Justin Hynes found the going tough in the land that sleep forgot, but his Land Rover fared better
Day one: It's dark. Very dark
Somewhere outside, a pale moon is battling to cast a weak glow through the clouds.
It's also very cold. I bring my wrist as close to my face as I can and catch the faint luminous glow of my watch dial. It's 4 am. Oh dear. Three hours to go and I'm sleepless, not so much in Seattle as in survival hell.
Cocooned in a sleeping bag, in the shadow of the 1,491m (4,892 ft) Mount Hekla in Iceland, in an ice-covered one-man bell tent, I'm wondering what to do next.
That's it, count stuff. Sheep, icicles, whatever.
But for some strange reason, I keep coming back to the survival tips by legendary wilderness guy Ray Mears that the nice people of Land Rover had courteously handed out the night before.
1. Stay warm. There's nothing more important than maintaining body heat. Get a good sleeping bag and dry clothes. Check.
2. Keep sleeping bag dry. Uh, there appears to be ice on mine. Is that good?
3. It is important you don't sleep in your day clothes because they'll become damp. Umm I'm wearing the t-shirt I wore all day.
Ditto the fabulous Dunnes Stores long johns the woman in the shop giggled at when I bought them. And she hadn't even seen me in them. And my thermal socks. And my Polartec hat. Not good.
4. Never put your head inside your sleeping bag. Your breath will make it damp. Oh crap, wrong again, cue frozen sleeping bag zip.
The list was endless, so much so that I nodded off, waking at 6.30 to the sound of a large Russian man swearing with florid viciousness in his mother tongue as he tripped over the guy ropes of my tent.
It was that kind of night.
Still, it was that obvious difficult end to a day that been one of stunning and pleasurable revelations.
For one, who knew that Iceland was such an amazing place?
This, after all, is a country whose major contributions to world culture have been Bjork, fish left to dry in the wind for three weeks, and seal clubbing.
But the Icelanders have been hiding their light under a bushel. This is a staggeringly beautiful place.
All the chaps from Land Rover knew it and as we prepared to put their Discovery 3 (nicknamed Disco) through its paces early in the morning of the day before the tent episode, they were grinning to themselves as we hapless few pondered whether or not there'd be snow in 'them thar hills'.
That's the point, they said, we think this Discovery is pretty wicked.
So much so that even though it was launched last year, we thought you might like another crack at it. In a trickier environment, say, on top of a glacier when it's minus 10.
Nice people. Hearts of gold, but, it seems, shot through with a vague streak of sadism.
So we belted off down Road One, the Tarmac surfaced major road that loops around the island of Iceland, the one they show on programmes like Top Gear when they go to Iceland, all smooth bitumen and flowing corners, perfect for sweeping an Audi TT through.
For Land Rover that kind of stuff is for girls. After confidently skimming out of Reykjavik on the One, gradually attuning to the bleakness of vast fields of tumbling volcanic rock and heath, it's time to put the Disco through its paces and, my, how easy it is.
Unlike some on the expedition, I'd never driven the Disco before this event, but that made no difference.
Heading off across the barren wastes for the upland Landmannalaugar region, a snowy white mix of crags, rivers, lakes and black desolate valleys strip-mined by age-old glaciers, it was simply a case of looking down at the centre console, flicking a couple of switches to raise the suspension, turning a knob to select the sand/snow/gravel setting and, in the trickier, more vertiginous sections, engaging the Land Rover's wonderful descent control.
Hit the switch, take your feet off all the pedals and let your Disco do the walking.
The car just effortlessly tip-toes down the mountains. All you have to do is point it in the right direction.
It's like a Sunday drive to Tescos with the kids. Standard 4x4 material.
Until we hit the snow line. A concerted blast at a seemingly innocuous snowy hillside looks like it will succeed.
But no, the car slips, slides and bogs down, wheels scrambling for grip. It's almost defeated.
A sideways run at the edges of the hill succeeds in pushing one car up, but thereafter it's winches and a steady right foot on the accelerator.
Keep it at 1,000rpm, keep the wheels straight, edge up, metre by metre until the brow is crested.
Now we're in the real stuff. Not a million miles from here, on the Snaefellsnes peninsula, Jules Verne sent his intrepid party into the heart of darkness in search of the centre of the earth.
Here, on the northern fringes of the Myrdalsjokull glacier, it feels entirely right that such a journey should begin in this way.
It's so new, so elemental, alive with the violence of nature, a place where the earth has turned itself inside out in an eon-long show of brute force.
Here the centre of the earth is only a few metres beneath your feet.
Just how close it is was brought home when we pull the Discoverys to a halt beside Landmannalaugar hut, the tented home for the coming night.
Dinner gives way to a 100-metre dash through the freezing night, leading to a plunge into a river as hot as a comfortable bath, the water rushing out from the rocks, heated by the still bubbling geothermal activity below.
As the air temperature plummets towards minus 10 degrees, in the water it's balmy and people are singing, "Let it Snow, let it snow, let it snow". They'd get their wish.
Day 2: the final challenge
A scorched earth blast back to the south coast close to the town of Vik and then a right turn up, up and away.
Myrdalsjokull glacier awaits.
And once again the Discovery is not found wanting. Slow and easy, gentle with the power and the car effortlessly pulls itself up the ice sheet until we're on top of a crest in the river of ice, sipping soup and laughing at the simplicity of it all.
It's the beauty and the curse of the car and perhaps of Iceland itself. This seems simple. The Discovery aids you so casually, that a false sense of security is inevitable.
Any idiot can offroad and that idiot is me. How easy it would be then to get into difficulty in the belief that the Discovery can handle anything.
Two days after the expedition, I'm back in Iceland, an Iceland in the grip of a howling blizzard. The following day, the roads are impenetrable, the snow a foot-thick blanket across the entire island.
Internal flights are off, the roads treacherous. Attempting a drive connecting Pingvellir to Laugarvatn in a well-paved area of the country, in a more modest two-wheel driver car, I'm stopped by a man in a super jeep, the size of a small building.
"Don't bother," he sighs as I gaze hopefully at a snowdrift blocking the road. "There's 10 or 15 more after that, you'll be all day getting through".
I know that if I had the Discovery I'd make it. Maybe. Then again, maybe Iceland would bite back. It's that kind of place.
Unpredictable, wild, fickle. And that's so very attractive.