One of the days of our winter week in Iceland was devoted to Gate 1 Travel's tour of the well-known "Golden Circle." Nanna Gunnarsdóttir describes the "Golden Circle" as "the most popular route to take in Iceland" and adds that it is "a common route between 3 beautiful natural attractions in Iceland: Þingvellir National Park, Geysir geothermal area and Gullfoss waterfall." Those three well-known spots along the "Golden Circle" will be the subject of a future post. This post focuses on two attractions we visited before and after those three sights: Hellisheiði Power Plant and Friðheimar Greenhouse.
With so few hours of daylight in the winter in Iceland, it's not surprising that the Gate 1 tour took us to these indoor activities in the morning before we had good light and in the afternoon as we were losing the good light. This approach allowed us to enjoy the three outdoor attractions the "Golden Circle" is known for with full daylight (as much as the winter weather and clouds allowed).
Hellisheiði Power Plant
It was still dark outside when we arrived at Hellisheiði Power Plant in the late morning, but this facility was warm and well-lit.
The "On" on the outside abbreviates "Orka náttúrunnar" ("the energy of nature") but our tour guide pointed out that "On" in English also fits this geothermal power plant well. ON Power is a subsidiary of Reykjavik Energy.
A power plant tour guide provided insightful details about how this power plant is able to extract power from the renewable energy cycle so relatively readily at hand in Iceland.
Although I had heard about Iceland's hot water and power being based on this renewable energy cycle, I felt like I understood much better at a high level how it all worked after the tour guide's explanation and reviewing the words and diagram on the wall. I understood before this tour that Iceland had easy and plentiful access to hot water by drilling boreholes to access the naturally heated water, but I did not realize that steam was also used to generate electricity.
The Geothermal Exhibition page currently summarizes some of the high-level facts. It was interesting to see so many clear roads in Reykjavik thanks in part to the readily available hot water used to keep snow off.
There were some more details and illustrations on the walls in the power plant visiting area and I liked this model of the Perlan, which we had visited the day before.
The ON Power tour guide started a film "Gas into Rock" for us that I thought was really interesting because it briefly covered efforts to turn carbon dioxide into rock. After the film, we were free to return to the large wall displays to read more and to take photographs. Here is a photograph of the power plant itself.
We typically don't purchase many souvenirs or other items while traveling because photographs are our main souvenirs, but we did purchase a really nice photobook on Iceland (they had several to choose from) and some interesting Iceland salts from the gift store at this power plant.
Friðheimar Greenhouse
We went to Friðheimar Greenhouse (AKA Friðheimar Tomato and Horse Farm) toward the end of the daylight hours. It was still light when we entered, but was rapidly becoming dark as we left.
A worker at this greenhouse explained that a greenhouse is required to grow plants such as tomatoes effectively in Iceland. He explained the steps they had to take to grow and distribute these fresh tomatoes to the rest of Iceland. He had some cherry tomatoes they had grown for us to sample and I ate several of these tasty tomatoes.
The Friðheimar Greenhouse has its own bee population to help pollinate the tomato plants.
Conclusion
Hellisheiði Power Plant and Friðheimar Greenhouse may not be as famous or dramatic as the three main sights that the "Golden Circle" is known for, but they were pleasant and informative ways to start and end the day's tour, especially during those darker hours. With these two stops, I felt that I learned much about the unique and adaptive approaches Iceland uses to get its hot water, electricity, and fresh local vegetables. It was also nice to be the only tour group at each of these locations before and after being at the much more crowded sites in the Golden Circle.
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