Did you know that Shetland used to be part of Norway? And that a lot of the Norse ways survived even after the islands became Scottish? Visiting the two castles is a good way of learning about the history of Shetland during the time of the Earls. This tale of two castles gives a brief outline of the history and helps you to plan your visit to the castles.
Shetland has two castles both of which date back to the time when the Isles were ruled by Earls. Even though both castles are in ruins, there’s enough left of each one to make them fun to explore.
I’ve been to them both several times now and each time I go back I feel surprised by how much of them there is left once you get inside. With both castles, but especially Scalloway Castle, I always get the feeling that they’re bigger on the inside. Now where have I heard that before?Continue reading “A Tale of Two Castles”
Puffins have got to be cutest birds ever. I can spend hours sitting and watching them.
For this week’s Friday Flickr I’ve decided to go with a theme rather than a place.
And for my first theme, I’ve chosen puffins.
Puffins have got to be the cutest birds. With their colourful beaks and soulful eyes, to say nothing of their clumsy gaits and comical crash landings, how can anyone not love a puffin?
The best place I’ve found to see puffins is Shetland. There are two huge colonies; one right at the bottom of the islands at Sumburgh and the other right at the top at Hermaness on Unst (my favourite island).
Sumburgh is the easiest to get to as it’s on the Shetland Mainland (main island) and is easily drivable from Lerwick. You can even get a bus if you don’t have a car. I say easiest to get to, but it still involves getting to Aberdeen and then a 12-14 hour ferry journey before you even get to Lerwick.
Unst is a little trickier (but so worth it), as from Lerwick you have to drive to the top of the Mainland, get a 20-30 minute ferry over to the island of Yell, drive for 30-40 minutes to the top of Yell, get another ferry for 10-15 minutes over to Unst, drive as far as you can to Hermaness at the top of Unst (half an hour or so), then walk across the boggy moorland for around an hour (dodging skua attacks) to get to the most northerly bit of coast in Britain.
Looking out from cliffs there are a couple of bits of rock that belong to Britain (Muckle Flugga and Out Stack), but that’s it. No more land. You’d have to keep going until you reached Antarctica before you hit land again.
Hermaness is well worth the effort of getting there. Not only do you get to see Muckle Flugga lighthouse (of Shipping Forecast fame), have the overwhelming sense of being on top of the world and sit among hundreds of puffins, but you get to experience a ginormous gannetry.
Puffins might be the cutest birds, but gannets are my all time favourites. They’re just so sleek and skillful as well as stunningly beautiful to look at.
The gannetry is a massive assault on the senses – the sheer number of birds, the sound, the smell – about the only sense not being assaulted is taste, though I’m sure that could be fixed just by breathing in through your mouth.
But back to puffins. Sit on the grass on the cliffs at either Sumburgh or Hermaness and you will have puffins pop up out of their burrows and crash land on the grass all around you.
They spend most of the year at sea and only come back to land when they breed. This means there’s quite a limited season to see them. They start arriving around April and have pretty much disappeared by early August.
I can sit for hours just watching them or snapping away trying to get the perfect photo. The photograph I really want to take is of a puffin with a mouth full of sandeels, but so far I’ve never managed this.
So I have a reason to keep going back. Not that I need one.
Click on the image below to access the Flickr album.
It was a grey and gloomy day in Unst. But I still liked it.
Unst is my favourite island. I couldn’t go to Shetland without a trip up to the very top of the British Isles. I woke up at lunchtime on the day after Up Helly Aa (or should that be four hours after Up Helly Aa?) to find everything covered in white including a thick layer over the windscreen. I took a few photos – Lerwick looked so pretty in the snow – and then headed slowly up the winding road out of Lerwick on my way to Unst.
The further north I got the less snow there was and the clearer the roads were. When I drove off the ferry in Yell I headed to the right on the small road that leads round to Burravoe Pier where there’s a lovely little set-up for campers and boaters. A small building, with an old lifeboat for a roof, houses very sleek kitchen, laundry and shower facilities. I had a lovely hot shower, heated my evening meal up in the microwave and filled my flask with hot water. There’s an honesty box for payment but no recommended price list for showers and kitchen use. As it’s £1.60 to shower at the leisure centres, I chucked a couple of quid in figuring the extra 40p would cover my boiling of the kettle and three minute use of the microwave.
