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.