Last post I did in this blog was last October, so to make ammends I braved the outside at 02.30 the other morning to make a video. Quality isn’t brilliant as I did it on my tablet as I had it handy.
You can definitely hear the birds in full voice too…
On the way back from Town this evening it looked really cool with the mist in the valley round Veensgarth and Tingwall.
James and I had to bring the horse in on the way past and had to drive through the mist. We had to drive past the graveyard and what better thing to do while the mist rises … we went in.
Sadly my phone camera was really struggling with the light levels … but it does give an idea of the atmosphere.
This weekend we decided to take the caravan for a little outing to Burra. These are two islands, East and West Burra that are joined to another island of Trondra. Thankfully all connected by bridges and about a 25 minute drive with the caravan attached.
We parked our little 1993 caravan next to a Pile of super posh newer ones. We were in the Bridge End Outdoor Centre which also has spaces for caravans. £20 a night wasn’t too bad.
Today we went to Banna Minn beach…
This one was a but busier than my usual beach visits… there must have been twenty other people there. Minn beach is one side of a tombolo. We didn’t bother today, but you can walk over onto Kettla Ness. Esther has been doing some survey work over on it and they discovered some iron age pottery last time they were there.
There are lots of great views across the water down there and lots of great places to sit and admire the views… sadly I found a place to sit that wasn’t that great!
Here is another beach that I have only been to once in the seventeen years I have lived here. More weirdly it is two miles from work and I basically drive past it twice a day. So this is Raewick, derived from the Norse – red sand bay.
As you can see, totally overrun with people… eleven people including the five of us.
Now to be fair, we got here at 16:00 but based on the footprints there weren’t many here all day.
It isn’t too far away from this beach https://outaboutinshetland.home.blog/2021/04/26/a-new-beach/
The first beach is just beyond the spit of ‘green’ land to the left of the photo above.
Today we decided to take the dogs a bit further afield and ended up heading west to the burn of Lunklet. The name supposedly comes from the old Norse lyngklettr which means ‘rock on a heath’ this place has a lot of the vegetation that Shetland used to be covered in such as dog rose, eared willow St John’s Wort.
One of the more striking features however, is the small waterfall…
It has been quite dry recently so not much of a whoosh in progress.
When the stream is in spate then it us extremely expressive, and loud! I have got a photo of it tanking through, but cannot find it anywhere. You can see an image Here .
The other think of note nearby are the ravens. Again in old Norse the area is known as hrafn-holl meaning Raven Hill. Sadly none were visible today.
As you can see from the photos, it wasn’t the brightest of days and there was a bit of a stiff breeze too, but still a pleasant walk. Sadly we couldn’t stop at the cake fridge as it was rather busy. We did nip into Aith charity shop on the way past though.
Today we went to a new beach, we have been past it a few times but never to it. In fact it is the longest beach on Shetland. It is right down towards the South end of the island near Quendale. Furthermore it was a lovely sunny day with temperatures around 9C.
My kids being like they are were in paddling straight away…
It was crowded as …usual…
We did get some nice photos though…
Quendale was where the dunes pushed right inland and covered a number of farms. One was excavated from the 17th century with amazing preservation as it was quickly covered by the sand.
On the way back home we stopped off at Makenzie’s Farm shop and cafe and got a late lunch. I ate mine at 15:00 and didn’t want to eat again until about 23:00. I was stuffed.
We normally go for a walk on New Years Day, but with torrential rain and Gales tomorrow we went for one today.
There were some awesome patterns in the sand at the beach…
We had a mooch at the old Church near the beach,
Evidently the air is clear here, as shown by the lichen on the gravestones…
St Mary’s was the main church in the Sandsting Parish. It was built in the 12th century. It originally had a thatched roof. It was still in use in the 1560’s. It eventually fell into disrepair in the 1760’s.
This is all that remains of the church now.
The wall to the left is not part of the original building but is now a walled family plot.
Yesterday the weather took a turn for the worst and as was expected the wind arrived… The temperature dropped too so it was an ideal time to go to the beach.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0GrSY7KJTozsEwl1gXGboDNsA
The wind caused some amazing patterns in the sand… tiny sand dunes were in patches.
The down side was the wind that caused the sand to blow. Going with the wind wasn’t too bad, but coming back into it meant sand and, later on, drizzle. This meant being sand blasted with sand that stuck.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0dAiikJeZ88f6dPO56Mt8-BtQ
Apologies for the links to the videos, the new phone decided to store all photos on the cloud. I managed to sort out the photos onto the blog but sadly the videos won’t work the same way.
As it was such an awesome day my two youngest and I donned our shorty wetsuits and headed off to the loch. There were quite a few jellyfish left stranded on the sand after the tide had gone. So we waded out (aka strolled about 200 metres until the water was deep enough to swim in, well for me anyway. We messed around in the deeper bits … by deeper, please read this as around 1m 25cm.
We had great fun, the best bit was swimming through a whole host of moon jellyfish. They were awesome. Now the one thing I didn’t know was that they have tentacles on the side of the bell. Usually they have four purple circles visible on the bell, however we found one with six and a few with five. By all accounts these circles are the reproductive organs… who knew…
We also saw loads of small fish and a huge crab 🦀… well it’s carapace was about 12cm across. We followed that for a good while.
Unfortunately no photos were taken, but after that we went into town and they now have snorkels and masks so we can have a proper look around.
You really don’t have to travel far to find some lovely views on Shetland… okay I am being s bit trite, but for some reason this evening the sycamore in the kale yard attracted my attention… I have been past there loads, so why tonight should be any different I am not sure. The leaves were just beginning to open and a heavy shower had covered a lot of buds and branches in raindrops.
Mr Blackbird was doing his evening song, he sits on the same wire most evenings, you can probably just about hear his rival off to the west…
And finally on the way in I took a shot along the valley…not bad for after 10.00pm…
You can still hear the blackbird singing, amongst others.
Out&About in Shetland 