Thus cleaned and fed I continued on the narrow road up the east coast of Yell. It was dark and the snow had now reached the north. I drove very slowly through a blizzard (at least it seemed like that in my headlights) until I reached the top of the island and the ferry to Unst. There is a wider road further west, but I didn’t want to backtrack to get to it. I saw nothing on the drive up apart from a few hardy sheep. I had to be careful of them as they blended into the blizzard, their wool providing the perfect camouflage. I was the only person on the ferry to Unst. As it was dark and there are toilet facilities at the pier, I parked up and spent the night there. Next morning it was a bit rainy, a bit gloomy, but not snowy. I drove off to do a quick visit to some of my favourite places. I had thought about doing a short walk, but the peat bog which can be soggy-going to walk on at the best times, looked completely sodden. Instead I drove around taking pics and sat staring at the grey skies and grey seas from the comfort of my driver’s seat. I’d wanted to come up here to see if I liked it as much in winter as in summer as part of me would really like to live here at some point. Although it’s bleak and I realised it would be difficult to get any good walking done in winter, I still liked it. I sat in the self-service cafe in the Skibhoul bakery for lunch and found two other tourists in there who also had a campervan. Theirs was a proper motorhome type, so I felt I retained my self-imposed title of the craziest person in Shetland for sleeping in the back of a van in the middle of the North Atlantic winter.
Self service really means self service
In the evening I headed back to the pier to catch the ferry back to Yell and did my journey (including the shower stop) in reverse arriving back in Lerwick later that evening. Here are some pics showing Unst in winter …
The hostel in Uyeasound is a wonderful place in summer. Full of interesting people. And it has a large well-equipped kitchen and a lovely conservatory in which many a late evening has been spent drinking Valhalla beer, chatting and watching the sun finally go down and darkness spread across the water. It’s closed in winter and looks really forlorn. And it’s strange not see my little green tent perched on the lawn.
Views of the rocky beach in front of the hostel
Muness Castle was built around 1598 for Laurence Bruce who was half-brother to Robert Stewart, first Earl of Orkney. It burnt down in 1627, supposedly after being attacked by French raiders. Renovations were made, but by the late 1600s it was uninhabited. The Dutch East India Company rented it in 1713 and used it as a storage facility for salvaged cargo from a nearby wreck. It has been completely uninhabited and left to ruin since 1750. It’s now owned and maintained by Historic Scotland. Entry is free and the castle is always open and unmanned. Torches are provided at the entrance. The old cottage with stone walls is next to the castle.
Bobby’s bus shelter is named after the little boy Bobby Macauley, who at the age of six got fed up waiting for the school bus in a dishevelled and draughty bus shelter and wrote to the council to ask for a new one. The council duly obliged and Bobby got his new bus shelter. Soon, various items of furniture and ornamentation appeared. No-one knows who started it, but the bus shelter soon gained curtains, a sofa (actually an old bus seat) and a TV. Over time, the decorating of Bobby’s bus shelter became more formalised and there is now an ‘executive committee’ (as far as I can find out it’s currently his mum) who decides on a theme each year and furnishes it accordingly. The themes are often topical such as an African theme the year Bobby (no longer a little boy) moved to Swaziland, or a World Cup or Queen’s Jubilee theme. I’m assuming the theme I’ve just seen is still last year’s and is in honour of Nelson Mandela as he died at the end of the previous year. I’m quite a fan of Nelson Mandela and so was pleased to see him commemorated in this way at what is just about the opposite end of the planet from South Africa.
Probably the world’s most photographed bus shelter
These photos were taken at Norwick beach – one of my favourite beaches in Unst. Even on a grey, miserable day I could have stared at it for hours. Imagine living in the white house at the end of the bay and having this view all the time? The little ‘island’ is the Isle o May (I’ve never managed to find out why it’s called that).
Over on the west side of the island is Westing beach and I finished my day here. It was starting to rain huge icy drops and the wind was spattering them over my camera lens. After a last longing look I headed for the ferry pleased to feel I could happily survive a winter here.
Finding inspiration in a chocolate factory and a brewery.
