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