Wednesday. A day to recover and my last day on Shetland

Wednesday was a day or recovery, and Steve and I visited the Shetland museum as Alison had to work for a couple of hours.

We also visited Scalloway a port town and the original capital of Shetland. It is a pleasant place with a Nautical Training Center with an excellent reputation in Europe, and also a memorial for “The Shetland Bus” Nothing to do with the Unst bus stop, but the operation during WW2 to move people, arms and munitions in to and out of Norway. Forty four brave Norwegians gave their lives in this operation that lasted several years. The memorial contains 44 different rocks, one from each of the towns or villages where those that were killed hailed from. It is very low key, as was the operation and I believe a very fitting tribute. It has many visitors and there was a Norse flag flying on the memorial on the day of our visit.
I made a quick visit to Tingwall where all the inter island flights leave from. They use a Britten Normon Islander and some of the sectors are as lttle as 10 minutes.
I also saw a Cat Excavator at the airport so took a quick pic of it too for the gearheads!

The other pic I have been meaning to post is the one warning of otters crossing the road. Much to our dissapointment we did not see any but Alison says that she sees them playing on the shoreline right outside her office quite frequently.

We spent the evening (my last) having dinner with some of Alison’s neighbors and Naomi who I talked about in the Unst bus post. We had Haggis with “neeps and tatties” (Turnips and potatoes for the uninitiated) It is a traditional Scottish dinner, and one where you do not inquire deeply as to the content particularly of the haggis!. The neighbors Pete and Kate were “from South” but have lived in Shetland for 25 years and clearly love it. We had some great discussions about traditional music and the Shetland Folk Festival in late April














Bright and early Thursday morning (well early anyway) Steve drove me to Lerwick to catch the 6am bus down to Sumburgh airport about 30 miles south of Lerwick. It had snowed overnight and there were significant snow flurries still as I boarded the bus.

An uneventful flight to London followed via Kirkwall in Orkney and a plane change in Inverness.

Up Helly Aa

Up Helly Aa. Tuesday


We went to the music on Monday night, after a delicious meal at The Ghurka Kitchen. Both were really good.

There were about 12 bands and each band played 2-3 sets of tunes. One of the bands was lead by a (maybe) 12-year-old accordion player who was very good. A keen observer (such as me) would notice that several of the individual performers showed up in multiple bands. One was a lady who is normally the receptionist at the clinic where Alison works, who is an accomplished fiddle player and very cute to boot.

There was also a larger lady who looked out of place with her hair all done up and lots of bling. She played fiddle and then sang a French song, after telling us a story related to her reputation for bling. Very funny. She had a fantastic voice and sounded like a larger version of Edith Piaf.

So all sorts of surprises but a very good evening was had by all.

Tuesday saw the start of Up Helly Aa proper.

It is difficult to describe the event, but I will try.

There are a number of “Squads” consisting of about 15 – 20 men of various ages, some as young as 12 or so and each squad decide on a theme for their squad for the year. Squad members are known at Jarls. You have to be a Shetland resident for a minimum of 5 years to be invited on to a squad, and the Lerwick Up Helly Aa is still all male, although the squads and Up Helly Aa events on the other islands have women in the squads also. There is increasing pressure for Lerwick to change of course

An elite squad supervised by the Guizer Jarl (the overall head of the event) constructs over the winter a replica of a Viking Longboat. Both the construction of the longboat and the themes for the other squads are closely guarded secrets and so the morning parade is the first opportunity for everyone to see the designs. This year’s Guizer Jarl has had his father and Grandfather as Guizer Jarls in past years. Clearly it is an honor to be elected.

It is quite a sight to see about 900 men all dressed up in a variety of costumes, from Vikings to Penguins or leprechauns, and watch them parade through this small town.

All the school kids are out and pretty much anybody who is in town.

The squads then disperse until the evening with some making tours of the local schools and also the senior homes and care facilities, so everyone gets a chance to join in. There is also a junior squad who has their own parade earlier in the evening. Their ship is not burned, nor do they carry lighted torches ad the adults do.