When I’m at school, I get so overwhelmed with the amount of things I need to do and the amount of my time that is taken up, and I’m so ‘in the moment’, life outside of school seemingly ceases to exist and all the plans, ideas and hopes I have come to a standstill. As soon as I take time off, get away, give myself chance to meet interesting people (actually, ordinary people like myself except they have done something with their dreams, instead of just filing them away) and before I know it, I’m filled with inspiration and ideas are buzzing inside my head and what’s even better, they all seem feasible.
Foord’s Chocolate Factory
Today I’ve had two inspiration boosts. Firstly, I visited Foord’s Chocolate Factory on Unst. This in itself is inspiring – an English couple started a connoisseur chocolate factory in buildings which are part of the old Saxa Vord complex. (Saxa Vord was built as an RAF base in the days of the cold war.) Not content with merely making delicious chocolates, they have made the most of both their product and their location by making themselves very attractive to tourists. It’s possible to wander down the corridor in the factory observing the chocolate making as it happens. There is a room with a display on the history and geography of chocolate and the chocolate making process. Another room taps into the historic associations of their location and has a big display on the RAF connections including uniforms and lots of photographs. At the front of the factory is a cafe selling not only chocolate experiences, but also a range of savoury food. On an island with not many places to grab lunch (the hotel has a restaurant and two of the shops have cafe areas where you can get a cup of instant coffee, a bowl of soup or heat up a pie from the pie counter), and since the Northern Lights Cafe and Bistro closed down (please, somebody buy it and re-open it in exactly the way it was before), having a cafe here is a good way of attracting extra business.
Chocolate Experience
But this wasn’t the main source of my first bout of inspiration today. No. At the back of the factory is a room where they sell locally made crafts. Two years ago, on the day I was leaving Unst, I was at the Skibhoul shop and bakery stocking up on their wonderful, thick, chilli-flavoured oatcakes (special ingredient: sea water) and I spotted an old, but very well kept Morris Minor in the car park. I have a thing for Morris Minors having grown up with one. If I was in the position of being able to own a fleet of cars, and if I had the knowledge, time and ability to ‘do up’ and maintain old cars, I would definitely have one. Along with an old Landrover Defender and an ancient VW combi. But I’m not and I don’t. But that just means I’m even more fascinated when I see other people with them. As I left the shop a lady was unpacking her shopping into the Morris Minor. Of course I went over to admire her car and, as happens in places like Unst, we ended up chatting for quite a while.
Heather had recently moved to Unst from Nottingham having taken early retirement from her teaching job. She seemed disillusioned with the way teaching and schools in general were going, and so with redundancies and early retirements on offer, she jumped. Along with her husband, she’d bought a house in Westing on the west side of the island called ‘Da Peerie Haa’ – Shetlandic for ‘the small manor house’. When I met her she was about to leave on a long drive in her Morris Minor to the Isle of Wight. She was doing it for charity and referred to it as ‘Westing to Wight’ – sounds much better than John O’Groats to Land’s End. Being unsure as to whether or not the Morris Minor would make actually make it, her husband was driving a campervan as a back up vehicle. Although I read something about the trip in the Shetland Times that week, I never found out the end of the story. I don’t know if the Morris Minor made it or how the journey was.
Heather had told me to pop in next time I was in Unst, so I decided to take her at her word as I really wanted to know how the story ended. I drove out to her house yesterday but no-one seemed to be about and there was no sign of the Morris Minor. Was this a bad sign? Did it mean that the Morris Minor hadn’t made it and was now relegated to life on a scrap heap? Or did it mean that the dream retirement on Unst wasn’t so dreamy after all and they’d returned to the mainland (as in mainland UK and not mainland Shetland)? The lady in Skibhoul told me she was still living on the island though she didn’t know if she was at this moment in time. She also didn’t remember if the Morris Minor had made it to the Isle of Wight.
