Where to sleep on the Ring Road: towns with fuel and a supermarket

Sleep in a town that has both a fuel station and a supermarket, because on the Ring Road the two do not always travel together and the gaps between the towns that have both are long: 260 km from Vík to Höfn with no chain supermarket, 165 km from Egilsstaðir to Reykjahlíð with no town at all, 170 km from Blönduós to Borgarnes with fuel only at Staðarskáli. The seven-day ledger on this site sleeps at Vík, Höfn, Egilsstaðir, Reykjahlíð, Akureyri and Borgarnes, and the table below is the reason it does.

#The table

Anticlockwise from Reykjavík. Distances are Vegagerðin's distance tool (vegagerdin.is, read 1 November 2026), town centre to town centre on the main road; the Egilsstaðir–Reykjahlíð row is the Route 1 figure from the Hringvegurinn article the ledgers cite, because the tool's shortest route takes 22 km of gravel on Route 924 instead. Fuel is from the regional station lists on bensinverd.is on 1 November 2026, which the operators feed (N1's own list returned 403 that day; Orkan's loads only in a script). Supermarkets are from the chains' own store lists read the same day: Krónan, Bónus, Nettó, Kjörbúðin and Krambúðin.

The rows add to 1,341 km against Vegagerðin's 1,309.7 km for Route 1 itself (July 2026), because Höfn and some other towns sit a few kilometres off the road. Between the rows there is fuel that is not a town: Freysnes by Skaftafell and Fagurhólsmýri between Kirkjubæjarklaustur and Höfn; Skjöldólfsstaðir and Möðrudalur on the long east row; Fosshóll at Goðafoss; Baula and Hreðavatnsskáli north of Borgarnes.

#The gaps

Supermarket gaps, which decide where you buy the next two days' food: Vík to Höfn, 260 km, is the longest, and Kirkjubæjarklaustur in the middle of it has fuel and a roadhouse but no chain store on the lists. Egilsstaðir to Reykjahlíð, 165 km, has nothing of either kind in a town; Krambúðin at Reykjahlíð is the only store on the lake. Akureyri to Blönduós, 144 km, has fuel at Varmahlíð and no store until Kjörbúðin at Blönduós. Blönduós to Borgarnes, 170 km, has Staðarskáli and nothing else.

Fuel gaps are shorter, which is the point of listing the roadhouses: on this table the longest town-to-town runs without a listed pump are Höfn to Djúpivogur, 103 km round the fjords, and Akureyri to Varmahlíð, 94 km; on the east row Skjöldólfsstaðir and Möðrudalur break the 165 km, and this post has not measured the spacing between them. A 7.5 l/100 km car with a quarter tank clears any of the measured runs.

#Why the ledger sleeps where it does

Vík, 225 km from Keflavík, is the last town with fuel and a supermarket before the 260 km supermarket gap, and the ledger's Day 1 ends there for that reason as much as for Reynisfjara. Höfn is the end of the gap and the first chain store after Vík. Egilsstaðir is the largest town in the east and the last store before the 165 km of Jökuldalsheiði and Möðrudalsöræfi; the ledger says fill up before leaving, and the table says buy breakfast too. Reykjahlíð is where the gap ends and the lake loop starts, so the next day is short on purpose. Akureyri needs no argument. Borgarnes, 73 km from the city, keeps the last morning to an hour and a half and has two supermarkets and five fuel brands for the drive to the airport. The ten-day ledger (/journeys/iceland-ring-road-10-days-snaefellsnes) adds Stykkishólmur, which has Bónus and three fuel brands, and a second night at Egilsstaðir.

Beds are deliberately not a column. The ledgers price them as a band because every operator publishes its own rate and changes it by season, and a town with fuel and a store but no bed on the night you need it is a town you drive through; book the six sleep towns first and the rest of the plan follows.

#Two corrections for the next re-check

The ledgers' Day 2 notes say there is no station on Route 1 between Skaftafell and Höfn. The 1 November 2026 list has Orkan at Freysnes and N1 at Fagurhólsmýri, the second of them between Skaftafell and the lagoon. And the Höfn fuel stop page says Djúpivogur's fuel could not be verified: the same list carries N1 at Djúpivogur. Both notes will be changed; the advice to fill at Höfn in both directions stands.

#Sources

• Vegagerðin, distance tool "Vegalengdir", read 1 November 2026: https://www.vegagerdin.is/samgongukerfid/vegakerfid/vegir/vegalengdir
• Vegagerðin, the road network (Hringvegurinn 1,309.70 km, July 2026): https://www.vegagerdin.is/samgongukerfid/vegakerfid/vegir
• Hringvegurinn, Icelandic Wikipedia (Reykjahlíð–Egilsstaðir 165 km): https://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hringvegurinn
• bensinverd.is, regional station lists (Suðurland, Austurland, Norðurland, Vesturland), 1 November 2026: https://bensinverd.is/
• Krónan, store list: https://kronan.is/verslanir
• Bónus, store list: https://bonus.is/opnunartimar/
• Nettó, store list: https://www.netto.is/verslanir-og-opnunartimar
• Kjörbúðin, store list: https://www.kjorbudin.is/verslanir/
• Samkaup, Krambúðin locations: https://www.samkaup.is/verslanir/
• The seven-day Ring Road ledger on this site, checked 1 November 2026: /journeys/iceland-ring-road-7-days