The main event starts at 7.30 prompt with a “maroon” , which is a red flare being shot in the air to signal the lighting of the torches. The torches are about 3 ft long, and are infused with something flammable. Suddenly the shy takes on this orange hue as the torches are lit and in a few minutes the first of the procession comes in to view. There are a total of about 900 Jarls that parade and they follow the Viking Longboat that has been lovingly built over the past 3 months or so. It is paraded around a fairly small number of streets before being placed in a park where all the Jarls gather and eventually march around the longboat in concentric circles singing about 3 different songs in order. Eventually there is a second maroon and that is the signal to throw the lighted torches on to the ship, and it begins to burn. The parade has taken about 50 minutes and the ship is engulfed in just a couple of minutes. Remarkably nobody catches fire or is hurt in any way, and the event has an excellent safety record. I am sure that not all of the Jarls are entirely sober at this point.

This is the end of the public event. We were very lucky to have been invited to view from someone’s front yard that is very close to the burn site, and on this occasion is upwind of the burning, so we had an excellent view of the whole event.

There are a number (11 or 12 I think) of “halls” that are private parties held in various community halls and one has to be invited to these. We were, and we attended South Hall. Each of the squads puts together and practices some sort of skit that they then perform in all of the halls until they are done. This can take until 7am the next day. Fortunatly the Wednesday is a public holiday. Just as well as nobody would show up for work anyway, or indeed be in a fit condition to work.

We did not stay for the whole thing, but saw several skits including a Shetland rendering of Lord of the Dance, and a skit based on Bollywood style dancing. All this from Shetland men, who are generally built short and round as a defense against strong winds. It is also a strange contrast as these are not generally extroverts, but their inhibitions are absent maybe just for that one evening.

As well as the skits there is lots of dancing, and there are small kids and grannies all dancing away and having a great time. Each hall has a Scottish Dance band and there are some traditional dances in between the skits and food is also served and is part of the package. You are not allowed to have alcoholic drinks in the dance hall but there is a side room where drinking is allowed. I was impressed by how everyone danced. There were teenage girls all dressed up to get the boys attention and younger kids who were taking it all in and joining in the dances. In many respects it was a reminder of school dances with girls clustered together and boys daring each other to ask the girls for a dance. I did not see anyone refusing a dance.

I had a really good time and it was first class people watching for sure. Who knows I may be back next year.

Unst Sunday

Sunday was a nice day for January in Shetland in that it is not raining. We decided to hike to Muckle Flugga today and had decided to try to do this way back when we planned the trip. It all depended on the weather.

We left around 10 and met up with Delano and Davy who showed us the house where the lighthouse keepers lived when the Muckle Flugga lighthouse was manned. Today it is automatic as are all of the many lighthouses around the coast of the UK.

There were six families, each with their own accommodation who lived in the housing complex and Davy and Delano stayed in one of them and showed us the house. It was remarkably spacious.

There were two teams of three keepers who rotated. We debated how long the stints were, and I believe that because the lighthouse was close the stints were shorter like maybe 7 days at a stretch. All was dependent on the weather and the ability to get on and off the rock.

The other incredible thing was how they ever built the lighthouse in the first place. It is stuck on the top of a rock, maybe a hundred and fifty feet up. Davy said they built a sort of funicular railway to winch (manually) supplies up to the top to build the lighthouse.

The hike was across a combination of peat bog, and being a National Park there was a walkway that kept you off the peat and helped keep your feet dry. This worked for about half of the hike, and after that there were a series of posts in the ground that showed the general direction. I would not have liked to do the hike in poor visibility as the posts were about 100 yards apart, and lets say that they blended with the landscape very successfully as they were difficult to see.

It was about 1.5 hours out to the end of the peninsular by the coastal route and it was only in the very last part that we got a view of “The Flugga”. We came back by the (slightly) more direct route in an hour or so. It was cold and windy but the exercise kept us warm. Again I was grateful for the hat that Jen made for me.
The last picture is of the Saxa Vore Early Warning Radar Station that I mentioned in an earlier post. It is across the Spound from Muckle Flugga and now is a remote station but used to be a manned RAF facility until the early 2000s

The Famous Unst Bus shelter.

One of the other highlights of any visit to Unst is to see the partly famous “Unst Bus Shelter”

Unst is a windy place and the Islands council provides an “on demand” bus service and limited scheduled service. This also doubles up as the school bus. One winter several years ago the bus shelter near Balta Sound was blown away in a gale, and not replaced until a small schoolboy named Bobby wrote to the council to ask for a replacement. The council obliged and Bobby was so happy that he and some of the other kids decorated the inside of the shelter as thanks and to show their appreciation. Not sure how long ago this was, but several years.