Today, in the craft room at the Foord’s Chocolate Factory, I looked round the handmade scarves, hats, gloves and so on, and was just about to leave when I spotted an interesting stand half hidden behind the door. The stand was displaying an array of colourful knitted bags, each one individual. The sign at the top said ‘Bags by Heather’ and there was a woodcut of her house which was labelled ‘Da Peerie Haa’. It had to be the same Heather, it had to be. I bought a very unusual bag for £10 and asked the man (Mr Foord?) if she was on the island at the moment. She’s not because she’s back in Nottingham for a wedding in which the Morris Minor is being used as a wedding car. So I know she’s still living here and I know the Morris Minor is still living here. I also know it made it to the Isle of Wight because Mr Foord told me so. What I don’t know is how the journey went. As she’s not due back until early August I’ll probably miss her (unless it’s very early August, as in tomorrow, aka August 1st).
So this was my first bout of inspiration today. She’s been living here for over two years, has started a little business and has completed her dream ‘expedition’.
Leaving the chocolate factory, I headed for the brewery (is this a dream island or what? Lightly inhabited, stunning views, amazing wildlife, fascinating history and geology, pretty much as isolated as you can get in the UK (apart from Foula and Fair Isle) and yet it has its own chocolate factory and its own brewery. And there’s talk of a distillery setting up too. Should it be renamed Paradise Island?).
The Valhalla Brewery, Shetland’s one and only, has moved since I was last here. Owner, Sonny Priest, has expanded from a barn outside his house into much bigger premises at Saxa Vord. He makes six beers and I always buy a selection to take home. I called in on the off-chance that he would now take card payments (he never did before) and I could stock up now to save coming back later. He doesn’t. But I was just in time to go on a tour (£4.50 including a bottle of beer of your choice at the end). It was interesting to see the workings and hear how the six beers are made with different combinations of the various grains. But his own story of how he came to own a brewery is what provided me with my second bout of inspiration for the day.
He left school at 15 with no qualifications and trained as a joiner. After several years of joinery he went to sea for three years on a North Sea trawler. This was followed by a job at Baltasound Airport (a tiny strip of runway with a few sheep grazing on it and not much else) and in the attached firehouse. Redundancy led him to to wondering what to do next with his life. He toyed briefly with the idea of opening a launderette, but following a drinking session with some of his soon to be ex-workmates, he found himself promising to start a brewery in order to keep them drinking. This may have been a drunken comment but the seed (of barley presumably?) had been sown and it germinated and lo and behold, he found himself in 1997 setting up a brewery and hiring a master brewer as he had no idea about brewing himself.
I’m planning my hostel and planning a sandwich bar / coffee shop, and all these other things and I keep on planning and not doing, as I feel I’m not ready; I don’t know enough; I don’t have the right skills; I need more money; and excuse after excuse. Here’s a guy who didn’t have a clue about the business he was starting, but jumped in, did what he needed to do to get it up and running, and learnt what he needed to know as he went along. I am most definitely inspired by this. Now, I only have to keep hold of all this inspiration once I’m back at school and getting bogged down in marking, planning and bureaucracy.
Gannets, puffins, a lighthouse called Muckle Flugga, a chocolate factory and a brewery: just some of the reasons why Unst is my favourite island.
Sunday 14/8/11
The hostel at Uyeasound in Unst.
Unst is one of my favourite places in the world. You can’t get any further north in the UK. There are a couple of rocks further north (Muckle Flugga and Out Stack), but this is the last place that can actually be called a place. Last time I was here, I found it difficult to tear myself away and spent about half of my time on Shetland here. This time I’ve left it till last so I had something to look forward to and so I did get to see other places too.
I’ve been here a couple of days already. The first day was spent doing admin-y type things – finding internet access to book my train tickets for the Great Glen Way (GGW), sending emails, getting petrol, doing a stock-take of my food and working out what I needed to buy for the GGW, and so on.
Yesterday was really stormy. Force 7 winds and rain lashing down until the evening. No-one could really go anywhere, including all the canoeists who are up here for the weekend. We all sat around the hostel watching the waves crash against the shoreline and the tents flap madly in the wind. Once again my little Vango survived brilliantly. There was a similar storm when I was here last year and other people’s much more expensive tents were tearing and had poles snapping. Mine flaps away, but survives without the tiniest shred of a tear or hairline crack of a pole.
Calm after the storm.
This morning was beautiful. As predicted, the storm had blown itself out. After breakfast I drove out to Hermaness. This is a nature reserve at the end of the end of the UK. There is a car parking area and a small visitor centre with toilets. This area is known for its birds as well its dramatic views. Because of the birds visitors are requested to stay on the paths and not wander freely across the moorland tops. As it is very, very boggy it’s much easier to stay on the paths anyway.
