4th June Saturday

After a very windy night it looked to be another lovely day – and it was.

I had a mind to get the ferry to Mousa, an RSPB uninhabited island with the biggest broch remains.  There is a privately owned ferry and you have to ring them to check that it is running – at 1 pm. I also managed to work out that the pier at Sandwick from which it normally sailed is being rebuilt so currently it sails from Aith Voe  (a Voe is a Shetland fjord). 

Having booked a place I decided to spend the morning in Scalloway, which is on the west coast across from Lerwick.  Much smaller and prettier than Lerwick.

It has a harbour, a Patrick Stewart castle (the one where the mortar was mixed with blood, eggs – and human hair) and was also a base in WWII for The Shetland Bus, the fishing vessels which were manned by Norwegians and plied back and forth between Norway and Shetland after the German occupation, smuggling in essential equipment for the resistance and smuggling out people.

Scalloway Castle

In order to see inside the castle you had to collect the key from the Scalloway Hotel. One would have thought it would be next door, but, no, it is across the harbour. It was quite a pathetic key, for a castle. Not a great deal to see, but quite a good view of Scalloway.

Inside

Scalloway harbour

The entrance to the caste, key tag visible on the grass – tag more impressive than the key itself.

And then you have to go back to the Scalloway Hotel (sounds grand but isn’t) to take the key back.

I recall Scalloway castle in a much more rural setting than I found it this time.  I think the field of 35 years ago is now a brand new museum – unopened as yet and the old one in the high street is closed.

 

Ministers’ Reach – this reminded me of a place in Papa Westray where there was a specific landing stage for the Church of Scotland Minister as the Laird had banned him from his land.  I wonder if there was the same problem in Scalloway.

There is now quite a bit of information in Scalloway about The Shetland Bus- there are other places where they sailed from and where there was a “safe house” so I shall see if I can go there too.

The Shetland Bus memorial

Detail of top of the memorial

One of four lists of names around the memorial

Used by The Shetland Bus

Fishing vessel at the wharf

Back to Aith Voe to pick up the ferry to Mousa at 1pm.  It turned out that there is a night trip at 11 pm to hear (and see?) Storm Petrels.  And that he thinks he can probably squeeze me in.  And I can park up the Van overnight on the quay.  So all fixed for tonight.

Mousa and its Broch

Mousa Broch

Looking up from the bottom

Looking down from the top

  View from the top

Black guillemot

Seals Nesting shag

Feeding frenzy at Aith Voe

I didn’t want to sit on the pier waiting for 11 pm so I did another drive around but nothing very exciting, certainly compared with the night time sail to Mousa. 

 

All quiet at the pier in the evening

The boat was full – there were two big organised groups which were a bit overwhelming but we were split up when we got there, the organised groups going off with their guide and the individuals split into two groups between the boat owner and his son.

 

Sailing to Mousa at about 11.15 pm

We first stopped to listen to the dry stone walls – all the nesting petrels were burbling away in case their mate came back, they are usually away for 3 days at a time. And the snipe were drumming so there was a lot going on. The petrels also nest in the stones on the beach so you are not allowed to walk on those.  They also nest in the broch,  Like Manx Shearwaters they only come back to the nests in the dark to avoid predators.  We stood next to the broch and these birds were circling it.  They fly quite close to you and can bump into you, apparently if they do they spit out their food (fish offal and fish oil – so you want to avoid that).  And they can fly very low so you could step on them by accident. They have to make several attempts to find the right hole to go into – they flit like bats (no bats on Shetland) – they are about the size of swallows.  Watching the birds was magical.  But also magical was the evening.  Clear and calm.  When we left the pier there was still light in the sky in the north west, when we came back to the pier at 2, it was dawn in the north east.  Just over two weeks to the longest day.  Difficult for birds that need darkness to breed…

At the broch at midnight

 

Dawn coming up at about 1.15 am

Back at the pier at 2 am

Fab.