< Sullom Voe at Mavis Grind
Sea cliffs, Eshaness >
bonxie- and Arctic skua-dodging
experience. But, alas, the cliffs of
Muckle Flugga are as far as you can
get without risking life and limb.
The lighthouse at Muckle Flugga
was manned, pre-1995, and for
a time this was indisputably the
northernmost ‘inhabited’ place in
Britain.
The geology of Shetland is
complex: a glorious mish-mash of
gloups, sounds, wicks, steep-sided
geos and deeper, wider voes, that
penetrate the land. You struggle
here to get as much as three miles
from the sea. Indeed, at Mavis
Grind, Magnus Bay and Sullom
Voe are separated by little more
than a hundred metres. It is this
scenery, the bracing climate, and
long-summer days that are the
main attractions. But the outdoor
adventurer will find walking
opportunity almost without limit,
the scope for cycling is as good as
any in Britain not least because
for the most part the roads are
wide and well-maintained, even
in winter. The hills, such as they
are, are more bosomy than craggy,
the highest, Ronas Hill just about
managing to reach 450 metres. But
what the islands lack in altitude,
they make up for in loch-filled,
rippling landscapes.
FURTHER INFORMATION
The main Visitor Information Centre is
situated in Lerwick town centre at the
Market Cross. Tel: 01595 693434;
www.shetland.org.
GETTING THERE
Shetland is now better served by ferries
than ever before, with departures seven
nights a week in both directions on the
Aberdeen-Lerwick route all year round,
with three calls a week at Kirkwall,
Orkney, en route.
www.northlinkferries.co.uk.
Flights to Sumburgh Airport in Shetland
are operated by the long-established
Scottish airline, Loganair. Their direct
services to Shetland, the scheduled
flight times and the maximum
frequencies are as follows:
Aberdeen
1 hour / Up to 5 flights per day
Edinburgh
1 hr 30 mins / Up to 3 flights per day
Glasgow
1 hr 30 mins / Up to 2 flights per day
Inverness
1 hr 45 mins / Up to 2 flights per day
(stops briefly in Orkney)
Kirkwall, Orkney
40 mins / Up to 2 flights per day
Manchester
1 hr 35 mins / 1 flight on Saturdays
< Mousa broch
The Cake Fridge >
The north-western part
of Mainland is known as
Northmavine, a panoramic region
blessed around Eshaness with
an Atlantic coastline without
equal. All but a handful of lochs
and lochans on the way are
commandeered by red-throated
divers; chambered cairns dot a
landscape largely devoid of trees,
and, curiously, every rural bus
stop has an adjacent car park…
car sharing is the norm here.
Every bus shelter has a seat from
a conventional bench to plush
armchairs, and one, at Baltasound
on Unst, is equipped with reading
material, curtains, carpets, flowers
and, for a time, served as a two-
person cinema showing brief
films made by the island’s school
children. It’s all a far cry from the
murderous complexities portrayed
in Ann Cleeves’ crime novels set in
the islands.
This is the land of light
nights, the ‘Simmer Dim’
as they call it...
You must visit Shetland
expecting the unexpected. Along
the seemingly innocuous road
from Bixter to the tiny port of Voe
and, overlooking East Burra Firth,
is the most unlikely food outlet;
a couple of fridges – The Cake
Fridge – at the roadside offering
home-made cakes, fruit loaves,
tarts and bread, as well as local
eggs during the summer months.
Where the Burn of Lunklet feeds
into the Firth, a short walk has
been fashioned to an attractive
waterfall that would never
otherwise be seen, and where the
road branches off to South Voxter,
a pile of rocks has been roughly,
well maybe over-imaginatively,
shaped to resemble rock people –
no-one knows why.
It can be windy here: after all,
Shetland lies in the track of the
Atlantic depressions, but is bathed
by the relatively warm waters of
the Slope Current, flowing north
along the edge of the Continental
Shelf, so the climate is classed as
temperate maritime.
For airborne visitors, their first
sight of Shetland is Sumburgh
Head, standing proud above
the sea swell; almost part of it.
A lighthouse marks the spot,
erected, like its sibling on Muckle
Flugga, by the monopolistic
lighthouse-building Stevenson
family.
Today, Sumburgh is famed
neither for sea-defying Fitful
Head nor its bleakly located but
otherwise comely and efficient
airport, by-product of World War
II. Here it’s all about Jarlshof,
one of the most remarkable
archaeological sites excavated in
Britain, a place that re-entered
the world when violent storms
exposed its stonework, rather
in the manner of Skara Brae
on Orkney. Prehistoric man,
Vikings, medieval and modern
man clamour for attention here;
the dwellings of each virtually
superimposed on each other: it
is this timeline of humanity that
hallmarks Shetland.
Go in Spring and you’ll find
fields of gold, bright-eyed with
golden flowers, and long days
when the sun barely sets. This
is the land of light nights, the
‘Simmer Dim’ as they call it, where
anyone bent on seeing both a
sunset and sunrise will get but a
few hours’ sleep. When I visited
once at the end of May; sunset
was 10.13 pm; sunrise 3.52am,
and it never really became totally
dark in between. It’s an odd but
pleasurable sensation, as close as
you get in Britain to twenty-four
hours of sunshine.
But slightly odd, and hugely
pleasurable for me just about says
it all of Shetland… why, they’ve
even taking to distilling their own
gin.
spring 2019 | Outdoor focus 15