It’s now been 2 days living like a Mancunian again and I’m realising why I don’t feel I fit in. When the population density gets high, it brings out the worst in people. All the dumb people, aggressive people, selfish people – resources are being competed for and all these people are either trying to get the resources before you, or getting in your way of doing so.

Case in point – driving to the shops. My lane was blocked by someone stuck at the lights, must have stalled or something. I flipped my indicator on to move to the next lane, quite an innocent and logical thing to do. I looked over to see when would be safe, and a guy in the car next to me eyeballed me, and then deliberately moved his car forward to block any gap in front of him so I couldn’t get out. His actions were so much like him shouting “F*ck you” loudly in my face it nearly took my breath away and I had to fight the urge to open my passenger side door hard against his shiny new car and start an incident of road rage. It’s selfishness like that which I realised I hadn’t encountered for nearly two weeks.

Sure, tourers are a nuisance up North and occasionally people don’t let you past on single track roads, but I think this is more lack of observation or just plain dimness that causes them to do this, its not any sort of aggressiveness. People blocking you in though, people queue jumping, shoving you out of the way, stuff like that – I haven’t seen that North of the Border. Indeed the locals sometimes appear so laid back to the city dweller that this can be a bit annoying if you are used to fast service, but they always serve you with a genuine smile. And the camping fraternity is especially giving – at the Shetland campsite I was in people were frequently leaving the place to get the boat the next day and end their trip, and they were leaving all manner of left overs in the place for other people like food, camping gas cylinders, shampoo and toothpaste, all sorts.

I think being in an isolated area (and I don’t think it even needs to be an island) first of all gives people the room to breath again and calm down – this makes them more inclined to be nicer to everyone else again, even the inherently nasty ones. I think people get friendlier too when they have more opportunities to be alone. Can’t handle talking to anyone today? Bog off in the boat to a nearby island and sit with your sandwiches, flask and a book for a while. Feeling chatty today? Go down the local co-op, you’re bound to meet someone you know. Indeed, at some of the more obscure sites in Orkney, I got the distinct impression from the way the warden leapt out and grinned gratefully at you that you may actually be the first person they’d been able to speak to for days. And certainly most of the rural communities on all the Orkney Islands must have problems meeting anyone at all.

One thing I found difficult with being on an island was that you kept seeing people you knew everywhere. Looking back, possibly I couldn’t handle this because I was either a shy kid or an angst ridden teenager though, because these days I find it quite fun to stop and have a chat with random people – conversations based solely on the fact I’d seen them already on the boat and at the petrol station and had become curious as to what they were doing here and were they enjoying things.

Also, rural isolated areas shift the emphasis of life onto completely different things. Here in Manchester, it’s all about consumerism. What shall I do today? There isn’t anything TO do except go shopping in a mall somewhere – you could try to drive somewhere but it only really starts getting pretty an hour or so out of town and by then, you’re realising that its work tomorrow and you better be getting back, and you may as well stop by the Trafford Centre now as its late, and you promise yourself to plan it better next time but never do. This gets you into a horrible downward spiral - you shop in enjoy yourself because that’s all there is to do, so you need to work hard to get the money to spend, and you wind up having to work more and more until you have hardly any spare time left in order to get this money, and when you do, you’re so depressed you spend everything you have in order to cheer yourself up, which makes the situation worse. And all the time you are shoulder to shoulder with other people, similarly trapped, and not inclined at all to be nice to you because they are in just a bad a mood as you.

Meanwhile, what does someone in Shetland do today? Well bugger all will be open so they’ll probably go for a walk somewhere, maybe head for a beach. Watch the seabirds. See if they can find an otter. If they’re lucky, that might be a chip shop open, but the mostly they’ll probably bring home is stuff they’ve found beachcombing. They might bump into someone they know, so they’ll have a gossip about something ‘local’. Insular, yes. But its cheap, it’s healthy. As long as you can reconcile yourself to never owning that state of the art TV or high fashion item, and occasionally discussing the same things over and over so many times you want to scream, it does the job psychologically and without all the pressure of fighting too many other people in the Mall. I think it may help to live in a touristy place so that at least you get new blood each year to introduce new topics of conversation (or be the butt of all the local’s jokes).

And the final thing that I think alters the way people think and act is being near working docks or tidal areas - it adds a special extra rhythm to life – that of the tide. I’m sure that sea faring folk exploit this. “Ah...can’t sail because of the sea conditions...”. “I’ll be late home tonight dear, bad swell”. “Yes I know I clocked off early but I had to catch the ferry and it was sailing early this evening” etc. It is a good rhythm to have though I think, something which ignores all of our artificial and sometimes arbitrary time rules – it forces us to concentrate on the weather and our environment again. It makes you look outside every day at the weather and know it means something more than just “Oh, raining, bad traffic on the motorway today most likely”. 

So comparing and contrasting:-

Ullapool. I quite like this place and I don’t know why. It’s probably more cosmopolitan that Lerwick or Kirkwall will ever be, and yet it still seems to manage to retain a village feel to it. It copes with being swamped twice a day with strangers and tour buses all getting on and off the ferry, and then it gets completely deserted in the evening apart from locals, bikers/cyclists on their way to John O’Groats, and the odd confused foreigner. Aside from the one or two profiteers though (e.g. the ever present Edinburgh woollen mill), the town has a soul. Regular ‘events’ at the town hall, its own little music festival, commuters and a local shop for local people. And all signs in that area direct you to it – it’s the natural hub for most of the surrounding region. I like Ullapool, it’s got a nice feel to it, though it’s still definitely mainland UK...not even mainland Scotland, mainland UK.

North Scotland (Durness, Bettyhill, Thurso, etc). Endless tracts of single track roads cutting across peat moor with nothing but the occasional loch to break the monotony. Beautiful on a nice day. A second type of hell on a bad day, and almost totally blocked up with Tourers and wild campers during the summer. However I know I’m not being fair to it. I’ve only ever been helling down the A road up there trying to get to somewhere in a hurry, and I think if you take time to explore the backroads, you can find some pretty special places. Not much in the way of a sea faring community around these parts though, as far as I can tell.

Orkney. Well it’s the Isle of Man with a much more organised Tourism industry in essence. It can draw international guests, though most of the tourists I met were Scottish or Shetlandic interestingly enough, it seemed that the lions share of the international visitors rarely got above Ullapool and the lure of the Stornoway ferry to the Western isles. There was the odd tour bus – nightmarish devices designed to take people round all of Orkney’s sights in a single day and have them on the ferry back in the evening...but I managed to avoid most of them.

I love the history elements. Their museums were small but very well maintained and crammed full of info, often lovingly looked after by wardens or families. The place is bristling with cairns and ruins which can sometimes be quite dull, I’ll grant you, but at least the majority are free so you don’t feel cheated when you go to a dud one. And some take you to the most weird and wonderful locations – I mean, the majority of these things have been found by farmers whilst tilling their land so you get led to all sorts of fields in the middle of nowhere down dirt tracks, only to pull up at a gate with a tiny faded sign and a ‘No parking’ sign, have to work out where to dump the car, then hike across a ‘live’ cow field full of bullocks, then accidentally go to the farmers shed before unearthing another faded sign that points you in another direction, then yomp across a sheep field only to eventually come across a hole in the ground with a lid on it labelled ‘Ibister Earth House’ or whatever, which you have to crawl into with a torch. It’s certainly a unique form of entertainment.

Like I said before, everywhere in Orkney is ~30mins from everywhere else and the majority of the time, you end up going through one or two ‘hubs’ over and over again. This wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that e.g. Finstown (somewhere I thought looked pretty the first time I passed through it and not after the 20th) doesn’t actually have anything there like a petrol station for instance, or even a shop, just a ‘Slow down to 40’ sign. Norseman Town was the same deal, as was Dounby – actually I’m being unfair I think Dounby did actually have a pump that operated between office hours, most days of the week. The people are sweet though. Often unintelligible, but very forgiving of your unfortunate affliction of not understanding them, and very warm and kind when you did finally work out their accent and spoke with them at length. These people were unmistakably the descendants of the first Neolithic people who had to claw at survival with stone knives and whale bone in dark smoky holes in the ground, there was barely a Viking among them. Kind, strong, tough supportiveness underpinned everything they were about, and it simply didn’t cross their mind that they or anyone else should be any different.

I do suspect I might get bored of Orkney faster than I would of Shetland though. It’s warmer, friendly, but also feels a lot smaller, and that has potential for closing in on you quite rapidly if you’re stuck there...despite it being much easier to get good bannock and fuel on Orkney, and it being marginally warmer (I think I actually managed to take my coat of for a couple of hours once on Orkney and just walk around in my jumper. Yeah, it was THAT hot!).

Shetland. It feels more like the North end of Scotland I think. Everywhere is ~30 mins from Lerwick, which means that if you don’t live in Lerwick, suddenly everywhere is a bit of a pain to get to. The Voes/Fjords are pretty, but also, by their very nature, dead ends with no shortcuts to them so once you’ve gone down one, there is no route back other than the way you came (unless you have a boat) and that can get tiresome after a while unless you are prepared to rack your speed down quite a few notches and take a much slower pace of exploration that can be take on Orkney. And there is a whole deal of nothing on the island, so it’s easy to get stranded (I always refilled at half a tank, just in case, and for the trip all the way to Unst, that precaution served me well). There isn’t the high density of cute little museums and bizarre free cairns like there is in Orkney.

I think the population are more or less Viking. Not big hulking blond people – but the twangs in their accent and their attitude is very different. Shetlanders are more outward looking, there is less of a love for their land (the Orkney people fiercely love their land). The natives I managed to speak to had all travelled and worked abroad at some stage (mainly Scandinavia), had connections with and visited the mainland regularly, were wheelers and dealers and not quiet contemplative crofters. They felt no allegiance to the Picts other than to mention that when the Vikings arrived, they mostly used them as slaves. The Pictish echoes in Shetland are very much quieter, and difficult to find under the Nordic overtones.

