Graveyard in the Mist

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.

What…Another Beach

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!

Another Day, Another Beach

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.

Burn of Lunklet

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.

New Day…New Beach

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.

New Year’s Eve Patterns

We normally go for a walk on New Years Day, but with torrential rain and Gales tomorrow we went for one today.

Luckily I took this photo as I realised I had left the car lights on.

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.

Steatite… aka Soapstone… aka Talcum Powder

As I said yesterday I was off today to look at the Viking and Norse Steatite quarry down in the South Mainland.

This is down at Catpund, just a bit below the village of Cunningsburgh. The actual quarry is a bit of a climb up a hill, it is only 150m up, but it is a steep ascent, luckily a modern talc quarry ran a track up there in the 90’s so at least it was a dry walk. The quarry was used to make industrial Talcum Powder… from what I remember they removed over ten tons in the time they were in operation.

The historical strategy is about 50 – 60m away from the more modern site.

So we got up there and had an explore around the site.. we spent most of the time in a small area, but the actual original quarry went up and down the burn… so anyway here we have some spots where the Norse workers removed some blocks…

My compass is 10cm (4 inches) long.

As you can see, these are rectangular gaps, this is pretty specific to the Norse period. More circular gaps are either earlier or later.

We also found evidence of where the chisels had done their work in removing the blocks…

The above photo was a pure fluke as the light was pretty rubbish due to cloud and mist. Just when I was about to give up, the clouds parked and the chisel marks leapt into focus.

I took a photo down the burn to show some of the Mills and associated buildings, including a planticrub (a walled raised bed).. this is the squarish structure on the left of the photo.

So if you would like to learn a bit more about steatite on Shetland then please have a look at the following blog post all about it (written by my wife)… https://www.archaeologyshetland.org/post/2016-1-16-in-depth-steatite-in-shetland

I got myself a couple of bits from the modern spoil heap and will try and make an oil lamp and a spindle whorl.