It has become progressively better known and features a Visitor book and the décor is changed every year and there is a roster of people who visit the site daily to keep it tidy and monitor the content of the comments in the Visitor book.

I did not know the detail of this until last evening (Wednesday) several days after our visit. This was because Alison had a visitor at her house. Naomi is a Doctor on Yell but lives on Unst and is also a bassoon player who is taking lessons in Lerwick to improve her skills. She (as it turns out) is also one of the bus shelter keepers, so we were treated to insider stories on the history and how it all works.
Google Earth has several images of former styles. Go to Google Earth and type in Baltasound and you can see them and the afore mentioned airport

There was another bus shelter at the end of the road to our cottage but it only featured two garden chairs no doubt donated by local bus users.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Shetlanders have made good use of the oil and gas revenues, and one cannot help but reflect how harsh life could have been without it, and the need to plan for the day when those revenues are no longer available.

There are proposals for some large wind farms, and there is significant local opposition to the proposals based on the carbon cost of the construction. No doubt the concerns are genuine, but I have to wonder if the same people actually have any alternate proposals, or if their preference is just to complain without offering solutions. You can go all over the world and the basic issues appear to be the same!

Unst ... More

Unst Saturday Second post.


Unst is about 15 miles long and is the most northerly inhabited island in the archipelago. There are about 600 residents with a couple of small communities and then greater metropolitan Baltasound!. While Baltasound is the largest community, it can probably rustle up 250 inhabitants, and is a shadow of it’s former self when the herring industry was at it’s height. At that time there were pickling, salting and smoking factories and many more people in the late 1800s. The sound is well protected by Balta island and has a small airstrip for emergency medical evacuations, but does not have the inter-island air service because of the ferries and the reliability of that service. We looked at the airstrip and I had expected a gravel runway but it is concrete with an apron and a hangar. Looks about 2500 ft long with runway lights and VASI lights for you pilot folks.

Our cottage is on Westbay and within 100 feet of the sea. Not exactly the white sands of the Caribbean.

It is about 450 square feet total with two bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen/living room and bathroom downstairs. So tiny but cozy and with a wonderful view. We had a peat fire every night. You look out over the Bluemull Sound and in the distance is the very top of Yell, one of the other islands.

In May Bluemull Sound attracts a lot of whales. Orcas and Minkies as well as killer whales. The bad news is that they are attracted there to feed on recently born the seal pups.

The road ends about 200 ft from the house and you have to navigate a kind of causeway liberally scattered with sheep deposits, as are most things around here. I just noticed on Google Earth that there is a photo of “sheep eating seaweed”. This is immediately outside the cottage we stayed at.

Sorry for the delay. Unst Part Deux

Unst Saturday


The only ferry that you are charged for is the Toft to yell ferry and then only in one direction. All the others are free or included in the fare that you pay initially. For the car and three people the fare was twelve pounds or about twenty dollars.

The Shetland government generates a lot of revenue from the fees and taxes on oil and gas, and typically runs a surplus that will be paying subsidies for many of the services islanders receive. This is similar to Alaska in many respects.

There is of course much debate on the future and what happens when, inevitably the oil and gas revenues decline or stop all together.

There is much debate about wind farms and the carbon cost of actually building them, as well as the impact on wildlife, and the environment in general.

As you can tell I am fascinated by the whole lifestyle and what motivates people. It would be easy to make the assumption that all islanders are the same in that respect. One of the topics yesterday was the differences between Shetlanders and Orkadians (from Orkney, the islands to the southwest of here and closer to Scotland) The difference was described as follows. Shetlanders are fishermen with a croft (small farm) and Orkadians are Crofters (farmers) with a fishing boat. I have no way to verify but this would seem to be accurate.

Shetland is also much more influenced by its Viking or Scandinavian heritage. This is apparent in the names of the people and the places and word root origins.

I was gently corrected yesterday about the spelling of the larger houses on Shetland. The correct word is “Haa” and I called them Haars. A Haar is a sea mist! Voe is another word that is in common use meaning a small bay or harbor. Hamnavoe is the name of two or three places on Shetland and also the name of one of the three big ferries that run to Orkney and Shetland.