Shetland is more hardnosed, with its oil and its quarrying and its internationally funded fishing. There is more to see on Shetland, plenty more places to hide way and avoid people if this is your wish, and they’ve marketed their nature a lot more as well. I didn’t bond with the place quite as I did with Orkney though for some strange reason. Shetland remains aloof. Am I not quite the Viking I thought I was?

Damn educational trip though, and I think, based on the conversation I had with the woman on that day long boat trip, I want to become an island collector too. Try as I might, it seems that I’m drawn to environments such as these and I’m most comfortable with them. Perhaps I’m even genetically pre-programmed to want to live in them. I thought when I first came to ‘the mainland’ (and its interesting that when you say that in Orkney they discount mainland Britain and assume you are talking about Orkney itself) I was drawn to the shops and the bright lights and the action and all the things going on. Now, having spent half my life in England after half my life on the Isle of Man, I think I may finally be tired of the mayhem and the crowds and the consumerism and be on the tipping point of wanting to return to the sort of place I came from. Frightening, but true.

So...where next? Western isles? Isles of Scilly? Isle of Wight?? The Norwegian Fjords even??? I’ll have to get researching – but for this section of the blog at least, this is me signing off :)

I've geotagged and uploaded the best photos I took from my trip - here they are

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29856807@N07/map/

Or

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29856807@N07/

 

www.flickr.com

It’s a funny old thing being back home after while away. There is the disorientation that this morning I woke up in a ships cabin and now, here I am. What always seems to go through my head is ‘What a lot of stuff I have’ followed by looking in wonderment at the pile of things I have been surviving with for the past few weeks – makes me wonder why I bother having shelves full of books I don’t read and DVDs I don’t watch and clothes I don’t use.

Then, slowly, little things reveal themselves to me as being wonderful. I can sit in a comfortable chair. I can watch TV. I can boil a kettle just by flicking a switch on a kettle and not squatting over a stove in the freezing rain. I can type this with a proper keyboard and not have to use my phone. I have my own toilet, and I don’t need to use a head torch or brave a cloud of midges to get to it. The fact I have access to artificial light so I can stay up later than dusk. I can microwave food to get it warm. Oh and the floor isn’t wobbling up and down.

And my bed...my wonderful comfortably bed....well I still haven’t gone near that yet, I’m saving it. I’m really going to relish it tonight.

The sea trip overnight was wonderful – it was as still as the proverbial millpond, quite amazing. We got a fabulous orange sunset and I think I saw a whale, or at least something black backed with a stumpy fin (oh and I don’t think I mentioned we saw 2 porpoise yesterday too – one actually leapt out of the water and swam under the boat, it was amazing). I had treated myself to a cabin with a window on the journey back so I got to sit in comfort and private as I watched Shetland disappear into the horizon (and as the ferry route goes down along the side of the island and it’s an abnormally long island, this took some time).

My slightly more expensive cabin also had the advantage of being above wave level and away from the engine, making for a much quieter journey...except for when we docked at Kirkwall at 11pm and there was this almighty grinding and crashing. I was in bed, but sat up and pulled up the window shutter and lo! I was looking directly at some engineers who were attaching the foot passenger walkway to the ship ready for embarkation. My cabin was only feet away from the main boat entrance. I hastily closed the shutters again and put ear plugs in for the rest of the night.

I don’t think I finished talking about the boat trip yesterday either did I? English guys playing at sea captain. A couple of Australians aboard who kept screaming out Otter false alarms. Loads of gannet flying over our head, just as many as at Herma Ness...in fact on the all day trip the day before I got talking to the banker man and he said he and his wife had actually done the Herma Ness 4 hour walk the other day and he wouldn’t recommend it. Most of the time you are just hiking over bog with the occasional bird diving bombing you, and when you get to the cliffs you can’t get close enough to them to look down and get a close look at the birds, so the boat trip was absolutely the correct way of looking at the cliffs. Bonxies taking biscuits out of the engineers hand.

Ah yes - ‘bonxie’ is the local name for skewer. Wretched birds, worse than herring gulls. They can’t dive themselves so they wait for gannets to dive and come up, then rob them of their food. They also plunder the nests of other birds and eat their eggs and chicks. Not quite as bad as fulmars that eject a foul smelling oil from their nose at you to make you go away, but bonxies are the rat/wasp of the seabird world.

Oh did you also know that shags feathers aren’t waterproof? The reason you see them sitting on rocks all the time is that they have to dry their feathers out periodically else they’ll start to hold water, and they’ll sink and drown. Gannets feathers also lose their waterproofing over time, and generally gannets dies of cold because water starts to get in as they get old. Gannets are also pre-programmed to dive if they see a flash of light in the water as well. If you have ever seen a gannet dive, it’s impressive because they start their dive from about 30foot up, and fold themselves up on the way down so they hit the water like mini-Concords. I thought there was some intelligent scanning of the water below before they dived - like eagles might do for prey on land – but no, it’s simply that if they see a flash of light under the water, the brain screams ‘Dive’ and they dive more as a knee jerk reflex action than anything else. Presumably they also surface, confused, thinking ‘What the f*ck was THAT!”. Old Shetlanders used to exploit this reflex and caught gannets by trailing hooks with shiny bits of metal under the water behind the boat to make them dive and get themselves caught.

When we got back to port, I killed my remaining couple of hours in the Shetland museum, which is free and reasonably well stocked with things to see. They had a reconstruction of a Neolithic woman from a skull, for instance, and a huge hoard of Pictish silverware which was astonishingly finely made. It’s interesting though that they had to say on one board something along the lines of ‘...and they call this the Bronze age, though Bronze wasn’t actually discovered on Shetland for another x thousand years’, and all their timelines show when the mainland discovered bronze, iron etc, and then trailing behind are when someone thought to tell Shetland and Orkney about them as well. Just keep banging the rocks together guys, you’re doing fine...

Oh and I had managed not to meet Billy Fox again for the remainder of the visit, which I thought was impressive – though I did meet the healthy looking 60 somethings again, wandering around the Ancient man section. This is how it is on Islands you see. Suddenly you can’t go anywhere without bumping into people you know.

The museum visit took me neatly into checking in time at the Ferry, and I locked myself in the car until I got my queue to drive in, because the midges were everywhere again today...all over town, wandering up and down the harbour looking at boats, buying tickets at the pay and display machine and giving you a nod hello. When it’s come to midge count, some days have been better than others and I’d say that on the whole, the Shetlands had seemed freer of the little bastards than Orkney. That said, maybe I’d been lucky about the weather again because yesterday was evil, it was one of the worst days I’d seen all visit for midges. The only way to escape them was to go out to sea. Perhaps this is why fishermen grow beards and have rollneck sweaters (and I have been keeping the sleeves of my jumpers closed with hair ties this past week – looks stupid but it works).

Actually it’s worth saying something about my car too. Okay it was never the tidiest of cars anyway but I got by. It rains so much in Manchester I generally never have to clean it, and I can rely on the routine valeting it gets when it goes for MOT or a service to keep its interior roughly hygienic. 

After two weeks camping though...for a start, you don’t realise how much salt and sand is in the air on the coast until you let your car sit around in it for a while – it starts to form a crystalline crust. Drive around as much as I do (the round trip finally came in at around 2200 miles) and you also develop a thin layer of insect guts over the windscreen, bonnet and bumper. It wasn’t raining as much as I was used to in Manchester, so gunk was just building up and by the final few days in Shetland, my car was genuinely disgusting to touch and hard to see out of. But then it rained heavily one night and that alleviated some of it. Give it one evening back in Manchester and it’ll be back looking as good as new.

The interior has suffered a bit as well, having been used as a cloakroom/dining area The area under the drivers seat was a thin layer of meat and bannock crumbs, sand and mud, sheep muck, gull droppings, you name it – its worse than the Gannetry at Herma Ness (and shit was falling like snow that day, its amazing I didn’t get hit on my observation deck). It’s also a buzzing hive of insects. Some, I think, got in when I packed my tent way, or via sleeping in my clothes. Others got in when I had to do routine opening and shutting of the car though – so there always seemed to be a handful of midges and things buzzing around my head as I was driving and one thing I can say is DON’T open up with a can of DEET in a car, it will blind you, you will choke and you’ll have to stop in a layby and cough until you are nearly sick. So a friend tells me...

...If you do though, it’s funny watching all the midges scream and start flattening themselves against the windscreen to get away from you. If you then leave them in the car overnight (and you mostly have little choice), they all seem to die and you find them the next morning coating your dashboard, sliding around as you turn corners and dropping off into your lap – else stuck to the screen in the condensation so you have to wipe them off. I’m not sure if it’s the DEET that does that, or the temperature, or whether it’s just that the foul under-layer of stuff under the driver’s seat gets to them. Incidentally as I bundled some clothes into the washing machine after I got home, I released a further cloud of midges and shooed them out into the garden. It’ll be interesting to see if they ‘take’ and displace the local population.

It was nice to get a little wander around the ferry. I had a look at the cafeteria – it was serving Scottish mainstays of meat and tatties, and dull looking sandwiches. It crossed my mind then that I hadn’t seen a Curry or a Chinese since I had entered this neck of the woods. The Scots are definitely into bland – far more so than us cosmopolitan city dwellers with our Mediterranean chiabattas and frappucinnos. They’re all for tatties, haggis, macaroni pie (yes it is...macaroni cheese, chilled in a pie case), chips, beef and bannock, black puddin’, and that’s about your lot. Desert is ‘Eve’s puddin’ – sponge cake with apple in it and heavily coated with sugar. Nary a spice to be seen for over 400 miles in either direction.  Though to be fair, the co-op in Lerwick did sell croissants.

