In the south of Shetland:

A remarkably pleasant propeller plane flight to Sumburgh Airport at the tip of the Shetland Islands. We had taken the air tram to the airport the night before…inexpensive and simple… the tram literally across the street from our hotel. We stayed at an airport hotel and just dragged our luggage via sidewalk to the airport in the morning. I worry that any day little Martha (my $14.99 luggage made by Martha Stewart) is going to flip off a wheel. She has been pretty amazing for many years.

We got a pretty tiny car, great for the pretty tiny roads but not so great for Brant’s not so tiny knees.

Our first home was a short drive from the airport and extremely close to perfection. It really felt like home. I easily could have spent a couple days reading on the couch. It has been dream since I was about 9 years old. My friend wanted to go and get a Shetland pony but I just wanted to see it. (We liked looking through National Geographic together).The weather said 4 days of rain so we rushed out to explore before it started raining. Apparently weather apps can’t be trusted here as there was never any significant rain.

Note there are 2 fences, one is turquoise and the other in the distance is purple. Behind the purple fence are SHETLAND PONIES! And if you were to turn around 180 degrees you would be watching the surf.

The house was on a sea cliff overlooking the crashing surf. We knew it was my kind of house when we saw that nearly all the finishes were in teal, turquoise and purple. They even had a teal whisk!

The place was golf course green everywhere, and the sheep keep it manicured to velvet.

The beaches made me think of home….until I remembered I was in thermals and a down puffy jacket while the locals wore shorts.

One evening, we walked across this sand ‘bridge’ (which disappears in the winter) to a beautiful island covered with sheep and crumbling ruins. We looked back across the beach and on the far right people were going out to swim then jumping into a beachside sauna.

We found a visitor center where they had a cafe. I believe it was the only place for lunch within an hours drive. There were perhaps 2 or 3 other people that wandered in, while the staff (which I think was 3 high school boys under the command of a frazzled woman) prepared for arrival of a tour. They thought it was hilarious that I didn’t know what a tattie was (a potato). A jewelry shop nearby sold rings for several thousands of dollars and hand woven scarves were several hundred dollars. Truly beautiful stuff but a bit pricey I thought, Cruise ship shoppers?

Here is the map in the visitor center with visitor stickers from all over the world. (Zoom in to note we are the first Baja visitors). It appears that the majority of visitors to Shetland come from quick stops from cruise ships that come into the one large town (Lerwick). We saw few people everywhere we went. We had whole trails and beaches (and thankfully roads) to ourselves at times. That said many of the locals complained that the influx of tourists was hard on the island and they didn’t have the infrastructure to support them. We are not exactly sure where they were hiding all these tourists. I agree they have little infrastructure. We only saw a hotel in one town, there were very, very few stores or restaurants and the vast majority of roads were single lane with 2 way traffic (fortunately with lots of “passing places”.

There is a no no trespassing rule in Scotland. Our understanding is that you can pretty much walk anywhere anytime. It’s okay to just open a gate and walk out to the beach anywhere. This is the Croft museum located a couple hundred yards up the road from the home we rented. That’s the rule we followed when we arrived after closing time. We just opened the gate, greeted the Shetland pony then wandered around until our guilty consciences made us leave.

It was kind of Jane at Sumburgh Head to tell us about this Saturday morning bread sale at this former church. They had wonderful bread, coffee, tea and a bit of a weekly garage sale. It was a nice spot for the local community to gather at the tables surrounding the bread. She was right that it gave us an opportunity to see and be with the community. It’s clear they are a very “close knit” (literelly and figuratively) group that seemed very warm and caring.

One day we drove out to this area and decided perhaps we should check out the “Shetland Pony experience”. Why not? We went to kids day at the US Open…might as well continue with the theme. Well, as it turns out you must book in advance which turns out to be true for many stores and restaurants here as well)….perhaps a cruise ship thing but instead we wandered down a path to this Caribbean like beach.

The picture above was when the sun was in the clouds and below is when the sun poked through. The Shetland residents repeatedly told us it was clearly a miracle it did not rain during the week we were there. The in and out of the sun made me have to take many duplicates…with and without sun but never in the rain!

We did seem however to be frequently a bit off on our timing. This is where a ferry takes you to the island of Mousa which is the location of the world’s largest broch except on Saturdays.

While we saw few formal gardens there were lots of little pockets of flowers….cornflowers, daisies, and poppies were common.

It is completely untrue that I wanted to go to the Shetland Islands just so I could pet a pony but since doing so (several times) I think it would be a perfectly acceptable reason for going there. They are clearly very bright …ponies with an attitude who love getting their head scratched. I want one!

Will end the southern part of our trip to Shetland with a few more pics and the hope we can return again someday.