Saturday. Breakfast and off to Unst

On Saturday morning we were invited to breakfast at some friends. Steve knew Andrew from University, and from a three week stint covering for another doctor in Lerwick about 14 years ago.
Andrew is now a part time General Practitioner in Walls on the western mainland of Shetland and they have a beautiful home located on a bay looking south. It was originally a croft house that they used for weekends and vacations. There was no running water and no electricity. It is at the end of a gravel road about 3 miles from Walls. Over 17 years they have improved and added to the house (including getting water from the village, and electricity. Andrew has shown his carpentry skills and built most of the shelving and doors from materials recycled from abandoned churches and other buildings locally.
Andrew will be a participant in one of the squads at Up Helly A on Tuesday. It is an honor to be invited to a squad and you would have to be a permanent Shetland resident for at least five years to be considered. We have no idea what his squad’s costume is this year as it is a closely guarded secret. Last year they were penguins, which may give you some indication of what to expect!
Andrew is a quiet almost shy person so the contrast is intriguing.
Susan is a Community Nurse and with a combination of their professions and the small population they are well known and well liked in the community.
One thing we discussed was Shetlanders approach to non native born residents.
We concluded that they were initially curious as to your background and pretty straightforward about asking, but once that was done you were left alone to follow your own life and rarely criticized. In other words what you do is your business and within bounds they were, and are perfectly happy for you to live your life without someone trying to tell you how to live it. I find that delightful and refreshing.
All this fun and good food meant that we were late leaving for our drive to Unst, but we caught the two o clock ferry from Toft on the mainland to Yell, the next island north. I was surprised that the ferry was both bigger and much fancier than I had imagined and much fancier than the one we took in Ireland across to Bere Island.
While waiting in the line (queue) to drive on to the ferry we met a patient of Alison’s Delano Jennings, and his friend Davy Hamar who were also driving up to Unst. Davy is a sea captain and now runs the tourist boat out to Muckle Flugga in the summers. It is known locally as “The Flugga”. More about The Flugga in a later post. We are planning to hike there tomorrow.
Delano is a big guy with a big gray beard (see photos). He was born in the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic, roughly as far south as we are north (sixty degrees) He left there before the war with Argentina in 1982 and has lived on Shetland since then. We shared some hot chocolate (from a machine) during the passage in a very comfortable lounge.
After docking we headed across the island of Yell to the next ferry that gets us on to Unst. A quick crossing to Unst and then only about 15 minutes to the house we are staying at in Westbay. More about that in a separate post. Basic house and house approach pictures shown, but more detail to come.
Enjoy

Friday..More

On the road to Vementry this afternoon we passed the settlement of Twatt. Not wishing to pass up an opportunity we stopped by the sign and took four photos. Two of Steve Grey hat) and two of me, (in my green Jen special hat).

We invite comments and votes on who is the best Pratt in a Hat at Twatt? (Ask any Brit for a translation). Pathetic I know for a couple of guys who should know better. Oh well. It is who we are.  I am sideways and Steve is correctly oriented!!

My apologies that some images are sideways. I am still trying to figure out how to cure this, with no success so far 

Friday. Roaming on Shetland mainland

Sorry for the long delay in the posts but we have been in remote places without access to the internet, I will get caught up with a few posts in the next couple of days. I am also going to post a link to Snapfish for additional photos should you be interested.

It blew again all last night and this morning so far. As I said in the “quick post” all the ferry service has been cancelled for the next 3 days so from the point of view

of being here for Up Helly A. we made a good choice. It remains to be seen if some of the musicians who were scheduled actually make it.

Steve and I braved the elements and went for a drive to Sandness which is about as far west as you can go on the mainland. It consists of maybe 20 houses, all spread out, a village hall, Post Office/store and a factory that knits woolen products, Jamison Woolens.

There was a sign that visitors were welcome and we went in. They said we were welcome to “wander around and ask anyone we saw any questions. Also “Please do not touch anything that looks dangerous or is moving”. That appeared to be the extent of the Safety Briefing! Needless to say we complied. They make scarves, sweaters and other articles in traditional weaves. We saw several boxes marked for “Simply Shetland” a store in Washington state as well as other destinations like Tokyo. It looks like they employ about 10-12 people and most of the machinery was likely recycled from other mills that have closed. Some machines seemed to run on punch card readers rather than computer controlled.

