It’s possible I am not the best person to talk about the Shetland Islands. I
love a bit of rain and I’m fond of windy walks. I actually like swimming in
cold water, and guillemots and gannets do strange things to my soul. I am,
in short, an unreliable witness. Phrases such as “life-affirming” will
almost certainly be overused before the end of this page. Gratuitous gushing
may well occur. I will endeavour to poke cruel and cynical fun wherever
possible, but it will be hard.
I have just had one of the best weeks of my life.
I come to the Shetland Islands because Atlantic Airways is launching direct
flights from Stansted to Sumburgh on June 23, and I want to find out if it’s
worth the £156 they’re going to charge. Gannets and guillemots are all very
well, but EasyJet will fly two of you to Marrakesh for that sort of money —
with enough change left over for the finest tagine south of Tangiers. With
many papers talking up Shetland as if it’s the new Maldives, what I want to
know is this: is it worth the bother?
Five minutes from the airport, I have my answer. I am sitting on a tufted
clifftop at Sumburgh Head, turquoise shallows twinkling far below, a
foreverness of emerald fields and clear blue skies rolling towards the
north. A pair of puffins are squabbling outside their burrow not 10 feet
from where I’m perched, the skies around me are thick and riotous with
wheeling fulmars and crying kittiwakes. I live in the Trossachs, 10 miles
from the nearest pint of milk, ospreys glide about above our garden — and
still I’m slightly wobbly at the sheer, unfettered wildness of what these
islands seem to offer. God knows what effect it’ll have if you’ve just
schlepped up from Balham, but I suggest you don’t wander too close to the
edge of the cliff.
There are three things nearly everybody seems to know about the Shetland
Islands. One, there are the ponies, of course, and I’m happy to report that
they really are all over the place, trotting about like happy flashes of
burnished russet against the green. Two, there’s the notorious lack of
trees, often cited in evidence against the islands, as in phrases such as
“desolate moonscape” and “forbidding wasteland”, favoured by my guide.
Again, pretty much true, give or take the odd rebellious outcrop, but
desolate? Okay, Shetland villages are disappointingly scrappy affairs,
scattered across the hillside like flotsam on the wind, but even in the
half-hour between the airport and my hotel in Lerwick — particularly at
Levenwick, where the village is wedged photogenically between cliffs and
beach — there are enough Kodak moments to make me pull off the road and wish
to God I’d brought the family.
The third thing Shetland is famous for is oil, both because it has lots of it,
and because, in 1993, a Liberian-registered tanker ran aground here in Force
11 gales, spilling 85,000 tonnes of crude oil into the sea off Sumburgh
Head. It takes me all of two pints in Captain Flint’s, on my first evening
in Lerwick, to discover that Shetlanders are still quite angry about this.
How fair is it that a population of 22,000 should have eight top-notch
leisure centres, all paid for out of oil-company sweeteners, I make the
mistake of asking. Why should Shetland have such good roads, and a per
capita education budget that’s the highest in Britain? “Fair?” says a bloke
in oilskins (I swear), almost spitting out his pint. “Have you not heard of
the bloody Braer?”
It is, give or take, an equally shaming moment when I manage to knock a fiver
from a ferryman’s fingers and watch it whistle off into the North Sea, the
one isolated encounter I have with Shetlanders when they are anything other
than pathologically friendly. Strangers buy me pints; chip-shop owners want
to know if I’ve had a “brally good day”; and I know tourist offices are
meant to make you think they’re pleased you’ve walked in, but a cup of tea
while you browse the pamphlets, sir? I promised to poke cruel and cynical
fun, but you can only work with what you’ve got.
Something you come across a lot in Shetland is a vaunted connection to Norway:
it’s closer to Oslo than London; it has a neo-Viking celebration every last
Tuesday in January when islanders set fire to a longship; its dialect is
laced with Norse, including the familiar form of you, “du”.
At first, I’m ready to go along with this: the islands are riven with fjords,
or “voes”; the maps are dotted with names such as Keelhammar and Griesta,
Fladdabister and Noss; there’s even a Norwegian cafe (formerly a seamen’s
mission) in Lerwick, just down from King Erik Street. But crammed into the
Lounge Bar, in Lerwick, with teenage girls in one corner bashing out reels
on their fiddles and old blokes in Fair Isle jumpers grinning away on
accordions beside them, what you can’t escape is just the obvious,
unbridled, intoxicating Shetlandness of the place.
