Höfn

Höfn is a working fishing harbour on a flat spit in the southeast corner of Iceland, reached by a short spur off the Ring Road. Nobody comes for the town itself — there is a supermarket, a fuel stop, a clutch of guesthouses and a couple of good restaurants, and that is roughly it. What makes Höfn matter is where it sits: an hour east of Jökulsárlón and Diamond Beach, in sight of Vatnajökull, and 15 minutes from the black-sand drama of Stokksnes. On a Ring Road trip it is the obvious place to sleep before or after the glacier country, and the best dinner you will get for a long stretch of road.

Treat it as a one- or two-night base rather than a stop you build days around. The glacier hikes and ice caves people picture when they think of this region do not actually leave from Höfn — they meet at Skaftafell or down at the Jökulsárlón lagoon, 45 to 80 minutes back west, so you book the tour by its meeting point and use the town purely as your bed and your kitchen. In winter that westbound road is the part of any Iceland trip most likely to close in wind and ice, so the smart move is to keep your driving day loose and your schedule forgiving.

One honest note on the langoustine. Höfn calls itself Iceland’s lobster capital and still throws a summer festival in its honour, but commercial Icelandic langoustine fishing has been banned since 2022 to let collapsed stocks recover. Restaurants here still put it on the menu, often frozen or imported, and it is still very good — just don’t assume what you are eating was landed at the harbour outside the window. The structured detail below — drive times, where to stay, what the tours cost in pounds, and when to come — picks up from here.