To the end of the World! - or the British Isles at least!

To the end of the World! - or the British Isles at least!

Today was the big adventure, our trip to Hermaness on the isle of Unst. This is an RSPB nature reserve at the northern most tip of Shetland, and so the most northerly point of the British Isles. We made an early start and drove up past Lerwick, Brae, Sullom Voe and Hillside to the ferry terminal at Toft. There is a ferry about every hour. Here's a chance for me to tell my Shetland Island joke….
"Is this where you catch the ferry north?"
"Yell?"
"I SAID IS THERE WHERE YOU CATCH THE FERRY NORTH?'…..
(The next island is called Yell……)
The ferry has a capacity for about 16 cars, but as it was early and Sunday we had no problem.
From the Yell southern terminal - Ulsta, to the northern terminal is about 9 miles, and you can't really dawdle because there's another ferry to get to Unst. So we just "bombed" up the road, this is easy because on Yell:
a) The roads are great, in really good condition.
b) There's hardly any traffic, we probably only met 3 or four cars on the whole trip.
c) There are no distractions! A black sheep, (as apposed to a white one), is about as interesting as it gets!

Unst is the last Island, and this is more interesting and before we got to the most Northerly car park we saw: the the most Northerly Brewery, the most Northerly Cafe, the most Northerly Church, the most Northerly business - are you spotting a theme here? oh and a "furnished" bus shelter - it has an arm chair, a carpet, some books, a pack of cards and even it's own web site! (I didn't see a bus timetable though!)

Before we started our walk onto the bird reserve we tried to visit the visitors centre.. (the most Northerly visitors centre?), but guess what? It was closed "for the winter"…. It was August 21st!

The walk to Hermaness point begins over a vast stretch of boggy heathland, it would be a nightmare if those wonderful RSPB people hadn't provided a "duckboard" type path which went for over 2 km! But it was still an exhausting ascent, to a spectacular coastline view of high cliffs and the blue Atlantic! We walked north along the cliff top, the path dropped really steeply, and I was aware of how we had to go back up this hill on our return… Our aim was to keep following the the coast until we could see the Flugga Mucker lighthouse, the furthest we could go, when we got to this point we stopped for our sarnies. As we ate we watched the gannets flying from the rock stacks below, the weather was good again and the rest was much appreciated!

The return journey was tough, (that steep bit!), but once back on the duckboards it surprised us how quickly we got to the car park, on the way back we passed a pair of nesting skuas and a lady cyclist…. a rare bird?

On the Shetlands many of the roads are really narrow - single lane, and there are "passing points" every so often. When we drove away from Hermaness we were on one of these lanes when we met another car coming the other way…. I reversed maybe 200 yards and pulled onto the verge, the car passed but when I tried to move on I realised we were actually in a ditch! PANIC! We really thought we were stuck, and Sunday afternoon on Unst is not the easiest place to get the AA out - that's if you can get a phone signal… So with Jan pushing the car and me using all the skills I've learned from Top Gear we managed to extricate the Kia! Phew!

We stopped at the aforementioned Cafe and bus shelter (photo opportunity) on the way back and then motored/sailed home.. A long day, but memorable too.