LERWICK, SHETLAND
Today, we arrived at our final port-of call, Lerwick in Shetland, on our way back to Dover, where we expect to disembark on Monday the 5th.
Both Tracey and myself thought we’d been here before, but a sophisticated spreadsheet, designed and maintained by Tracey, proved otherwise. We can enter the name of a port and it will tell us if we’ve visited before, on what date/s and on which ship. We’d been to the Faroe Islands and the Orkneys. Alas our previous visit to Shetland is nothing more than a figment of our imagination.
The good news, imparted by the captain the night before, is that we’ve secured ourselves a parking spot alongside the quay in the port instead of having to tender in. In fact, we could have walked it into Lerwick from the port, but neither of us is feeling one hundred percent. Yes, I managed to catch the cold too, although both of us are on the mend, we both agreed the shuttle bus was a good idea.
Once we’d been dropped off in the centre of Lerwick, we proceeded to walk about a mile and a half to a spit of land we’d identified on the map with good walking potential. Even the walk to our starting point had me wondering if we’d maybe bitten off more than we could chew, considering our colds, but the payoff when we got there was more than worth it.
Our target was a small place called Sound, on the outskirts of Lerwick, from which a good, well signposted footpath took us around the outer perimeter of the piece of land known as Ness of Sound.
It was a very satisfying walk, with good views across the bay, back to The Knab, lots of sheep to accompany us and a point of interest in the shape of the Ness of Sound Coastal Battery, a series of old gun placements and bunkers covered in interesting graffiti, and clearly a site of historical importance.
At the Ness’s most southerly point, we sat and ate our lunch overlooking the dramatic cliffs – lunch being a banana and chocolate we’d bought from a Tesco along the way… there are some benefits to being back in the UK!
Once we’d circumnavigated the small penninsula and returned to our starting point in Sound, there was one other place we wanted to check out; a round tower built on the shoreline of Clickimin Loch, known as Broch of Clickimin. We spent some time exploring the ruins before heading back slowly towards Lerwick town centre, and the shuttle bus pickup point. I say ‘slowly’ because both of us were really flagging by now.
The old town of Lerwick is quaint and understated. It’ll be entered into the spreadsheet, ready for such a time as we may be given the opportunity to return, and we may wonder ‘have we been there before?…’.