Oh they can’t make sandwiches either – I haven’t had a decent sandwich since I entered Scotland. I don’t get how they can ruin them, but they manage either by the plainness of the ingredients (egg, cheese and ham, ham, egg and ham, cheese and egg – that’s about all you’ll ever find) or the extended shelf life (the smaller shops keep the sandwiches on the shelves until they sell, be that 1 day or 5 judging by the curliness of the bread and sourness of the butter in some cases). That’s how my whole bannock obsession started. And Bannock wise...well I’m even more confused now than I was because in Orkney they are flat and round, in Shetland they are little triangles, and then on the ferry I saw something labelled as bannock and it was fruit cake so what’s going on here?

The drive back to day was ok...the GPS got confused around Edinburgh where there was a new bit of motorway it didn’t know about, and I think it picked a somewhat dubious route of B roads between Dundee/Edinburgh/Carlisle but at least I got to see the countryside round there. I had passed by it briefly once before but forgot. Nothing like the highlands with the huge imposing cliffs, its all soft undulating plains of agricultural land – if I hadn’t had Scottish radio on to remind me, I would hardly have thought I was in Scotland at all.

Was kicked off the boat at 7:45 and got back home for 1pm, thus proving you can easily be in Shetland one day, and home the next (or vice versa). No speeding penalties waiting for my on my doorstep from the journey up, amazingly, only a heap of local papers and adds for pizza joints as per usual. And my car unpacked remarkably easily (ignoring the internal layer of filth), so I had most of the day to restock food, settle down, and wander around my house, awestruck by its amenities.

Ack I’m nodding off – it’s been a long day – won’t be able to finish this entry now. I’ll do a sum up of the holiday tomorrow and also post some of my ‘better’ pics from the proper camera instead of all the cameraphone stuff. So it’s finally time to (oh be still by beating heart) lie on my bed and go to sleep. I think I may have forgotten how this sleep-in-proper-bed thing works....well they do say it’s like riding a bicycle...Goodnight.

God it's positively tropical down here! And what a lot of people, it's very disconcerting. All the way to the motorway I had to keep over-riding the urge to dive into a layby when I saw oncoming traffic.

So here am I on another boat, after being on a boat for 10 hours yesterday and another boat for 3 hours this morning. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to stand up straight when I get off shore tomorrow morning.

The trip today was very unlike the tour yesterday. Today the skipper and first mate were English, all beards and sailor caps like middle aged men playing and captain. The guys yesterday...well Stu was wearing sandals, shorts and a stained t-shirt, long crazy hair held back with a Fair Isle knitted ear muff headband. Frank was a bit more normal looking but you could tell that sea faring was something they did rather than something they played at.

This said, the tour today was a lot more organised. Our skipper spoke over a speaker system that you could here all over the boat (including the open top deck where I headed again). They were better at operating their ROV, and they'd picked a really clever spot that was near enough not to lose the attention of non-nature spotter tourists, and have enough big obvious things to look at (seals, gannets, skewers aka bonxies) to cover up for the frustrating elusiveness of the otters and whales. They even went into a cave or two, and never strayed into rough water and amde their passengers sick (I never doubted Stu's ability for a minute, be perhaps he wasn't used to being around land lubbers and ferry loupers yet and didn't know how crap and fragile they were).

It was all wrapped up for 1, just in time for our skipper to meet his wife back at the pier and take his father-in-law (trailing oxygen behind him) out for lunch.

The rest was all queuing for ferries and getting settled in the cabin, but as I have to go and shift the car because we've come into dock, I'll tell you around that when I get back home tonight

Well! What a trip! I'm happy with the choice I made there.

The little catamaran left from the small boats harbour in Lerwick. It was a new boat, and kitted out with all the sort of technical gizmotry that normally draws me like a moth to a flame (sat nav with big screen, radar, lots of radios etc) BUT it also had an observation deck - a second story as you see on these deep sea fishing vessels (no roof, just a short rail around the top and two twizzly seats). This was a bigger draw for me and I was up there like a ferret up a rabbit hole, as they say. None of the other members of the tour seemed keen to go up, perhaps because of the rather small ladder you had to use to gain access to it, and the rather precarious postion you occupied at the top once you were there. But I loved it.

My theory was correct about the non-sailing yesterday. The 'sea conditions' thing was a complete lie and basically they hadn't sailed all week because they were trying to drum up the 4 people minimum necessary to make the sailing break even. As it was, on this trip there was me, a heavy uncommunicative italian, a 60 something couple with matching kagools and a tartan flask, but a healthy hillwalker look to them, and a 50 something couple who looked like bankers from Harrogate.

They warmed us up with a gentle pootle out of the harbour and a look at the large number of seals there. As in many active fishing harbours, the seals have got very cheeky and right on que as we slowed down to look at them, a big bull grey seal swam up and put its head on the flat bit on the back of the boat so everyone could say 'aah'. Apparently the smaller boats often go out on 'sport' fishing trips where they throw the fish to the seals at the end of it, hence why they've learnt this trick.

Then we went out past nearby Bressay and Kibister Ness and saw loads of 'day seals' as the crew called them - seals which are pretty much guaranteed to be lying about basking whenever you turned up. We all went aah again and took photos, and learnt that the pink headed seals weren't a separate species, but simply regulation grey seals who had been 'at the salmon' and turned pink as a result. The engineer also pointed out his house on Bressay - right at the point we were sailing past. He said he had lived there for 23 years now. One time he was down the pub and one of the fellas in that night had been living on Bressay since 1921. They got into an argument about sheep (as you do) - a lot of Bressay is common land so who owns the sheep? This can be debated for hours and can get quite heated but at one point someone had said to him and this other guy 'But what do you know, you're just incomers!'. I drew analogies with the Isle of Man...

Next we rounded Whalsay and had a fruitless look for otters. Finally, someone dared to come up on the top deck with me, the healthy looking 60 something and we started chatting. Turns out she was an 'island collector' and had accidentally begun a mission to go to them all, then lecture about them to the W.I. She'd been to St Kilda, and Fair Isle, Scilly, most of the Western Isles etc. She said St Kilda was a bitch to get to but she'd managed to get on a small charter and stay for a couple of days - she'd found it absolutely fascinating. Was a bit iffy about Scilly and Orkney ('touristy') and loved Shetland. This was her second time back - first time was a couple of decades ago. She and her husband and gone to the Isle of Man a few times too...for the UK chess championships (?) because he played for England (??), and he later said these were held in Port Erin (???) which was the first I'd ever heard of it. But apparently that's why they had missed puffin breeding season (only a few weeks ago) - because he was playing chess.

As we chugged off to the far North, past Yell and Fetlar, squeezing in between Yell and Unst, nosing in the caves but finding all the puffins had left for the season. As we reached Unst, everyone got down in the galley for coffee and a sandwich, and even I descended from my lofty perch because I was ravenously hungry. S'funny how sea air seems to do that to you.

Up ahead, we were approaching the nasty bit where all the Atlantic and North Sea tides started hitting one another and causing 'swell'. I heard the engineer and the skipper have a little talk, weighing it up, and the skipper reckoning he could tackle it assuming he did this and that and we got back by whenever. The engineer sucked his teeth and considered, and eventually deciding to let him give it a go. Just looking at their expressions, and looking at the water ahead, I decided it would be prudent not to go up on the top deck and maybe even stay in the cabin for the next stretch...

Sure enough, the waves started to get BIG and our skipper, though a man of some considerable experience (17 years as a fisherman) was having to concentrate hard to keep the waves from hitting us side on and spinning us around. It became a bit of a rollercoaster with about an hour of rough ups and downs and 30mins where (and I'm not exaggerating here) my feet were actually off the ground for a millisecond or two each time the boat nose dived off a particularly high swell and ultimately slapped into the water again. We lost a lot of pots in the galley, and a few other things that weren't tied down. Waves splatted against the windows ocassionally and one by one, people started to get pale and quiet. Then the female banker type ran off to the toilet, followed by the healthy looking 60 something gent. We all realised at that point that the Italian was nowhere to be seen and the engineer said 'oh shit, better check he's still on board' and rushed off. Thankfully he was, though holding on for dear life in the seat on the upper deck, and also feeling sick. The banker bloke went out to look after his wife, so the last two standing were me and the elderly island collector, who were both grinning and having a great time.

The hellish bit reaped great rewards, namely vistas of the Herma Ness reserve and light house. The air was full of gannets, completely full. The noise was incredible (and the smell a bit iffy) but it was quite and experience to look up at (albeit carefully as I had been warned of the birdshit rislk on the upper deck by our skipper - I kept my hood up).

The stretch out to Muckle Flugga was a bit fiesty again but I dared myself to do this from the top deck, and actually it was far better than from the over-warm cabin below. The panoramic view of the horizon meant the brain didn't freak as much, so as long as you wedged yourself firmly into your seat e.g. by pressing yourself in using your feet against the railings, it was quite exciting. Better photos too.

This all said, as we rounded the rock, we saw a smaller boat, well, 8 man inflatable powerboat, and they had landed at the lighthouse and were climbing up. Our guide had just told us that the lighthouse harbour only used to permit a landing every few weeks and sometimes lighthouse keepers could get stranded there for months because of it - so either these people were lucky or insane.

Then we rounded Muckle Flugga and paused for a while to look at the view. I can update my highest position to HP206616 just north of 'Out Stack', and from here I looked due North towards the North Pole, and due West towards America.

Finally, the banker lady pleaded with the skipper for calmer water so we anchored the boat in a harbour just under the road to Saxa Voe where I had driven the day or so before. Soup was offered to anyone who was still feeling hungry after our rough ride (me and Mrs Island collector were about the only ones).

