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.