My Favourite Holiday: Majestic Iceland melted author Jan Turk Petrie’s heart

Jan Turk Petrie is a former English teacher with an MA in creative writing from the University of Gloucestershire.

She has just released No God For A Warrior (Pintail Press), a futuristic thriller set in a dark, cold Nordic city, the follow-up to Until The Ice Cracks.

She has also published some award-winning short fiction.

AS a reluctant flier, it takes a lot to get me on a plane.

However, having heard so much about Iceland and its extraordinary geology, I just had to see it for myself.

Reykjavik is deservedly a magnet for tourists with a famous foodie scene.

We stayed in the old part of the city and ate wonderfully fresh seafood.

At the Elf School, Magnús Skarphédinsson served us tea and cakes whilst telling fascinating tales of “the hidden people” – the elves and trolls many Icelanders firmly believe in.

Wanting to explore the vast and dramatic interior of the island, we hired a 4×4 and headed east along black volcanic roads.

We passed steaming thermal pools before reaching our first destination, a stylish hotel improbably converted from a former hostel for workers at the nearby geothermal plant

Our next stop was a remote hotel on the Snæfellsnes peninsular, where we finally witnessed the Northern Lights – our necks ached as we watched all those eerie, pirouetting beams moving across the starlit sky.

We couldn’t leave the area without hiking up to the glacier-topped volcano made famous by Jules Verne’s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth.

Heading further north, we passed fjords and tiny red-roofed hamlets, waterfalls and spectacular mountain ranges. Photographing everything, we utterly failed to capture the sheer majesty of the landscape.

Finally, we arrived in Akureyri, Iceland’s second city, and then visited the mind-blowing volcanic Mývatn eutrophic lake reserve.

Akureyri is a pretty, peaceful town with few high-rise buildings but nonetheless its location at the head of the Eyjafjörður fjord became the inspiration for Eldísvík – my fictitious, far less harmonious, city-state of the future.

With so much still to see, Iceland has become a favourite holiday destination.