The skipper had a rest and a chat, and said that this harbour had used to be a favourite of his to park the boat and let the crew have a bit of sleep. They got a little R.O.V out (remotely operated vehicle) and showed everyone the kelp forest under where the boat was anchored, and teased a few sea urchin. Stuart (skipper) and Frank (engineer) argued over the ROV like it was a new toy. 'Naw Stu, gaw thus way, gee it here!'. 'Noo Frank, gi me a minute, I go' it' etc and they slapped each others wrists and kept stealing the controls - they even slipped into strange dialect in places as they squabbled - quite sweet. Then Stu dragged the ROV back in, hauled anchor and headed back to Lerwick again.

We didn't linger much on the way back, though just past the Herma Ness reserve the boat slowed down and rumour went around that they'd heard a Mayday. We immediately thought of that little inflatable we'd seen before and had it gone under - but then we saw it approaching from the North at a healthy speed. It pulled up and a woman sat at the front shouted out 'och we saw ye an' jest thought we'd come over fer a chat'! (only in Scotland). She was surprised we were all the way from Lerwick, they set out privately from Unst. They'd nearly turned back because of the roughness of the sea but were glad they'd made it in the end to the lighthouse and said it had been good fun. She and the skipper did the maritime communitee equivelant of exchanging cards (which is a gruff 'ah weil, ah'll see yer en Lerwick than, ay?' then her boat whizzed off and we were on our way again.

We paused around the other side of Whalsay and I finally saw my otter - well I saw two. One was off the point of the island, and dived under as the boat came past. The other was floating around in the kelp. In fact I may have seen other otters and assumed they were kelp, but now I've had it explained to me, I'm a bit more confident at claiming kelp is sometimes otter. You generally see an otter by seeing their head poking out of the water, you see - and their head is small (half that of a seal) and brown like kelp. But generally, otters are followed around by gulls looking for scraps, so if you are in doubt, look to see if a single black backed gull is nearby. If it is, it's likely it is actually an otter. But can still sometimes kelp. Hope that helps.

Shame we didn't see any whales, but skipper had a little rest and joined me on top deck, and he told me that he started as a fisherman (in the galley, then working his way up), but then came ashore when the bairns started arriving. Was a sparky for a while, and worked at the youth hostel, but couldn't hack being ashore so him and Frank clubbed together to get the boat and do this (it cost £270k and was made in Finland). He reckoned all the jobs in the island were government supporting the ferry and bus and port services, and not so much to do with oil or fishing or tourism so he considered himself lucky to be doing what he was doing. He grinned and looked around him 'baw et's a hell of a day job innit?'.

I asked him random questions like - if all the sheep we were seeing right now on the cliffs and things were owned by someone, how did they round them up? They must have to round them up sometimes. He said, they can send dogs down the cliffs sometimes and the dogs can get to where the sheep have got themselves mostly (though they do lose the odd dog). When they can't get dogs in, that's when they start fencing off the cliff, though on Fair Isle, which is all common land again, some days everyone goes out and goes down the cliffs themselves to shoo the sheep out and up. They make a day of it.

And yes there is a rivalry between Orkney and Shetland, especially to do with football. Liken it to Mancunian's and Scousers (except neither Orcadians or Shetlanders are likely to nick your wheels when you aren't looking ;) ).

We arrived back at Lerwick about 8pm (10 hours at sea and my brain is still gently swaying up and down). The weather had broken, indeed everyone has told me this had been a fabulous week for Shetland and I have been extremely lucky. As Stu said 'ack, isnnae anything wrang wi tha weather tho, jest the amoont o clothes yer poot awn'. I must have looked starved because Stu made sure I took away all the spare sandwiches, and the elderly couple checked to make sure that I had transport waiting at the harbour and didn't have to get the bus back.

Then we all parted rather sorrowfully, because it was such a good day :(

I'm on a much shorter trip tomorrow around Bressay and Noss. Then I figure I may be able to get a couple of hours at the museum in before the boat, and then its time to go home boo hoo.

I'm all alone in the campsite again tonight too. Means no queuing for a shower in the morning I suppose, which is good, but still need a brisk start to pack up the tent. Oh bah, I hate this bit. Oh well, its not over til its over which technically isn't until I put my key back in the lock back in Manc...and that's a while away yet still...

Well I don't have much to report on today - I finally took it slow.


I ambled round the West bit, pausing at known Otterys and saw nowt of the little beggers. I proved to myself that there was nothing at the Brig of Wass, Wass, Sandwick, Bixter or Aith, though the views were pretty. I visited Twatt and got a picture (interestingly, all the people in Twatt drive like 'em as well - perhaps they are sick of people laughing at them whenever they tell them their address so they are all extra aggressive). I also went to the very end of Whiteness, a sticky out bit like West Burra, just to look at the view.


After all this, I went back to Lerwick to catch the gift shops in the last hour before they closed, as it could be my last chance to get mementos if I'm on boats for the next two days. Kindly Shetlandic ladies kept their shops open for me (I caught them as they were packing up, hoping to knock off early). I also found Lerwick's shopping centre, which reminded me a lot of the one in Birchwood where I work (its not very good - shabby old building, tired shops with faded signs, old stock). It did proudly boast to be "Shetland's shopping experience" though, which is frightening.


Then I spent the remainder of the evening back at Sumburgh lighthouse watching the birds wheel about around the cliffs, it was very lovely and calming and a little bit cold. We almost got a sunset too, despite the clouds. All the tourers on the island were still grimly making the pilgrimage to Esha Ness cliffs though - I caught them all on the way back. Sunset rush hour - make sure you're never on west coast back-roads half and hour before or after sunset or you'll be jammed between tourers all the way. It was like that at Yesneby on Orkney as well.


I'm knackered now. It will be a relief to be sheperded around for a day or so. I've done my duty, I've scouted the majority of Shetland and I can report back that the areas to home in on during next visit are -


- Do the 4 hour walk round Herma Ness Reserve (1 day). Maybe stay on Unst :S

- Stay at least a couple of nights at Braeburn caravan park overlooking 'The Drongs' near Esha Ness and do the walks around the cliffs (1-2 days). Or at the lighthouse. Or both.

- Hang out on Sumburgh Head during puffin breeding season (1 day)

- Have a concerted couple of evenings otter spotting in all the voes of Northmavine and West/East Burra.

- Wild camp 1 night at Papil and build things in the sand

- Do Mousa Broch this time (half a day)

- Get to Foula and Fair Isle (1 day each)

...and I'm sure there is more exploring to be done too, I just didn't have any time.

I'll sign off now, I need some sleep. It was a restless night last night, bizarrely I was too hot (!). I dunno, is this meant to be sub-artic or wot? Mind you, I have started driving along with all the windows wound down, we all do it here. It's not because you get toughened up, its just you have to put on so many layers to survive outside that when you get in the car it is too hot, but you can't be arsed taking all your layers off again just for a short drive, so you just open the windows full instead.

Anyway, like I said, bed for me now, tomorrow should be an exciting day...

It's time to (hastily) explore the final major chunk of the island, the West Mainland today.

It's about 30 mins from Lerwick. Indeed most things on the island are 30-40 mins from Lerwick which means it's great if your based in Lerwick, but becomes a pain if you find yourself on the fringes of any of the North/South/East/West bits and need to get to the edge of one of the others. That's because of it's silly shape - it should get a more sensible rounded shape like Orkney.

The leaflet for the West of the island is a bit light on suggestions for things to do other than 'lose yourself in the beauty' which is what the Unst and Yell leaflets were like and translates as 'the next fuel pump and shop is 40 miles away'.

That's ok though, I'm getting the hang of this 'lose yourself' nonsense. I'm just going to bimble from one Otter spot to the other to see if I can bag a sighting. From the things that have the little Otters foot symbol next to them on the map I'm getting the hang of what Otters like in life. Sea loch (tidal) with lots of potential for fish, crab and mussels. Calm, no serious currents. No human beings. Despite this, they still tend to only come out in the evenings though so my hopes aren't up that high, I'm just using otter spots as the motivation for getting out today as no ferries or any other council run services (incl. Museums, libraries, even public toilets) are running today because of a strike. Either the fishermen have come out in sympathy or the council control the harbours too as it looks like most sea traffic has stopped. So even if I did manage to find a facility today on my journey I suspect it will be locked.

Let's hope I'm luckier with the otters eh?

Ooh, all the Shetland flags are pointing in a different direction today, and it's feeling decidely brisk. Finally. Was beginning to think some wierd quirk of sea currents meant Shetland was warmer than Scotland and Orkney. Hope this goes away before tomorrow else they may cancel my cruise again. That would make me sad :(

It was a long day.


You know, I suspect Unst wouldn't get the visitors it does if it weren't for it being the Northern most Isle of the UK. Even the heritage centre had to admit that not a whole deal has gone on in the last few thousand years. A bit of crofting (pictures of people looking peasant-like and miserable drawing wooden single spike hoes across a barren looking land), the odd pictish remain (though I think they were nicked from Yell) and a whole bunch of quarrying which, lets be frank, no visitor really wants to know about. Sure, they glossed it up as 'geology' but as you go over the trunkroad that takes you South to North you can see evidence of it everywhere. Billy had hinted at this and I wondered what he was talking about ("Shetland...hah, or what's left of it") as the South is more or less untouched. As you go further North though, you can see where they've took great chunks out of the hills. Most of North Mainland and Yell just gets through traffic to Unst though, so I suspect no-one actually takes much notice as they whizz past.


Mind you, I was as bad really. I set off this morning dead set on going straight through to the top with no stopping, and only ambling down again as time permitted. Thus I saw all the local commuter traffic to Lerwick - all the Eastbound roads were full, and I mean full of cars, I didn't think the Shetlands had that many people but it's clear where all the non-farming jobs are. Most of the far North bit of the island past in a blur that didn't look dissimilar to the stretch from Ullapool to Durness.