We drove around on mostly single lane roads. The way it works is that there are designated “Passing Places” about 100 yards apart on more frequently traveled roads and maybe 300 yards on less traveled roads. Who ever is nearest the passing place pulls over and the car coming the other way passes with a customary wave, or at night a toot on the horn. All very courteous and civilized!

The roads are really in excellent shape all across the islands and places I have been to so far. The edges are marked in white (on the single lane roads there is no centerline!) and there are posts on the sides on curves and low places to mark the road in the snow.

Steve is keen to see some otters, and we hope we can achieve this on Unst over the weekend.

We saw some seals today in one of the harbors and counted nine in one place. The best photo I got is pathetic and only shows three. They are curious creatures and stick their heads up and then dive and come up in a slightly different location, having told their mates that there is something of interest on an otherwise (otterwise?) dull boring day in the life of a seal!

We are off out this evening to Lerwick for dinner at an Indian restaurant. I do not know the name but Alison took care of the owner’s wife recently. We are also going to the “Ghurka Kitchen” on Monday I think. It is Nepalese and Indian food. Who would have thought it in Shetland .

  

Shetland. First day. It's a windy place!!

We survived!. Actually other than some rocking and rolling the whole journey was a non-event. Just as I like it. There are a couple of photos of the ferry at dock and one of Rhino checking out the scene from our cabin (comfy) as well as the cabin itself.
We arrived in Lerwick on time at 7.30 this morning, and after some initial confusion about the rental car we are now established at Alison’s house, which looks out on the sound about 10 miles out of Lerwick. It is north of 60 degrees here and so in the winter the days are really short. It was still dark at 8am and will be dark again before 4pm. To put it in perspective Raleigh is about 32 North and the US/Canadian border generally follows the 50 deg. north parallel.
The house (photo included as well as several of the surrounding area) is a typical “Haar” which is the larger style of traditional Shetland house with three dormer windows on the second floor. The other typical style is a simple croft house and I will get photos of both styles posted as soon as I can.
Steve warned me that the more prevalent style of “architecture” on Shetland is pebbledash houses that have no architectural value at all. Lerwick and the surrounding area is full of them and it is such a pity. We talked with a Shetland resident and the issues that relate to renovating old crofts are very complex and relate to people leaving in the 1800s but still having the right to the land. You could potentially renovate a croft and then someone comes along and claims the property as theirs at a later date. Not a good plan
The general landscape is stark with VERY few trees on any of the islands and lots of low hills with fairly poor grassland and sheep….lots of sheep. There are about 22,000 residents on Shetland and about 350,000 sheep!
The sun shone for a few minutes this morning, but it has clouded up again now and the wind has picked up. The forecast for tomorrow and Saturday is for winds between 35 and 40 knots (40-45 mph) and temperatures in the low 40s. Check out that wind-chill factor!
There are a variety of small local ferries that connect the islands. Some are charged for and some are free. There are also subsidies for the islanders for airfares and ferry fares to the mainland. Not so for visitors! We pay full price.
There is also local air service in a Britten Norman Islander (twin engine 7 seater) from the local Tingwall airstrip out to some of the islands. Sector times can be as little as 10 minutes but by car and or ferry can be several hours.
There is a service in Orkney (next set of islands down) from Westray to Papa Westray where the scheduled flight time is 2 minutes. That is the shortest scheduled flight in the world. I plan to do it some day. I will take a local flight here if I get the opportunity also.

Steve has been telling me about a local piece of history called “The Shetland Bus”. It was based out of a house called “Kergord” (the photo of the house with a tree in front) and operated during WW2. It was basically a covert way to land arms and munitions into Norway, and land agents and extract same as well as refugees. The naval part of the operation was out of Scalloway, which does not seem to make sense as it is on the west side and would have involved sailing around the bottom or the top of the mainland. Guess it fooled the enemy as the whole operation continued throughout the war!!.
When we are on Unst over the weekend we will visit the very north of the island where one of the early warning radar installations from the Cold War era was located. It was designed to give early warning of any invasion or attack from Russia. Those were the days. No ICBMs and no Taliban or Al Quada blowing them selves up indiscriminately. Just bombs on military airplanes.