raven | Shetland

Our landlord wants to know what we're doing on Shetland. "Oh," I said, taken by surprise, "oh, we're here to look at the wildlife, I suppose."

"Good place for it," he said, and not a lot else; he is, on the whole, a chap of few words. The truthful answer is that I have no idea; for some reason, when

shimgray suggested it two weeks ago, instead of going to Ireland or even Iona (where I've never been, shamefully), it caught my imagination.

I went off the idea again five hours into the North Sea, having spent all the time at sea thus far with my nose in a bag, horse-like. To make things worse, the only seasickness pills on board were homeopathic. The boat skidded into Kirkwall around midnight, and most of the passengers departed in the direction of Orkney, taking with them my scope for people-watching, and everyone else on board lashed themselves down for the long night. I dozed off eventually and woke up feeling rotten at seven - despite the clocks going forward to BST overnight, the ship had thoughtfully put on a burst of speed to get us there at the scheduled time - and we got off.

Here's a free bit of advice: don't arrive in Lerwick at seven on a Sunday morning laden down with luggage hoping, naively, to find a cafe. After we had been almost blown out to sea several times, and found not a single place open - other than the Co-op, socialism never sleeps - in the whole town (we hid in doorways from the wind, and I would have been worried we were going to be arrested for vagrancy had the general air of the place not indicated post-zombie invasion), I ran out of energy abruptly and we returned to the ferry terminal and dozed off again until lunchtime. At which point we were picked up by aforementioned landlord, and things got a lot better.

Here is the view from our kitchen window:

The wind turbine is out of sight to the left, but when you open the door you hear it like a helicopter landing. I can only say the double-glazing is very good in this place. Oh, but the little cottage is adorable. It sleeps five, which is a little embarrassing - it was still cheaper to rent than a B 'n' B! - and has the most adorable little kitchen, and beds with little cuddly seals on them. I love it very much. It is about ten minutes' walk outside of Lerwick, down a hill with no footpath, and surrounded by skittish sheep. Downtown Lerwick, such as it is, took us about forty-five minutes to explore this morning, but I found it quietly delightful - full of tiny little shops, including one that looked just like Quiggins would have done if you packed it in a tiny box and posted it to Shetland (that is to say, a tiny insular goth-shop - complete with incense burners, silver skull earrings, slogan t-shirts and spiky dog collars, everything the self-respecting teenage goth needs), and a bookshop that claims to be the most northerly bookshop in Britain. It may well be. We bought a book for the sake of the thing.

(Oh, also: while I am here, I am reading Lord John and the Private Matter, having found it in a bookshop in Aberdeen, and enjoying its intrigue and mysteries and fiery-haired Scots a little more than I would in a less epic setting - and now it seems like there is something I haven't read. Lord John and the Scottish Soldier - is that a short story, or a novel I haven't come across before?)

In the afternoon, we rented a car. I was a little dubious about this idea; generally, I am not the world's most confident driver, and it's been a good long while since I've driven. But after a few false starts getting out of Lerwick, and a pause at home for lunch, we got out the OS maps and set out again. It's worth noting at this point that the weather here is never the same for five minutes. When we got up there was snow on the ground; this melted by the time we went out, became bright sunshine, became rain, became stinging, painful hail, become sun glimmering off blue water, became rain, became more sunshine. It was grimly grey when we got in the car and started driving north. The road, which is one of two A-roads on the whole island, curves around to the west towards the water, and we reached the crest of a hill, and I nearly cried. The land just falls into the water - just a gorgeous curve into the sound, with the sun coming out gloriously over the shallows towards Scalloway, the second town on Mainland. I've never seen anything so perfect. After that we kept on driving - across these tiny, one-track causeways between the islands, over to Trondra, and then to West Burra, with the sun shining high in the sky all the way. (Here, so far north, the nights are already short - it was bright-sunshine bright even at seven and eight.) Once we hit a one-track road on West Burra, I insisted we stop - like I said, I'm not a confident driver, and had just driven, almost on autopilot, across three islands - and we did, in a tiny hilltop parking-place, and got out to have a look.

There's a novel I read once - it may, to my sorrow, be by Ian McEwan - that described some extraordinary happening as being "like opening a cupboard and finding a beach."

We did that.

Shim claims I look silly, carrying my handbag along a beach with my eyes shut (I needed somewhere for the car keys! I'm looking straight into the sun!) but I like it; it looks like that felt like, clambering down the rocks looking for nothing in particular and finding, out of nowhere, this perfect, tiny curve of beach, with white sand and blue water. I wandered across it feeling like I'd stepped into some other world - it was so unexpected, so perfect, and the sun was shining like it hadn't been all day, and the water was funnelling in along the sound from the North Atlantic, and had that oceanic clarity, that perfect blue.

On the way back there were little Shetland ponies in fields, peering through gorgeous mullets, and Shim claims he saw a tree. (No, several trees.) This is notable, really: it's a bit of a culture shock, getting used to an entirely treeless landscape, just rolling scrubland and salt water.

Tomorrow, we are thinking of heading further north, in the hope of spotting some seals. And otters. I am very much enjoying my holidays.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Lerwick, Shetland

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Posted by

balthaser.livejournal.com

One of the most notable things I remember about being in Shetland was that the swimming pool in Lerwick has a really cool slide! But that there is the most northerly post office right at the top, I wish I could remember what it was called.

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still crazy after all these years

Shetland

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