Then, once I got off the Yell ferry, I got in a convoy of vans who were also hell bent on going to Unst with nothing touristy in the middle. We overtook all the ambling tourists then chugged away down the mainroad at top speed. The Unst ferry was perfectly timed to pick up all the business traffic from the Yell ferry who, at an average of 60 miles an hour, had driven straight up without stopping. It's only those who amble who have to wait an hour for the ferry. Once on Unst, me and the vans all disappeared off in different directions and by the time I got to Haroldswick, I was on my own as usual.


A funny thing - in these parts, they brown sign anything they can think off. In England they only brown sign pretty major stuff like huge castles or Alton Towers, but here the signpost tiny little home grown visitors centres, beaches, slightly pretty view spots, public toilets, someone's dog...and leisure centres. There is actually a Saxa Voe leisure centre would you believe it (completely empty with just the odd sheep wandering around it). They do this everywhere from Lerwick upwards, so it seems. And every leisure centre I have seen has been shut or empty, mainly because they are in the back of beyond and really should be appended to a Butlins Holiday camp.


I went to Norwick and Haroldswick anyhow, then Saxa Voe where I wrote the last entry, then parked at the Herma Ness car park for a bit of a leg stretch and a rest. I realised then that even if I had decided to walk round the reserve (the visitors centre said 4 hours round trip) I would have been in the middle of twitcherville once more. All the cars had traces of it - the camoflage gear, tripods, nets, spotters books, those hats only nature spotters seem to wear. I would have felt out of place and intimidated again, I suspected. Better to cruise past these places in a luxury powerboat with other idiots, is what I say.


What else did I do? Well I popped into the Unst Heritage centre, which didn't have a lot to say for itself, and almost bought a wallchart of shetland sheep marking identification but they had sold out.


I saw an ad hoc sheep shearing session off the main road on the way back. A bunch of sheep were penned into a temporary holding area and being shoved down a narrow wooden tube one by one, where a couple of guys with van powered shears were waiting.


Then I got bored and got the Ferry back to Yell.


Of note about the ferries - it was interesting to see the size and luxuriousness of the ferries degrade as I got further North. I have experienced a few models of ferry now on this trip - the luxurious ro-ro ones as found to Hoy and Yell, the huge ones which you still had to back into and park next to a container lorry in a vast echoing cargo area like the Kirkwall-Lerwick one, the little 9 car ones you had to back into like the Rousay one, and the Unst one which seemed to be more or less a flat platform with an engine, and all it did was haul up its ends and take the sea square on. The journey isn't that long but it still didn't feel too sea worthy. Oh yes (hah) boy did I make the right decision not to camp on Unst this evening because I saw a warning on the boards going back that there was going to be no ferries tomorrow owing to industrial action over pay. Two days stuck on Unst? No thank you.


As it was still early and I was feeling guilty for treating Yell like a 'thru-island' I resolved to take a leisurely route back, along the coast and ignoring the trunk road. Now I understand why it is treated like a through road. The back road takes you over endless black peat moor where the only things you meet are the odd sheep and the ocassionally huge lorry carrying stone from somewhere to somewhere else. Sure, there was the odd visitors centre set in tiny villages every 20 miles or so, but I had a funny feeling they were going to be struggling as much as Unst to find something to say so...I gave up and got the ferry back to the mainland.


North Mainland - now this has a bit of scope. This is where I spent the rest of the day.


There is a sticky out bit called 'Northmavine' and as you pass over the spit of land that connects it with the mainland there is a big 'Northmavine' sign like the Hollywood sign, stuck on a hill. My intention was to pull a similar stunt as I did in West Burra and go to the furthest point of the longest sticky out bit, but I got drawn in a different direction, first to Brae (it had a co-op so I could grab some lunch) then Tangwick Haa (tiny free museum with not alot but some nice old photos of locals looking miserable) then Esha Ness.


Esha Ness is hit by the Atlantic and is very impressive. There is one island who's name I've forgot but looks like 'a drinking horse' looks lovely surrounded by deep blue sea and being splatted by huge waves. The lighthouse is on top of a forma lava flow so it looks like a moonscape on top of the cliff, and where land hits sea you got lovely crinkly cliffs with deep and sometimes quite sheltered harbours in them. Lots of birds. Lots of surf and roaring. And I was seeing all this as the sun was quite low so it looked great. Plus someone was flying a kite from the lighthouse tower (no the keeper wasn't bored, I think the building can be hired out to tourists).


I finished off at a tiny place called Nibbon which is meant to be a good place to spot otters. The road to it was finally the first single track road to give me the willies - effectively steep drop into sea on one side, drop into ditch on other, no barriers and just wide enough for the car. Now throw in the odd switch back with a random turn on the other side so you can easy drive straight off into the sea unless you have quick enough reactions to right the car as soon as it's nose has come back down so you could see the road again. Then have the sun in your eyes.


Oh it was the most gorgeous little voe though with two lucky lucky houses at the end of it. I had a quick wander along the shore and it was littered with evidence of otters - their 'fishy skats' and bits of chewed crab high up off the shore where no wave or gull could carry them. But as I sat eating my tea, waiting, I saw nought. Even with my cheap monocular trained on the shores opposite. Mind you, I think its a bit like expecting to see a Minky whale whilst having a 10min cup of tea at a parking spot. But at least I tried...

I have neighbours now at Levenwick campsite. All small expensive tents, no sprogs. Hopefully shouldn't get any trouble from them. As I have an empty day tomorrow because of the cruise being moved about, I'll 'do' Mousa Broch (you need to get a passenger only ferry to Mousa island), then do a whistle stop tour of the West sticky out bit. Then I'll have at least whizzed around every bit of the island, more or less, in the car so I can call it a reasonable reconaissance trip, even if I didn't get to do much in great detail.


This island definately merits a fortnight in its own right. While I have come away from Orkney feeling that I broke the back of everything that needed to be seen - with Shetland I know I'm going to come away with the same feeling I had the first time I whizzed around North Scotland and Cornwall - a sense that at least I know which bits to focus in on next time.

Orkney feels very much like the Isle of Man, and if I have a phrase that sums it up its "Oh, it's Finstown again" because wherever you go you wind up going through the same places over and over again.

Shetland is like the wilds of North Scotland. It's big and everywhere is difficult to get to over endless miles of single track road. But once you get into an interesting 'nook' you can wander around for hours in little circles just enjoying the viewa and it feels private and special because there is no other soul there.


And here's a silly theory for you. I got to hear more authentic style Shetlandic accents today on Unst and in Northmavine and I would say that it is very different to Orkney and to mainland Scottish, its very drawly and monotone with none of the sch's and rolled R's of pure Scot. The place I've heard a celtic style drawl like that before is...the Isle of Man. Okay, the Manx accent has got very polluted with Liverpudlian these days but I mean a 'true' Manx accent, there are still plenty around.

Bear with me - sounds a bit strange I know but let's accept that the 'base' accent is very different - Shetlandic is Scottish based and I'd say Manx is Irish based (that said, a heavy Glaswegian accent is remarkably similar to a heavy Irish accent). But imagine now that you have an influx of Scandinavians who want to speak with the locals e.g. Austrialia with incoming English/Irish etc. The Australian accent is English with an aboriginal accent. So could Shetlandic be a scottish/pictish language/accent corrupted with the invading Nordic accent, and Manx be an Irish accent, similarly influenced. Scandinavian is meant to be 'singsong' with many ups and downs but I've got used to hearing Swedish English now at work and the Manx and Shetlandic drawl definately had ups and downs in tone which are the same as when a Swede speaks English - and you could see why a Swede wouldn't bother with all the rolled R's and stuff, so that would get diluted out pretty quickly.

I'm going to make a guess that if you put a Shetlander and a Manxman together you'd be shocked how similar they sound, and that must be the Viking's fault. Nice that we Manx have some kindred spirits out there, but odd that Orkney got so left out - perhaps it was so close to the mainland that the Viking's though 'arse to it, let's just invade the mainland instead' and the picts got left alone to do their thang. I'd love to do some digging on this.

Anyhow - I've gone on long enough and I want to catch a dawn tomorrow, I must sign off.


But! A full day without meeting Billy! (though someone at Herma Ness did point out they had seen me before on the overnight ferry and again in Lerwick services and then in Unst so perhaps I can't claim this as a victory after all...)

Make that HP176630 (or HP630176). Found a leaflet saying the M.O.D moved out in 2006. However it was above the cloud layer, so I couldn't see Muckle Flugga but the principle was there damnit! Have now taken the car as far as it will go.

Need to get a 4x4...

Well here am I on the top of the Uk, or near enough. I'm half way up the road that leads to Saxa Vord M.O.D base, staying a discreet distance away so as not to get shot at (given all the warnings at the foot of the road). There are probably at least ten snipers and one satellite trained on me as I type this, but what the heck. If I mysteriously disappear after today - please check to see if I'm being interrogated by the military before exploring any other avenues of investigation.

Anyway this is officially the furthest North I can get by car as the other road to Britain's Most Northern House is closed and looks collapsed into the sea. I'm looking over at what I would have to hike across to get at the true most Northernly point and I don't fancy it much. It's a long way from the carpark and a big fat grey cloud is parked over a large chunk of it. The ferry over to Unst was jam packed and they were edging people up bumper to bumper in order to get the last car in so I can't afford to miss the ferry back.

The true Northmost point may yet defeat me too, as while I was sitting in my precarious position on the Saxa Vord road, I got a call saying my cruise tomorrow is cancelled. Some cock-and-bull story about sea conditions but the lass yesterday let slip they needed a minimum of 4 people and only 3 were booked so they probably use the 'sea conditions' excuse for when they can't be arsed. Anyway, I'm booked for Thursday now, so lucky I didn't go planning too much else around all this. And if Thursday doesn't happen, well the closest I will have got is HP632155 (or is that HP155632?) or there abouts.

