Shetland

There's an absolutely beautiful public garden in Lerwick which we visited several times. Despite the chilly wind, there were the most beautiful herbaceous flowers, such as these lupins - which, unlike mine, seemed to be immune to the depredations of slugs and snails - delphiniums (ditto) and every imaginable colour of columbines with nary a greenfly (unlike mine). I imagine the greenfly are blown off. Or perhaps they can't fly this far in the first place.

There were also lots archaeological sites, such as the Clickimin Broch, dating from about 100 BC, with an impressive indoor stair.

The Shetland wildflowers included these red campions, which were everywhere and absolutely lovely. Orkney had the usual pink ones but these were much brighter, with stems really thickly covered with blossoms.

Commenters have asked if I visited knitting shops. To my shame - no - though I did look in some windows. I'm not really a knitter. However, at the Bon Hoga Gallery there was a great café with this basket of knitting - a long scarf. I knitted one row, thinking of Thimbleanna and Daughter 1, both industrious knitters.

These notices were beside litter bins in various places. "Bruck" means "mess" - so "Don't drop litter".

 And

 everywhere

 we

 went

 there

 was

 something

 lovely to look at.

And more Viking and older remains. This is Jarlshof, which was occupied over many centuries.

Fortunately it hardly rained. Lerwick has a wonderful museum and there are a few other minor museums and some shops, but there's not a lot for tourists to do in either Orkney or Shetland in bad weather unless they just do it in the rain. Should you decide to go - which I would recommend - take warm, rainproof clothes, hats (yes, Mr L wore his fleecy hat on occasions), gloves (we didn't have any but often had to retract our hands inside our jackets to keep them warm) and a lot of books.

I got quite a bit of evening quilting done.

 

And yes, there were many Shetland ponies. Very cute!

Simmer dim

And then we got the overnight ferry to Shetland.

Shetland is really quite far north - about the same latitude as Bergen in Norway or Hudson Bay. It's about as far from Edinburgh (up the way) as Edinburgh is from London (down the way) - only with more sea in between. And one thing I was really looking forward to was experiencing the "simmer dim", or summer dimming of the light, at the end of June. It never gets completely dark at this time of year. Even here Edinburgh the nights are very short - just now, for example, it's half past nine in the evening and it's as light outside as it would be on a rather dull afternoon. But in Orkney and particularly Shetland, it's broad daylight till 11pm, somewhat duskish between midnight and 1am and then it starts getting light again.

We didn't have a great view out of the window of the place we were staying. We weren't far from the sea, but somehow Mr L isn't the sort of chap who's enthusiastic about going down two flights of stairs and making his way down to the harbour at midnight. And I didn't particularly fancy a lone midnight walk. So my photos are unspectacular but you can still get the idea of how light it was.

I did go outside and take a photo of the house at 11pm, above. We had the light on, as you can see up at the top of the house, but only because the windows of our living room were quite small and didn't let in very much light at any time of day.

These are views from the kitchen window about 11.15pm.

Midnight. The little light is the moon.

 

3.15 am, above and the two below.

 

Yes, you're perhaps right that I should spend more time sleeping. But I'll be doing that permanently one of these days. I don't like to waste too much time doing it now.