hour, weather permitting)
- Meet the foxes at the Arctic Fox Centre in Súðavík (1 hour)
- Stop at Litlibær turf farm café for waffles and seal spotting (45 minutes)
- Book a boat trip to the Hornstrandir nature reserve from Ísafjörður if you can spare an extra day for it
Fact: The Arctic fox is the only land mammal that reached Iceland without human help, walking across the sea ice at the end of the last ice age. Everything else with four legs and fur arrived on a boat, including the mice, the reindeer and the sheep currently standing in your road.
Where to Stay in Hólmavík
Day 5: Hólmavík, Drangsnes and the drive back to Reykjavik
Driving: Hólmavík to Drangsnes and back is 70 km (1 hr 20 round trip). Hólmavík to Búðardalur is 100 km (1 hr 20). Búðardalur to Reykjavik is 150 km (1 hr 45). Around 4.5 hours, so start reasonably early.
Hólmavík has the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, which sounds like a gift shop and absolutely is not. Strandir was where a lot of Iceland’s witch trials happened, and the museum tells that story properly, alongside some genuinely unsettling reconstructions of the spells people were accused of casting. Half an hour to an hour and you’ll leave quiet. Then drive out to Drangsnes, where three hot pots sit in the sea wall on the edge of the road, free to use, with a changing hut across the street and a view over to Grímsey island. Locals built them, locals maintain them, and you’re welcome as long as you shower first and don’t treat it like a spa.
From there the road turns inland and the fjords release you. Over Laxárdalsheidi, down through Búðardalur, and back onto the main road south. It’s a gentle, slightly melancholy drive. You’ll spend a fair bit of it thinking about which fjord you’d go back to first. Mine’s Rauðasandur, every time.
Things to do:
- Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in Hólmavík (45 minutes to an hour)
- Soak in the free roadside hot pots at Drangsnes (an hour, and shower before you get in)
- Look out for the Grímsey island puffin boat if you’ve timed it right in summer
- Refuel in Búðardalur, because the gaps get long again on the last stretch
- Break the drive at Borgarnes if you need one more bakery run before the airport
Money saver: Iceland’s expensive reputation is mostly about Reykjavik restaurants and organised tours. Out here the best things are free: the hot pots at Drangsnes, Pollurinn and Hellulaug, the cliffs, the beaches, every single viewpoint. Load the boot with supermarket food before you leave the capital and the Westfjords turn out to be one of the cheapest weeks in the country.
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Where To Stay For This Iceland Westfjords Road Trip
Beds are limited out here and they go early in summer, so this is not a trip to wing. Guesthouses and converted farmhouses outnumber hotels by a long way, and half of them close for the winter entirely. Here’s how I’d split the nights.
Patreksfjörður (nights 1 and 2): The obvious base for the southern fjords. It’s a working fishing town rather than a pretty one, but it has fuel, food and a supermarket, and it puts you within striking distance of both Látrabjarg and Rauðasandur. Two nights here saves you packing and unpacking on the busiest day.
Alternative: Breiðavík (night 2): If you want to be right on the doorstep of the cliffs, the guesthouse out at Breiðavík is about as remote as accommodation gets in Iceland. Twenty minutes from Látrabjarg, nothing else for miles, and dinner is wherever you’re staying because there is no other option.
Ísafjörður (night 3): The best town on the route for an evening. Restaurants, a couple of decent bars, a swimming pool, and mountains right behind the buildings. Stay central so you can walk to dinner, because the harbour area is where everything happens.
Hólmavík (night 4): Small, functional, and the right place to break the journey home. Options are thin, so book this one first if your dates are fixed in summer.
Alternative: Djúpavík (night 4): Further north up the Strandir coast, an old herring factory village with a hotel in the former workers’ quarters. It adds well over an hour each way and makes day five long, but it’s the most atmospheric place on this entire route and I’d tell anyone with a spare day to do it.
Pit Stops & Side Detours
The five day version already fills every hour, but the Westfjords reward anyone with slack in the schedule. These are the add-ons I’d actually make room for, in rough order of how much I’d fight for them. Keep them to one per day so you don’t wreck a driving leg.
- Djúpavík herring factory: A vast rusting concrete hulk in a village of about six people, with guided tours through the machinery. Strange, sad, brilliant. Roughly 75 km north of Hólmavík on a gravel road.
- Krossneslaug: A geothermal swimming pool at Nordurfjördur, right on the black shingle beach at the end of the road, facing the open Arctic. Add another hour past Djúpavík. Worth every minute of the drive.
- Hornstrandir: The uninhabited northern peninsula, reachable only by boat from Ísafjörður. Arctic foxes with no fear of humans, abandoned farms, no roads at all. You need a full day minimum, and it’s the reason to stretch this trip to seven.
- Selárdalur: The farm of Samúel Jónsson, a self-taught sculptor who built a church and a set of concrete lions in the middle of nowhere because nobody would let him do it anywhere else. About an hour past Bíldudalur down a rough track.
- Valagil: A short marked hike to a narrow gorge and waterfall off the Súðavík road. An hour and a half round trip and a good leg stretch on day four.
- Reykjafjarðarlaug: Another roadside pool between Bíldudalur and the main route, with a natural stone hot pot beside the concrete one. Almost never busy.