And how come I can get Orange reception here and I was cut off in most of Orkney???

Back to my exploration...

Well that's my first day in Shetland finished. I had my breakfast with all the fishermen in a little cafe next to the harbour in Lerwick, bought a few supplies, and now I'm camped in a placed called Levenwick, a bit South of Lerwick and overlooking Cumlewick Ness, No Ness and Mousa island - the view from the tent is very pretty.

Primary motivation for staying at Levenwick was the washing machine though really. Thus while I worked out where I wanted to go over the course of the week and how I wanted to do it, I also put a load on and waited for it.

Also, as I (wonder of wonders!) had phone reception at the site, I booked myself on a couple of boat trips from leaflets I'd picked up at tourist information in Lerwick. One is a real treat - a very luxurious full dayer around all the North Isles which effectively takes me around the top most point of the UK. I can't get there by car so this will be the next best thing. That's on Wed hopefully, weather permitting. I've also lined up a shorter trip around Bressay and Noss. This is to make up for the boat trips I didn't do in Orkney.

Once my washing was done and smalls stocks replenished, (plus the back of my car festooned with drying jeans and jumpers), I headed to the Southernmost tip of the Island. Primary motivation - to visit Jarlshof, a neolithic village site that rivals Scara Brae.

Jarlshof is a full-on hand rails and interpretive boards thing - you even get an audio guide with this one. Consequently there were lots of people (though no screaming kids at least). It is a very good site though I have to say, with buildings that are pictish built on by more advance pictish buildings, built on by Vikings, built on by medieval people. You can walk around and see how building has advanced and evolved over the millenia. And considering it was the same price as I paid to go down a damp hole in Minehowe - good value for money too.

Next - Sumburgh Head. It has a headland which you can see sticking up for miles around, and a lighthouse on it, and huge jagged cliffs which house a wealth of sea birds including gannet, guilemot, kittewake, puffin (supposedly) and lots more. I felt I had entered serious Twitcher territory though. Me with my £10.99 monocular from Blacks and bright purple clothing, them with huge high end binoculars, super telephoto lensed cameras and camouflage gear. I had a quick peek at the cliffs at all the recommended view spots then fled before someone growled at me for accidentally disturbing a lesser spotted thigumiwhosit.

- One thing though. An idiot board at Sumburgh head gave me a clue of what those big Not-Albatross things I was seeing were. Fulmars. Dunno if they have the takeoff problems I witnessed one bird have on Orkney, but they do seem likely candidates for what I was seeing, and at least they're official shoreline birds. See I knew the answer would turn up eventually.

Oh, another interesting fact - the main runway for Sumburgh airport goes across the only road that gains access to Jarlshof and Sumburgh head. Thus, they have to employ gates across the road similar to those that stop cars crossing when trains are about to arrive...only when the gates come across, a small plane whizzes by you instead. It happened to me when I was trying to get to Jarlsof and I couldn't believe my eyes. Tried to get a picture like every other amazed tourist at the gates but I think we all failed.

After Sumburgh, I had a look at the Croft museum which was another 'Historical Scotland' sponsored living cottage thing. Very nice and in the same spirit as the Kirbuster one in Orkney - the warden was even in period costume in this one. They had box beds too, interestingly, but weren't making a big deal about them. The croft also had an open hearth, burnt peat, and had traces of the In-by/Out-by concept as per Orkney, but again, this was played down. Shetlands don't seem to bothered with their pictish roots they only care about the Norse bits. Wierd.

After that I fanced having a look at Scalloway and Hamnavoe, having heard the names from somewhere but I couldn't remember that context. Turns out Scalloway has a 'palace' in the same vein as the Earl's palace in Orkney (though more ruinous), and Hamnavoe was in my guide book as being 'pretty' which it was in a strangely backwater sort of way. Some very nice silouettes of Foula in the background too.

As I was now in that neck of the Voe, so to speak (I think a Voe is the Shetland term for what the Scandinavians call a fjord) I decided to continue for as far as I could go down a narrow spit of land called West Burra - ending up in Papil. I had no idea what to expect, having never been in that sort of territory before but what I found was (in my opinion) the best bits of Highland Scotland and beachy Scotland all rolled into one. Impossible to describe (I just tried and had to delete it) but lets just say there is something very special about being on a narrow spit of land, looking at a slightly larger spit, and with the mainland behind that with looking hills and cloud on top, all in the middle of millpond still tidal water. Wow. Makes me suddenly want to see the Scandinavian Fjords so much more.

Still in the mood for spits of land, after I came back up out of West Burra I went to see St Ninian's Island for the sunset. This Island is separated from the mainland by a 'tombola' - which appears to be the official term for a sandbank with tidal water on either side. The sunset was lovely and orangy and enjoyed only by me and the occupants of two tourers - and then when I came back to the campsite I found I was the only resident tonight which will be a bit strange but at least no queues for the shower.

So. What have I discovered about Shetland from today? Well it's much hillier than Orkney for a start, so the roads are more wiggly and driving is a totally different experience. In Orkney I was often faced with long straight roads across large fields of crops and with absolutely no-one in sight you can really (safely) floor it, plus it makes over-taking people very easy as well when you do meet them. In Shetland the road weaves about with sharp bends and not much long distance visibility, also they are a lot busier with local traffic. Consequently, driving here is much more hard work than Orkney and when you get stuck behind someone, you're stuck.

I also see now what Billy meant about the landscape having been shaped by sheep. Orkney is all about rolling corn fields else wet moor. Almost all of Shetland by contrast is close cropped green grass which makes it look and feel more like the South Downs, especially as almost all it's edges are sheer cliffs like the ones around Dover. Or as I overheard someone say at Jarlshof - 'It's like tellytubby land!' (refering to the caost with its smooth grassy curves).

When I said before that it felt a bit more Scandinavia, I've worked out that this is because all the houses are painted bright blues and greens and reds in contrast to Orkney where all the houses are stone or stone coloured. They have higher sloping roofs too. There are also lots of wood built houses too - but as there is a shortage of trees on Shetland just as there is for Orkney, is this a reflection of the easy trade routes Shetland established with mainland Norway when the Vikings came?

Unless Billy is right and everyone in Shetland is actually Scottish, I'd dare to say that the accent is a more precise and easier to understand than Orkney's guttural and sometimes obtuse twang - like a hellish version of Glaswegian. Shetlanders also use sentences instead of random words, which helps.

And Lerwick is definately more cosmopolitan than Kirkwall - you can get pannini's and croissants in Lerwick. Possibly its the influence of all the Scandinavian ships in dock. Kirkwall only ever got boats from other Orkney Islands and Thruso so there ye goart tatties an' haggis and liked it or else!

But I wouldn't say Shetland is any better serviced with mod cons judging by my little excursion to West Burra where there was nothing except tiny residential communities, albeit with relatively contemporary looking houses but no shops or swimming pools or leisure centres as Billy threatened there would be. Of course I haven't been further north and Lerwick yet, maybe they are all there.

Oh - and I actually managed to avoid meeting Billy today. Amazing. Well there's still the rest of the week...

Ah! But! Something I forgot to mention! They do have one shocking and totally unexpected difference...THEIR BANNOCKS ARE A DIFFERENT SHAPE. Consider me traumatised. Butteries are still salty in Shetland though...

I aim to go to the top of the world tomorrow, aka Unst, the Northmost island. There, I want to visit the Northmost house and Northmost postoffice. I'd love to be able to walk to the northmost point to as well but this is in the middle of a bird reserved (with dive bombing kittewakes) and is a 3 hour round trip on foot so its debatable if I'll manage it. I'll have to play that bit by ear...

And now - to bed.

Well Lerwick has full bar Orange reception so I'll take this opportunity to write stuff up as I go before setting off for the wilds.

Met Billy Fox again on the Ferry - was parked next to him though we parted company swiftly to our cabins to grab as much sleep as possible.

A free long hot shower, oh and a toilet to myself - one I could get up in the middle of the night and go to without having to don Artic weather gear - oh joy of joys. Camping always puts you in touch with what matters most in life.

The cabin was very loud though - the cheap cabins were all put next to the engine (I have a posher cabin on the way back but only cheap cabins were left on this sailing). Combine that with the windowless enclosure and perpetual gentle rock plus ocassional shudder or bang as a rough wave hits the boat - if you inclined to feeling queasy, that would have got you in seconds (they do provide a compliment of sick bags in your cabin though, how sweet). Personally, I have been blessed with a strong stomach and found the rocking soothing, but the unpredictable judders and bangs were harder to cope with and kept waking me up, so I didn't have a great nights sleep. But at least it was in a proper bed for once, hurray! Some poor beggers had toughed it out all the way from Aberdeen with nothing but what they could improvise from the seating (I saw some people take the cushions of the sofas and lay them out like beds) or the floors.

The ship came into dock around 7, and me and Billy tried to say goodbye to one another again but I have a horrible feeling we're going to see each other again, I know how difficult it is to avoid people on Islands sometimes. Now I'm in a random carpark in town and I'm going to try and find a bacon buttie shop because I haven't had breakfast yet.

Is Shetland significantly different from Orkney? Dunno. There is something slightly strange about it but it's subtle. My current guesses are
- Lerwick is a heck of a lot bigger than Kirkwall, which looks strange to my ruralised eye.
- The buildings are different. More modern? Slightly more Scandinavian? Might be making this up
- The light is different. Its clearer, crisper. Might be a one off weather thing but on Orkney I had grown accustomed to haze.

Gonna have a walk around now and get a feel for the place...

My last day in Orkney and I kicked it off in dear old Kirkwall again - though Kirkwall on a Sunday is completely shut and my favourite bannock shop was closed too so it's going to have to be oatcakes for tea tonight.

