A Day of Up and Downs

What a day… we were going out in the caravan today… so I changed the wheel, put on the replacement jockey wheel (salvaged from the old caravan) and got the thing dragged out ready to go… sadly the off side wheel had decided to not turn again… so much hitting with a hammer continued, but it became obvious that it wasn’t going to budge. It would turn backwards (as they should) and as I turned it, it sounded like there was a spring loose in there.

So I got it parked up and headed out for a day out to Sumburgh (right at the South end of the Island) the puffins are starting to return, there weren’t a huge number but we got to see some…

Now I learned something today, that I had not known… Puffins can shoot their crap about 4x their body length!

The yellow mark against the dark sea is Puffin Poo!

I also managed to get a shot of my favourite summer visitor… the great Skua.

Funnily enough four of them came low over the house this morning and got attacked by every ground nesting bird in a 500m radius. I have seen one over the house in the 12 years I have been here so four was pretty impressive.

Sea bird colonies can be a little on the loud side…

So as we were meant to be ‘camping’ we were going to get fish and chips for dinner. We dropped into town and purchased them and went up to the farm to get the horse in… on the way back down the hill the bloody clutch went on the car… so we needed the AA to come and rescue us… on the up side we had fish and chips to eat…on the down side I told the staff not to bother putting any salt and vinegar on as I was taking them home to eat…

To be honest I am being pretty Zen about it all… yeah the clutch going was a right bugger, but it could have gone at any time at any point along the journey to or from the south end. It could have gone with a caravan on, on one of the single track roads.. so yeah I have been going Ommmmmm lots today and raking gravel into pleasing patterns… well maybe not. I am not sure how much a RAV4 clutch will cost, but I don’t reckon it will be cheap.

The one thing you notice a lot up here is how much lichen you get due to the clean air…

So here we have a gratuitous shot of A Puffin again…this was taken over the wall with all the lichen.

There are plenty of seabirds about, the summer visitors are all starting to return…

From what I remember these are the guillemots and razorbills.

If you want to watch from the comfort of your arm chair then the cliff cam is now operational …https://www.shetlandwebcams.com/puffincam/

SOE, Shetland and the Norwegian’s

Today was a nice day so we went exploring out towards Lunna. This small out of the way place is synonymous with Norwegian resistance and WW2 as it was from here the Shetland Bus ran. The Shetland bus was not, as might be thought, a vehicle with four wheels. It was in fact a small fleet of vessels that ran from Shetland to the Norwegian coast and back again.

After Norway fell in 1940, the king and Norwegian government (plus a whole lot of gold) were put aboard HMS Glasgow and were taken to England to set up a government in exile. A whole host of refugees arrived on Shetland in fishing boats and other craft. They had made the 200 mile crossing to escape occupation.

The first base of operations for the Shetland Bus as just over the hill from me in Kergord, about a mile away as the crow flies. This is pretty much inland so a suitable location was required and Lunna Ness fitted the bill. Although the naval side of things moved to Lunna, Kergord was still used for the training of agents as well as mission objectives and debriefing of those returning.

To begin with Norwegian fishing boat captains were asked if they were willing to take agents and supplies in, the ad hoc arrangements were soon made more permanent in early 1941 by formation of a group of men and boats to take on the role. The main purpose of the group was to take agents into and out of Norway and provide them with weapons, radios and other supplies. They also evacuated Norwegians who feared arrest by the Germans.

This is Lunna house today, taken from down near the church

Interestingly the local Fishing Bod, has had some alterations…

These weapon slits are rather unusual in a 19th century fishing building. But as this became a bit of a training ground for agents, I wonder if the addition made this building into a training bunker or some reason like that.

This small stone beach had an important purpose as it was used as a training location for the chariots that attacked the Tirpirz.

A number of Norwegian’s were interred in the Small Church in Lunna. One was the first of the Shetland Bus casualties of the war. In October 1941 22 year old Nils Nesse was killed when his boat the Siglaos was attacked by aircraft. Others were casualties that were washed ashore.

Operations were moved from Lunna to Scalloway as the boats could be repaired there. By 1943 the fishing boats were put to rest as they were too vulnerable. To put it in to context in late 1943 twenty four men from a unit of sixty were lost.

Three lend lease sub chasers were given to the unit. These could make the journey a lot quicker and were more heavily armed than the previous boats. This is probably a story for a visit to Scalloway.

Seaside Shenanigans

My daughter and I decided we would make a blog of the things we see and do on Shetland. Yesterday we went rock pooling over towards Nesting. The rock pools were pretty treacherous so we had a mooch on the beach too.

On the way we nearly stood on this little chap..

As the tide was going out more and safer rocks were exposed so we sat on them for a while and these swam and walked into our little net… we caught some young Pollack (I think) as well as hermit crabs and other smaller shore crabs.