The Lounge Bar is your best bet for an instant hit of this Shetlandness, but
if you go nowhere else in search of the islands’ pulse, make sure you take
the boat trip out from Lerwick to Noss. I could go on at really quite
bearded length about the 20,000 gannets, 25,000 guillemots, 3,000
kittiwakes, 1,500 puffins and magnificent 592ft cliffs you drift dizzyingly
close to on the trip, but frankly I’d pay the £35 just to sit in Lerwick
harbour if it meant listening to the boat’s captain, Jonathan Wills. Former
Muckle Flugga Lighthouse boatman, nature-reserve warden, Labour candidate
and journalist, Wills has the sort of polymathic knowledge of Shetland that
I’m guessing could get a bit much if you were married to him for 40 years,
but which for three hours is like touring the Galapagos with Charles Darwin.
Another thing that might get a bit much if you lived with it for 40 years is
Shetland’s wind. I know what I said, I love a windy walk, but there’s wind
and there’s Shetland wind. At Hermaness, the very northern tip of Unst — and
therefore, Britain — tattered twine and strands of wool cling sideways to a
fence. Skuas stagger upwind then turn to hurtle inches from my head. After
two hours of tilting into an icy westerly that repeatedly rips the map from
my hands and the skin from my face, I retreat to the cosy confines of my
car, defeated. BBC Shetland reports Force 8 winds. Any danger you’ll have to
close the ferry, I ask the ferryman. “Today?” he chuckles proudly. “It’s a
bonny day.”
Next morning, not even bonny by ferryman standards, it is almost more than I
can do to tear myself from the merciful, windless warmth of Lerwick’s Peerie
Shop cafe. Cappuccinos beckon, carrot cake calls — only professional pride
forces me into my car and off to St Ninian’s Isle, which Jonathan Wills has
said is worth a look. Worth a look? There are stacks tumbling into the tide,
seals wallowing in kelpy bays, and a walk-in across a half-mile stretch of
bone-white sand really could be the Maldives if it weren’t for the eider
ducks bobbing on the surf. That afternoon, bobbing on the surf myself,
kayaking through caves and arches in Ronas Voe with a local instructor, Tom
Smith, I’m beginning to resent the 37 years it’s taken me to get here.
I’m guessing Shetland life can get a little quiet. Winters are long,
alcoholism is rife, and the local rag the week I’m here is filled with
headlines — Man Charged With Speeding, Thief Stole Handbag at Nightclub —
that hint of twitching curtains and not enough to do. Hit it when rain has
parked in for the week and I dare say Marrakesh will seem a better bet, but
see Shetland in sunshine for even an afternoon and prepare to check out
house prices before you leave. Worth £156? I can feel a “life-affirming”
coming on...
TRAVEL BRIEF
Getting there: Atlantic Airways (020 7823 4242,
www.atlantic.fo) will operate a Stansted-Sumburgh service from June 23 until
October 30, with fares starting at £156. Flights depart Stansted at 5.55pm
on Mondays and 1.15pm on Fridays (returning at 3.30pm on Mondays and 10.35am
on Fridays). Alternatively, British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com)
flies from Heathrow and Gatwick via Aberdeen, from £164; flights from
Aberdeen start at £100.
Getting around: buses are infrequent on Shetland, so hiring a
car is essential. Star Rent-A-Car (01950 460444) is the only agency at the
airport, with daily rental from £30 and weekly from £164.
Where to stay: Burrastow House (01595 809307,
www.users.zetnet.co.uk/burrastow-house-hotel), with view over a wonderfully
abandoned bay 40 minutes west of Lerwick, is the best hotel on Shetland. It
has just five fabulous doubles (£70pp, half-board), and serves magnificent
seafood cooked up by the Belgian owner, Pierre Dupont. Phone ahead for
Scalloway prawns and prepare to be astonished.
In Lerwick, Brentham House (01950 460201, www.brenthamhouse.co.uk), on Harbour
Street, has elegant ensuite doubles from £70, including continental
breakfast in your room.
Noss boat trip: 9.30am and 2pm daily. Contact the tourist
office (01595 693434) or Jonathan Wills (07831 217042,
www.seabirds-and-seals.com).
Sea-kayaking: half days £35, full days £60. Contact Tom Smith
(01595 859647, www.seakayakshetland.co.uk)
More information: www.visitshetland.com is a superb site,
with links to accommodation, events, transport, attractions and local
operators.