I decided to have a look at the Earl's Palace, another interesting slice of Orkney history taking in the medieval Earl's - people who aren't too popular in Orkney because they forced the farmers off their land, forced them to build the Earl's palaces when they should have been farming the land and feeding their families etc. From what remains of the palace/castle though, it was a very impressive building albeit clearly designed to keep out rebellious Earl wannabes and riotous local peasants.

The ticket woman (with the typical Orkney 40 something look) was a laugh. She asked about my stay and how I Iiked Island life, and I played my 'I'm Manx' card. She immediately proclaimed 'ooh you'll know all about it then!' and then we had a good natter about the trials and tribulations of shopping on an island. I asked her where an Orcadian buys large white goods and she said that you plan 'Shopping Expeditions' to the mainland. A group of you fly over to Inverness with purses full of cash and a detailed plan of the shopping centre, plus order of shops to visit, maximum time slots allowable for each shop etc - pretty much planned to the same degree as a trip to Everest. Then you spend as much money as you are able and get the last flight home (on certain flights/days there are no weight retrictions and you can get the rest delivered). I bowed humbly to her skill. I told her in the Isle of Man we do much the same thing at Liverpool, though we do at least have the 'man and a van' concept and the 'Manx Electric' shop that will sell you a washing machine at +20% the mainland asking price. 'And there's always catalogues' she added sagely though I asked about that little clause you see in all delivery details '...except to Isle of Man, Orkney and the Shetland Isles'. She had a lovely rant about this, how they always charge you extra just to get something delivered by the Royal Mail who should cover the area anyway and it was fraud, so it was, fraud. I shook my head and sighed sympathetically, but I saw this as a lost cause. I admired her passion though. I bade her a fond farewell as a group of tourists formed a queue behind me for tickets, and waved to her again on the way out.

There was some sort of bell ringing practise as I wandered round the castle too. The Cathedral is only just next door and I listened as a group warmed up with a slow bong bong bong then slowly mixed in more and more bells and finished with a long peal that went horribly wrong in a couple of places - but bell ringers have to practise somewhere I guess.

Then I rounded the highest turrent and a bloke said hello to me. Blow me, if it wasn't the bloke who took my photo on Hoy. He was just killing time until the boat back to Shetland (he was Scottish but he lived in Shetland). Turned out that he was a professional photographer (I knew it! It was the expensive camera that was the give away) presently on an assignment for Northlink Ferries. When he was on Hoy he was trying to catch the ferry as it went past but the weather was so bad he settled for some shots of me instead.

Quite a fascinating guy actually. In his 50s is my guess, grown up daughter sometimes referenced, he'd moved to Shetland originally because he worked in the oil business, but then he became an ecologist and finally ended up in photography a couple of years ago. He reckoned the design company in Lerwick was having trouble finding stock photos of local areas so he sent in a portfolio and he's been in work ever since. I asked him if he'd been sent anywhere exotic and he went erm, well he got sent as far as Edinburgh once - and got his fare paid to Iceland, only it was from Copenhagen so he had to get ther first. But he does a lot of portfolio photos for local artists, local news etc. He's happy enough with his new career.

Then we chatted about Shetland - he reckoned I was going to find it very different from Orkney. Orkney is very round, he said. Shetland is much more hilly with deep fjords, and the people have a different attitude too. I asked whether they were more insular and he said no, it was more that there was a lot of 'oil money' (in the same way you could say in the Isle of Man there is a lot of Offshore banking money and Orkney has, erm, farming and tourism). He says the island is going through generation number two who have got used to the affluence and mod cons of working with the big Oil firms and this is dangerous because one day its going to end and then they will be back to sheep farming. I drew parallels with the Isle of Man and it's tax haven status. Also, because he was Scot he was able to be disparaging about the locals and he said that they'd all like to think they were Vikings but actually they were probably all Scots. Again, I drew parallels with the Isle of Man.

Then I drew him onto wind farms. I got the predictable response - he hates them and he's presently violently protesting against a huge wind farm proposed for the middle of Shetland. 600 million in tax payers money, he reckons and it won't be able to pay for itself for years to come, if at all. From his old employment he's seen it all before - cost wise, wind farms don't make the money back and (certainly in Shetland anyway) the peat that they'd remove to set up the farm would absorb more C02 from the atmosphere than the windfarm would save in fuel consumption.

He favours a more small scale local approach - each village should be given money to create their own off grid system for their community, something they'd care for and maintain, and dole out the power from to its members. By seeing what they consume and being accountable to their peers for it, this would motivate them to consume far less than just seeing a huge wind farm on a hill and thinking 'oh its alright now'. I liked the sense in that. And he reckoned that though the population of the Shetlands hasn't increased that significantly, power consumption has gone up 5 fold. This is because people aren't caring what they consume. A couple he knew that went 'off grid' though with a wind unit and a little hydro unit on a nearby stream + batteries to store charge during dry/calm spells (cost 8 grand) - they were horrified to see how much e.g. a dishwasher impacted electricity they had worked hard to make, and so instantly stopped using it. All he's proposing is this on a slightly wider scale. Goodness knows how you make something like this happen though.

He also wasn't keen on Greenpeace. Says during that big oil spill they had years back when a large tanker broke up on Shetland shores - he reckoned Greenpeace was there kicking up a huge stink but all they were after was publicity and they didn't actually do a great deal. In the end, they closed off a fishing area for 10 years and the rest just cleared itself up, storms broke up the spill and took it away. Greenpeace are also very pro-Wind farms which he didn't like.

Then we drifted onto art. I think it was back to the fact he took photos of artists paintings for prints and portfolios. I mentioned my Mum's links with a gallery in IoM and that islands did seem to draw more of an art community than e.g. Manchester. He reckon he knew this fella once who worked in a music shop and collected guitars. When he got up to 10 of them he was persuaded to hand them over to the local artists to decorate and there was a display of them for a while that he did the publicity photos for. He thought that the guitars were no longer on display anymore but I should go into the shop anyway for a laugh and ask about them, mentioning him. I'm almost tempted.

Anyway, we talked for ages about stuff, and when we parted we joked we'd probably meet each other again on a Shetland cliff, such being the size of things and the way things work in small places.

Www.billyfoxphotography.com apparently. I'll definately drop him a mail when I get back, could end up being a useful contact.

Anyhow, all that chatting killed the morning, time for a bit of antisocialness again. Rennibister earth house was first and if you cross refer to my picture of it, you see that I took one look at it and thought, 'Are you taking the p*ss here?'. Basically it was just a fenced off piece of concrete with a lid in the centre of it that you lifted up, then crawled inside. Actually it was quite cosy when you got down there, but there cairns were getting more wierd and wonderful by the second. At least it was free.

Next was Cuween chambered cairn. This was like a slightly smaller and less expensive version of Maeshowe. You picked up a torch from a box outside, then got in via a short passage way you had to crawl down. Inside, it was nice and cool and sheltered, with three little nooks coming off the central section where presumably bodies were placed. The spookiest bit though was tucked into the wall of one nook was a little posy of dried grass, tied with another stalk of grass. It was very deliberate and looked like an offering or something someone would put on a grave. Probably being extremely blasphemous to the local pagan, I couldn't resist and made a second posy and put this next to the next nook along. Wonder how much this will freak out the next visitor. Must also learn how to carve runes so I can leave an 'Elly carved these runes' graffiti somewhere too. Yet again, just as with Rennibister and all the free cairns on Rousay - not a soul around but me. People really don't bother if there isn't an 'interpretation centre' do they?

Case in point - next stop was the Broch of Gurness. Has an entrance fee, a warden, and promise of lots of boards and video displays. Suddenly the carpark had cars in it again. Tent living is strange because you can look at the outline of tiny little Viking huts and think to yourself hmm, roomy. Like the cubbyhole there, looks useful. Quite warm and in a sheltered spot too. Nice bed space and firepit. Perhaps I've been too long without a proper bed and now suddenly even neolithic remains are starting to look comfortable...

Continuing my theme for today which was chattiness I had a little natter to the Warden at Gurness. He was a Orkney local and wouldn't be drawn on what Shetlanders were like, only that I would find it 'different' and he looked like he was holding his tongue about something. I wonder if there is some sort of inter-island antipathy going on here? Must dig further on this one. I asked if it was going to be significantly worse weather up their and he just blew out his cheeks and said it was all a bit pot luck really. He had a point, the microclimates around the island meant all weather forecasts were more or less meaningless and the best you can do is pack lots of jumpers and hope. He lived just over Burgar Hill a mile or two from the Broch and reckoned sometimes he could leave home in sun and discover and storm and gale at Gurness so...I saw his point.

Click mill next, a Viking vertical shaft mill like an automated quern stone. Again, free, in the middle of nowhere, had to hike across a field and let myself in, and no soul there. I liked it though - clever little system. The vikings were way more advanced than the picts, no wonder they kicked their asses.

Finally, as it was closing time at all the pay-for stuff and I'd done all the important free stuff, I went back to the Brough of Birdsay (low tide) to look at the broch, and finished off playing at Yesneby again, getting some nice sunset shots.

And now I'm sitting at Hatston
Terminal waiting for the ferry - no point going to Kirkwall as everything will be shut except the pubs and drinking would be a bad thing right now when I need to load a car onto a ferry. Indeed I think the thing may now be in port but my car is so crusted with salt and muck it's difficult to see.

Is it wrong to be excited about getting a proper bed tonight? (even if it is only for 7 hours). As to the Shetlands themselves? I really don't know what to expect any more so I guess I'll just have to turn up and see...wish me luck (especially with my phone signal - if it all goes wrong this may be the last you here from me until the 22nd...nah surely it's not THAT much of a backwater...)

By the way, what are the symptoms for having fluid build-up in the lung. I have a tightness in my chest on the left side and I want to work out if I've got tuberculosis/pseumonia or whether I just slept wrong last night.

