GETTING BACK TO NATURE

Carlton Boyce embraces his inner adventurer on an Arctic Trucks expedition across Iceland

“We nosed through rivers and deep-snow before ploughing, literally, to the top of a mountain pass.”

The Norwegian word friluftsliv (pronounced ‘free-loofts-liv’) has no direct English translation. The best definition I can give is the deep-seated need many Scandinavians have to connect with the natural world in all weather conditions and terra ins. after spending four days in Iceland driving an Arctic Truck, I understand that need.

For those of you unfamiliar with the name, Arctic Trucks is the Icelandic company responsible for the imposing red 4x4s that Jeremy Clarkson and co drove to the magnetic North Pole for the Top Gear Polar Special, and while the guys and girls at Arctic Trucks will build you one of your own, the very things that make the AT38 so good off-road are the same things that make them less suited to everyday use on the road. So, while they’ll hum along quite happily at 60mph on studded winter tyres, the steering lock is appalling, the front tyres scrub during lowspeed tight turns, and they’re just too big for most roads; the reality is that while the AT35 versions are just about usable everyday on British roads, the AT38 probably isn’t.

But that’s not a huge problem because you can fly to Iceland to drive them yourself in the very terrain they are designed for, which means glaciers, snow-covered mountains, and fast-flowing rivers. The Icelandic government actively encourages wilderness driving on deep snow as it understands that it causes no environmental damage whatsoever. Beware though: off-road driving is prohibited once the snow has melted, and anyone caught doing so faces heavy fines.

The Toyota Hilux AT38S I spent four days driving are big, brash and utterly wonderful. Fitted with 38-inch tyres (hence the name), an automatic gearbox, front and rear differential locks, and an onboard air compressor to allow the tyre pressures to be tailored to the conditions, they’re almost ridiculously easy to drive and all but unstoppable when traversing extreme terrain.

Icelandic winters are long, and late into the year there is deep snow that is added to almost daily, which made our first afternoon’ s drive from reykja vic to Landmannalaugar a real challenge; it took over seven hours to cover 187km. The initial section was easy; storming along snow-free roads in an eight-car convoy was very satisfying, giving me a thrill every time I glanced in the mirror. The hard slog began when we left the tarmac and started to thread our way across snow-covered roads. We ‘aired-down’, letting out most of the air in our tyres until we were left with just 5psi, way lower than the 35psi most cars use. This vastly increases the contact patch of the tyre, giving better traction and a marshmallow ride.

We also selected four-wheeldrive and low-range on the gearbox. The lead car, a highly modified Land Cruiser sitting on enormous 44-inch tyres, navigated by GPS as even the roadside markers had been buried in this year’s unusually heavy snowfall. We were, at times, ploughing through a metre of soft snow, a state of affairs that required both front and rear differential locks to be engaged, yet even so our progress often dropped to an inch-by-inch crawl. yet it’ s a testament to the quality of engineeringon the part of both toyota and Arctic Trucks that the tow rope was used only twice throughout the entire four days.

Our first night was spent in a simple wooden camping shelter. After gorging ourselves on charcoal-cooked lamb served with a tarragon-infused Béarnaise sauce (Ørn, our guide, first trained as a chef before moving to open Arctic Trucks’ Norwegian outpost) we finished the evening sitting in a natural hot spring. The air temperature was -11C yet we reclined in complete comfort, sipping aquavit and enjoying the sensation of snow falling on our bare shoulders. I reluctantly rose at 2am and trudged back through the snow to my bed. My woolly hat was frozen solid by the time I reached the front door.

The next morning brought hot, strong coffee, a typically Norwegian breakfast, and another day in the mountains. Our confidence was growing, and we spent some time just playing on a vast snowcovered mountain. Some of us got stuck, and some of us didn’t, but we all got free eventually (some after some heavy digging, it had to be said…) enjoying a picnic lunch en route. We stayed that night in sophisticated wooden chalets in Minniborgir where another good meal was followed by hours in the hot tubs that sit outside each house dissecting the day; Iceland has no shortage of hot water, and its use is widespread.

Day three brought white-out conditions, which drew an end to our plan to drive the glaciers. Flexibility is an essential part of friluftsliv, and so we nosed our way through rivers and deepsnow before ploughing, quite literally, our way to the top of a mountain pass. A fast run back to Arctic Trucks’ HQ was the end of the off-road element of our trip but not the end of the adventure.

We did the usual sight-seeing – geysers, waterfalls and The Blue Lagoon – and spent a mildly riotous evening in Reykjavik, but my heart wasn’t in it. I missed the mountains and the rivers, I missed the Hilux and its fancy off-road tricks, but most of all I missed friluftsliv. I craved the wilderness, not the city. I wanted to feel fresh, cold mountain air on my face rather than that of an overly warmhotel room. And, despite eating the best steak of my life, I yearned for charcoalcooked lamb and aquavit from the bottle.

I yearned for friluftsliv and I suspect you would too.