Skip: Trying to squeeze Snaefellsnes properly into day one. It deserves its own two or three days and you’ll only end up sprinting past Kirkjufell to make the ferry. Save it for a separate trip.
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Browse the shopLocal Eats Worth Chasing
Food out here is fish, lamb, dairy and bread, done well because there’s no reason to do it badly. Restaurant options are genuinely limited outside Ísafjörður, so eat when you find somewhere good rather than when you’re hungry. For more of what I look for around the country, my destination guides go deeper.
- Whatever came off the boat that morning at Tjöruhúsið in Ísafjörður, served family style in a 18th century timber warehouse. The best meal on the route by a distance.
- Belgian waffles with rhubarb jam and cream at Simbahöllin in Þingeyri, eaten on the porch looking down the fjord.
- Plokkfiskur, the mashed fish and potato dish every Icelandic grandmother makes differently. Comfort food after a cold day on the cliffs.
- Harðfiskur, dried fish torn into strips and eaten with butter. Sounds odd, tastes like the best crisps you’ve ever had, and it lives happily in a glovebox.
- Skyr from any supermarket, in flavours you’ll never see at home. Cheap, filling, and the reason I don’t bother with breakfast on Iceland trips.
- A cinnamon snail from the bakery in Borgarnes on the way out and again on the way back. Non-negotiable.
- Coffee and cake at Litlibær on the Ísafjarðardjúp road, in a turf farmhouse with seals on the rocks outside.
Road Trip Playlist
Podcasts to Queue Up
You’ll have long stretches with no signal, no radio and no other cars, and the fjord driving gets hypnotic in the best way. Download everything before you leave Reykjavik, because the mobile coverage out here is patchy at best.
- All Things Iceland, for language, folklore and the sort of local context that makes the empty valleys make more sense
- The Reykjavik Grapevine’s podcast, for a properly unsentimental take on the country from people who live in it
- Anything on the Icelandic sagas before you reach Hólmavík, because half the place names on this route turn up in them
- A long-form interview show for the Ísafjarðardjúp stretch on day four, which is two straight hours of fjord
- An audiobook saved specifically for the drive home, when the scenery calms down and you’ve got 250 km to fill
Quick win: Download the playlist. Use zero data, and you dont need to worry about signal!
Road Trip Essentials
The Westfjords are more demanding than the rest of Iceland, and most of the trouble people get into up here is avoidable with a bit of forward planning. These are the things I’d sort before anything else.
The right car, booked early. This is the decision that shapes the whole trip. You want a 4×4 with proper ground clearance for the gravel spurs to Látrabjarg and Rauðasandur, and you want gravel protection and sand and ash cover written into the insurance. Windscreen chips from flying stones are the single most common claim in Iceland, and they’re not always included as standard. I’d compare Iceland car hire and book it well ahead, because the Westfjords-capable end of the fleet is small and it goes first.
Fuel discipline. Get into the habit of filling up whenever the tank drops below half, rather than when the light comes on. Stations at Patreksfjörður, Ísafjörður, Hólmavík and Búðardalur are your reliable ones, and several are unstaffed pumps that want a chip and PIN card. I got caught out once between Bíldudalur and the pass with a quarter tank and a headwind, and I’ve never made that mistake again.
Two weather sites, checked every morning. Vedur.is for the forecast and road.is for road conditions and closures. Wind is the real hazard here, not rain. Gusts strong enough to take a car door clean off its hinges are a normal Tuesday, so open doors slowly with both hands and park facing into the wind.
Offline maps and a working data plan. Signal drops out completely on the passes and along the emptier fjords, which is exactly where you don’t want your navigation giving up. Download the whole northwest region before you leave Reykjavik. I also carry a backup Iceland eSIM from Airalo so I’m not relying on one network in a region that only really has patchy coverage anyway.
Layers, boots and a swimsuit. You’ll want waterproofs, a windproof outer layer, a hat that stays on in a gale, and boots that cope with wet clifftop grass. Keep a swimsuit and a small towel in the front of the car rather than buried in the boot, because you’ll pass a hot pot roughly every ninety minutes and you will regret walking past one. More of what I actually pack is in my travel planning resources, and there’s plenty of first timer advice in my Iceland travel tips guide.
Cover for when it goes wrong. Remote roads, big weather and long distances from the nearest hospital. It’s a good combination for a holiday and a bad one for being uninsured. I’d sort travel insurance that covers self drive trips before you book anything else. If you’d rather not drive straight from the plane, you can also pre-book an airport transfer from Keflavík and pick the car up in the city the next morning.
Staying connected: If you want unlimited data rather than a capped bundle, Holafly’s Iceland eSIM installs in a couple of minutes and works the moment you land. Use the code THETRAVELTINKER for 5% off any eSIM, or 10% off Holafly plans for the first 12 months. Handy when you’re checking road closures from a lay-by with one bar of signal.
Good to know: Flights to Iceland get disrupted more than most, and if yours is delayed or cancelled you may be owed money under EU and UK rules rather than just a shrug at the desk. It costs nothing to check your flight compensation claim once you’re home.
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Nick Harvey
Hi, I am Nick! Thank you for reading! The Travel Tinker is a resource designed to help you navigate the beauty of travel! Tinkering your plans as you browse!
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