I walked about 30 minutes uphill and then across moorland to the cliffs. Once at the cliffs most people head east to see the puffin colony and Muckle Flugga with its lighthouse. As I like to be a bit contrary I walked west. Just a few minutes to the west, where hardly anyone goes, is the most amazing gannetry (gannet colony). I discovered this last year and wanted to go back this year. The dark cliffs look white, they are that stuffed with gannets. The air is full of gannets; the sea is full of bobbing gannets. The noise, the smell, is just pure gannet. Most of my senses felt completely overwhelmed by it.
The gannetry at Hermaness
Only after having my fill of gannets did I walk east. I didn’t see any puffins this year, though I’d probably only just missed them. Last year, I was here a few days earlier and there were puffins everywhere. I’d sat for ages with puffins popping up out of the ground or zooming in to land all around me.
Hermaness with Muckle Flugga in the distance.
I walked further east along the cliffs until I was level with Muckle Flugga. I have to learn to kayak properly so I can actually get there. There were a dozen canoeists on the water today and I watched for a while to see if they would go to Muckle Flugga, but they just seemed to be sticking to the coast.
Leaving the cliffs I headed up and across the moors again on another path that joined with the original path to drop down to the car park.
I finished my day out by going to the chocolate factory for a deluxe experience. A hot chocolate with whipped cream, marshmallows and a chocolate lattice; three Abernathy biscuits partly dipped in dark, milk and white chocolate; two filled chocolates, one dark and one white; and three squares of solid milk, dark and white chocolate. How ideal is this island? It’s isolated, friendly, relaxing, has great wildlife and views AND has its own brewery and chocolate factory. Can you see why it’s one of my favourite places?
I’ve just been catching up on Alastair Humphreys’ blog and see he cycled the length of Shetland recently and finished up by camping at Hermaness on the north coast of Unst. Unst is the most northerly island in Britain (not counting 2 lumps of rock, one of which is Muckle Flugga).
I found myself there last summer – I actually should have been in Iran, but that’s a whole other story – and fulfilled (kind of) an ambition by seeing Muckle Flugga. I’ve always been fascinated with it ever since I first heard the name on the shipping forecast. It’s basically a rock with a now un-manned lighthouse on it. But it’s a far away rock with a funny sounding name and those are two things that always appeal to me. I liked it so much when I finally saw it that I ended up seeing it three times.
The first was when I walked along the Hermaness cliffs which are fascinating enough in themselves because of their huge gannet colony and puffins. Then I went on a boat trip around Muckle Flugga and got a close up view of it. On my last day in Unst I climbed up Saxa Vord which has a military radar station sat on its top.
I felt very intrepid as I ignored signs warning me of snow and ice. I felt very adventurous as I next ignored signs warning me that I would be arrested under the official secrets act if I went any further. I felt very heroic as I ignored signs at the top that warned me I would be irradiated if I got any closer. (I’d actually been told by locals that it was fine to ignore the signs and everyone does). I’d gone up partly because I wanted to have the experience of ignoring all those signs and partly because it has great views of Muckle Flugga. At the top I ran into the guard who goes up once a day to check on the place. He didn’t arrest me, just told me where to go to get the best views and advised me not to get too close to the radar bits that really do have radiation in them.
So I’ve seen plenty of Muckle Flugga and that should have been that ambition fulfilled. But at the hostel I met a few kayakers, two of whom had actually paddled out to the rock, landed and climbed up to the lighthouse. This is not allowed but, as I found with Saxa Vord, no-one seems to bother with things like ‘not being allowed’ in Unst. I was jealous and so decided that I have to learn to kayak so I can also land on Muckle Flugga. The sea is pretty rough so it’s not just a case of learning the basics and going for it – I also have to get good at it. But this is why I have learning to canoe/kayak on my list of things to do.
I’m going to go back to Shetland this summer after I have walked the Great Glen Way. I’ll go back to Unst and gaze at Muckle Flugga from afar again. As I’ve done nothing about learning to kayak this year that will be the most I can do. But one year I will definitely paddle to it, climb the steps and touch those lighthouse walls.
