Shetland - Day 3

Woke to a heavy gray overcast, with tiny slices of blue poking through. I was certain this would be a typical Scottish day, but no! By the time we’d finished with an early breakfast, the breeze had blown most of the clouds away. The day continued to clear until it was unreserved sun once again. Huzzah!

One of the many beaches on Unst

After driving across Mainland Shetland for about a half hour, we drove onto the first of two ferries that would take us to our destination: Unst, the furthest northern point in the UK.

A large, heavily bearded, flame-haired guy, whom Carolyn thought was a woman (?) came up to the car for the fare. Note from Carolyn: In my defense I only saw the long blonde hair first - the beard came later <g>

We didn’t know how much it cost, so I handed him a twenty. He made a face and uttered a string of words that I heard as pure gibberish, but Carolyn heard as asking for five more pounds. 

I handed a fiver over and he frowned, then asked his question again. I still understood not a word, but Carolyn thought he was asking for a pen. She dug through her purse, looking for one, while he gave me back the fiver and asked his question a third time, speaking more slowly. 

Carolyn and I just stared at each other for a moment, then she took about ten pounds worth of coins out of her pocket and stuck her hand toward him. He carefully removed ten pence, gave us a one pound coin in change and then shuffled off. I assume, in retrospect, that he was merely asking for ten p, but that’s still a guess. 

I felt like such a jerk to have been so unable to understand our shared language, but then I started to laugh. We’d been treating the poor guy like he was a baby speaking his first words, encouraging him, but having to wildly guess his meaning. I assume he gets that often from Americans, or maybe I just don’t have the ear for pronunciation variation. Whatever it was, I hope he couldn’t hear me howling with laughter.

The first ferry ride was pretty quick, taking us to the island of Yell. Then we had to cross that island to get to the next ferry. It was 17 miles, and we had 25 minutes. We made it, but only because the deck hand saw us coming down the hill and waited. This was a small ship, holding about ten cars but it was free - apparently the first ferry fare included this one too.

Our guide, Josh, met us at the dock. He was a pretty young guy, English, who works as a naturalist, a photographer, a videographer, and a guide. He’s only in Unst during the summer, working in Norfolk during the rest of the year, doing the same jobs.

We were on the island for six hours, and saw pretty much every highlight. Only around six hundred people live on the island, with many times that number of sheep. But they have Shetland ponies galore.

They have two grammar schools, which seemed rather wasteful, given they were less than two miles apart and there are only twelve students. But they also have two community recreation centers, each with a sizable indoor swimming pool. 

Josh guesses that around twenty people use the pools, which were paid for by a hunk of money the islands received from the oil companies who operate rigs in their waters. I suppose there’s nothing more certain than politicians spending every dime that comes in!

We drove a lot, pulling into every possibly interesting nook. Josh was very good company, knowing every bird, plant and animal we saw. He’s a trained naturalist, and works for the BBC whenever they need anything captured in Shetland. 

In two weeks, he’s going to work on one of my all-time favorite programs, “Springwatch,” in which cameras follow spring around Great Britain for three weeks. I was impressed!

We stopped at a small museum that showcased traditional Shetland boats that plied the waters for herring in the nineteenth century. I can’t think of what would convince anyone to voluntarily work one of those twenty foot row boats for days at a time, but their other options must have been worse. 

We spent a little time at the Keen of Hamar, a national nature reserve. It was a strange spot, just 75 acres, of sub-arctic desert. It was a long strip of bare land, pretty lunar in character. It contains some ultra-rare tiny plants, but you nearly have to get on your hands and knees to see them!

It is an actual line of demarkation between the normal land and the sub-artic

After our desert trek, we went to a replica of a Viking longship. It was created to sail from Norway to the US, but ran into some trouble near Unst and was abandoned. I’m not sure how they got the money to repair it and display it properly,  but they also had the funds to build a replica longhouse.

The building was really cool, very well built. It wouldn’t have been terribly comfortable, but it was a very big improvement over what the locals were living in. Of course, the Vikings had killed most of the locals, so that was a moot point.

We spent a little time watching the sea to try and spot otters again, but struck out.

After bidding a fond farewell to Josh, we headed for home, not insulting any deck hands this time.

We stopped at Frankie’s Fish and Chips in Brae, and had an awesome piece of haddock. Actually, every single thing was near perfect, from the chips to the mushy peas to the tartar sauce, all house made.

It’s now ten o’clock and still bright enough to play a round of golf. We’ve been wanting to go out and watch the sunset, but we can’t stay up late enough!

We’re off to the Orkney Islands tomorrow, hoping for as smooth a sail as we had on the way in. Fingers crossed!

SXM & CDN