The little, yellow bugs are on the water

Four of the tenders were lowered today. It's a bit nippy but I'm sitting on the promenade deck without a coat. 

Lerwick is quite a large place with a busy fishing fleet by the looks of it. Further up the bay is what looks like fish processing yards, a development of industrial buildings, oil storage (or gas, not sure which at this distance) and the ubiquitous wind turbine. 

The town itself is hune out of the granite which creates this glacial landscape. Soft rolling hills with sudden cliffs at one end indicate the direction of glacial travel and shifting and buckling of the stratum show a hard geological life.

Its certainly a place I will come to, travel by ferry across from Scotland and spend a couple of weeks just exploring Lerwick itself. Then I might look to hiring a car up here once I've scoped out the lay of the land as it were.

I must admit, the manx shearwaters have now gone, probably too far out from their breeding places for them and their offspring but they've been replaced by the gannets and the black shearwater. 

I'm keeping my eyes peeled because there have been sightings of killer whales, common dolphins, minky whales and some seals.

Mm, a bit nippy but we were on a coach most of the time.

Shetland is so similar to Orkney but the Norse language is more apparent in the place names.

The land has been sculpted by ice, is mainly granite with some soapstone and there are large swathes of almost white sands (reminiscent of the Scilly islands) overlaid with peat.

Neolithic man denuded this set of islands of trees just as they had Orkney so both are tree-less.

Stone walls mark boundaries and provide shelter from the worst of the winds, both for people and animals. The majority of the island lies on a latitude of 60° so has a very short growing season, few sunny days and nearly six months of semi darkness. 

Our journey took us out of Lerwick and towards the south of the island following the A970, the main road, well the only road, towards Sumburgh airport.

Not far from there is an hotel called the Sumburgh hotel and next to it a large excavation called Jarlshof prehistoric and Norse settlement. 

Due to covid its actually closed at the moment but we had the run of the place and our guide explained so much about it.

It seems people have lived there since prehistoric times and evidence of their dwellings are still there. Interestingly as time passed the building changed too, first into a set of Bronze age roundhouses with a smythie, to iron age roundhouses and enormous Brachs. 

Seems these round unknowns are on many of the islands up here, Orkney and elsewhere, spanning ridiculously large spans and being fifty something feet tall! 

They really dont know what they were used for or how/what/why they were built but the construction is amazing.

Needless to say the photos are on the Nikon and will be processed when I get home so until then.......