It was another chilly night, though when I woke up in the middle of it for a pee I opened the tent to a beautiful full moon landscape not unlike that which might have greeted neolithic man at the door of his smoky roundhouse thousands of years ago. I sat for a while, watching the clouds move across the moon and strike halloweenesque poses - then went to the toilet block like neolithic man definately wouldn't have.

I'd booked myself on the first Rousay ferry out, expecting it to be heaving with tourists like the Hoy one was. Not so though, in the end there was only me and a couple of cyclists there which was unfortunate as I normally work out what to do by copying the guy in front. So I didn't know that with these tiny 9 car ferries you had to reverse into the boat until one of the crew told me. Going down a wet slipway backwards in a car, then up a clanky and slightly shifting gangway onto the boat - that was something I had to work out on the fly myself. I wouldn't fancy doing THAT with a caravan.

The journey was lovely. A tad shorter than the Hoy one and slightly more sheltered. I didn't have my destination Island looming over me muttering 'Feck off ye bastards' under its breath all the time either, Rousay seemed quite fluffy and welcoming. And I could smell something nice cooking in the ships cab, and the person collecting money offered me a student discount - everything seemed to be boding well for this trip.

Mind you, I say that but I didn't get what he was saying at first. 'Schtood-ah!' he growled at me and I looked blank. 'Schtood-ah!' he demanded of me again and I considered bursting into tears. This is the one thing that really bugs me about Orcadians, if you don't undertand, they don't help you at all by adding a little context round the word like 'Are ye a schtood-ah?', they just keep barking said random word at you until you work it out. Like the woman in the Co-op the other day who kept saying 'Kishba!' at me and expecting me to reply. I was almost tempted to reply in French or make up a similarly nonsensical word and say this back at her but she wouldn't proceed until she got the correct reponse, and kept saying this word at me - kishba. I looked around me for possible context...she was processing my card payment. 'Oh! Cash back?' I finally guessed and she nodded frantically. All sorted but a simple 'Di ye woan't kishba?' would have helped. Bah.

Oh and this is one of only three places in the world where I sound posh. The other two are America ('gee is that an Ingerlish accent? Ain't that so cute') and Wigan.

Anyway, back to the Rousay ferry. Another great thing about the journey was - and I can barely believe I was lucky enough to see this but - half way during the crossing I saw a Sea Eagle attack a gull! Some sort of bird type fracas caught my eye, and then it became clear that this big brown bird with white wing tips was trying to pull a gull out of mid air. When the gull managed to out run it, it gave up and did a low swoop over the sea, trailing its claws in the water. Then it flew off a short distance, met another eagle, and they did a little dance together in the air before flying off together. Like, wow man! I saw another couple of eagles of a cliff edge a bit later so clearly Rousay and her straits are eagle central.

I half hoped I would get to see locals waiting at the Rousay ferry terminal ready for a day's commute to the mainland, but there wasn't anyone there. Feasibly one van on it's way down as I drove away (looked like a local) but otherwise, nothing. How come big unfriendly Hoy gets all the visitors and friendly rural Rousay does not? I don't get it. From the hill at the top of the ferry stop, I watched the ferry back out of the tiny little harbour, do an 180 degree turn then go straight across a much shorter strait to Egilsay, a 5 min journey with likely as not no waiting passengers at that jetty either. Rousay was already feeling like the back of beyond and I hadn't even strayed from the harbour yet.

Midhowe cairn was first on the agenda. The carpark was completely empty so I feared that it might be shut because it was too early in the morning, but that's not how things work on Rousay. On this island, all its precious cairns have been enclosed in hefty protective buildings but none of them are locked, so you can pad around these structures quietly at whatever time of the day, and shut up after yourself when you are done. It feels a bit like letting yourself into a church and looking around, or like you have just broken into a museum after hours and are having a look around on your own. It's quite nice, if a little spooky.

Midhowe is protected by a subtancial stone barn with big thick doors - but you let yourself in and find this marvellous chambered cairn inside with gangways over the top of it so you can look in. And there are no screaming kids running around or anyone else getting in the way, it's just the sound of your footsteps and the wind howling over the roof of the barn. Its a very sublime experience - you can really concentrate on what it must have been like to be there at the time.

Midhowe broch is just next door. Brochs are huge hyper fortified Viking stone huts - walls which are feet thick with steps in them so you can run up the interior to the top, where presumably you can stand and shout rude names down at your aggressors until they decide to go away and pillage elsewhere. It was okay. I wouldn't say no to a Broch at the bottom of the garden to skulk in but only if they were on sale or something. Otherside a shed would do fine.

And on the shore just below the broch, tourists had been doing ad hoc henges as I've seen all around Orkney (I first saw a knee high henge on the beach next to Scara Brae and thought 'oh that's clever' and I've been seeing them all over the place since). I had to join in so I built myself a little mini chambered cairn and even put a couple of bones in it (gull probably). I'm wondering if people will be excavating again in another millenium and trying to work out why all sorts of ancient Orkney stone age sites are surrounded by lots of tiny little replica henges. 'Offering to the Gods' they'll probaby say. 'Ceremonial'.

After Midhowe, I drove to a beach which was meant to have a 'sandy sheltered bay with nearby seal haul out area'. The beach was sandy and sheltered only by Orkney standards (it was a mere two jumperer). I was dying to see a seal haul out area, but walked a few hundred metres down the beach and saw nothing except a group of testy oyster catchers and a bit of washed up boat.

Just as I was about to give up though, I spotted a grey head sticking up out of the sea, and them soon after, a seal dragged itself up out of the water only a short distance away from me and proceeded to bask in the sun. Another beached its self a distance further out to sea on some exposed rock, and another couple of grey heads remained bobbing up and down in the water as the sunbathers watched. It was really nice to watch. I stayed until my fingers started to turn white, then moved on.

The Knowe of Yarso is another cairn sheltered away from the weather by a big concrete dome which has then been grassed over to not wreck the landscape. This chambered cairn felt small and personal. Because I was the only one there it almost felt like I was intruding and should be apologising to someone so I did, just in case. Then I stood around for a reasonable length of time soaking up the atmosphere - there was definately a vibe to this cairn, but a good one, I liked it.

Blackhammer cairn - much the same again only you enter from the roof and a sliding metal door, then go down some steels steps to get to the long low chambered cairn. This one felt less personal though it was bigger that Yarso.

Finally, Taversoe Tuick - much the same again only it is on two levels and you decend down into the second level via some wobbly metal steps. Then you can sit in a dark hole where bodies and bones were once piled up, and hope that the door doesn't blow shut and trap you in because the next tourist to come along could be quite a while and I imagine it can get very creepy there at night.

Yep, I spent a full day on Rousay and never saw a soul. It was wierd and unexpected - I guess cairns just aren't a big enough draw for your average tourist, they need guides and interpretive centres and tea shops before they'll consider the ferry journey. And I thought that the tourists round here were tougher than that. I'd been looking at all the names in the museum visitors books yesterday and the majority were Scottish or Shetlandic, hardly any poofy Unglish. They should have been crawling over the cairns in droves.

On the ferry journey back, I finally had some companions. There were two other cars (so at no point had this tiny weeny ferry been full to capacity yet, or even half full) and one elderly lady, quite genteel looking, who was waved off at the pier and had a huge suitcase with her. It crossed my mind she might be going on holiday somewhere, and how troublesome that would be if e.g. you wanted to go to America and you were a Rousay resident. Ferry to mainland Orkney, taxi to Kirkwall airport, plane to mainland UK, flight to America. I can see why you can get into the Island mentality that anything beyond your immediate borders isn't worth knowing about. Indeed if there are only three ferries per day from your 20km Island to the mainland it makes things a bit of a fag and you'll start minimising the amount of times you do it, even if that's just for bread, milk and petrol. Before you know it, the last time you ventured more than 5 miles from your doorstep was 23 years ago and you weren't aware the Falklands war had ended. It's easy done.

I finished off the day with Stromness museum. It's a lovely little place, more of a reference library than a museum with hoary handed fishermen in there looking up their ancestors side by side with bored tourists killing time before the ferry home. It had a stuffed animal section so I revised my knowledge of seabirds. Have to admit I was confusing my snipes with rails, but my plovers, oyster catchers, curlews, shags, guillemots, skewers and shearwaters are still in order. I've always had trouble telling different species of gull apart, but I think that's forgivable.

There was one particular bird I was after but they didn't have any in the museum - I have been seeing something around which looks like a really big gull, I mean a REALLY big gull with wings out straight like someone had glued a plank on its back and painted it black. And I saw one trying to take off from the water - it was at it ages, running along the water surface and flapping like crazy, it had the takeoff profile of a jumbo jet. All I can think of is albatross but that feels wrong somehow - I thought they were mid ocean birds not cliff/loch birds. I can't think of anything else that big and cumbersome though but I'm sure I'll find the answer out eventually.

Alas it will be time to pack up and leave Evie tomorrow. I've been here so long, nature has started to integrate with my tent - grass is growing round it, beetles are living in it, I have small mushrooms in my vestibule and lichen will soon be forming on the lee side of it. There is a tiny bit of relief I'm going because yesterday someone erected one of those 20ft tents that are meant to sleep 18 people, and in it they have hoards of 2 year olds who run around screaming and falling over your guy ropes, then wailing about it. And having no phone reception at Evie has been a pain, but I suspect that's only going to get worse in Shetland so I may as well get used to it

Otherwise though, it's been a grand little place. Next stop - an overnight cabin on the ferry to Shetland (oh bliss) and as I am running short of socks, I think I'll spend the first night someplace with a washing machine, then head off into the true wilds of Unst and Eshaness. Wouldn't mind having a crack at getting to Foula and/or Fair Isle too but this could be ambitious with the time I have available. With any luck though, all the Shetlanders are in Orkney on holiday so things should be nice an