Our croft house was already feeling like home, just like that! Every place I stayed in Shetland felt very homey, but because I was sharing this place with David, it was doubly warm and comfortable. When I originally reserved it, I was planning on staying here alone. Somewhere in my subconscious, it seems I knew he would be there with me.
After our first breakfast together, we set out to explore the island I bit. I had reserved a tour and tasting at the Shetland Reel distillery in Saxa Vord for early afternoon, so we had several hours to take a walk or two. First, a visit to Haroldswick to see the Viking longhouse and longship.
Unst has a very deep history of Viking settlements. It would have been the first stop for the longships coming from Norway, as it is the northernmost island in the archipeligo. The Haroldswick longhouse is a replica, but there are longhouse archeological sites in Unst.
This Skidbladner is an amazing replica. The craftsmanship is very impressive!
The green stone is serpentine. Just beautiful! Norwick also has an example of ophiolite, earth’s crust at the ocean floor thrust up when continents collided. Whoa! I failed to capture it, however.
The Shetland Reel Distillery at Saxa Vord was in an unremarkable industrial building. The tasting was extensive! And delicious. So many carefully and skillfully crafted flavors. We loved the Filska (hints of grapefruit), Wild Fire (hints of spicy warmth), the Ocean Sent (bladderwrack seaweed), and the original. We drank too much and bought too many bottles. But they were excellent gifts along our way – we managed to make it home with the Ocean Sent, though!
Up the road from the distillery was a “planet walk” — Unst in particular has a very active “sky watching” community. The planet walk was exactly what you’d think – a walk through the solar system along a peat road with the heavenly bodies proportionately placed. It goes past the old RAF radar station (1957-2006).
You may have noticed that Unst appears to have….very few people. 46 square miles, 600 people, mostly concentrated in the several small villages. There are great stretches with nothing but land, water, and sheep. Now, I was there in mid-summer, when it never really gets dark. But in the fall and winter, it is very dark, and the night sky – from what I understand – can be quite dramatic, with stars, Milky Way, and Northern Lights.
At the beginning of the walk, there was a box with sticks that had planets attached to the ends. These are bonxie sticks, for holding up over your head if you get dive-bombed by Great Skua, which nest in the fields along the way.
Heading back to our croft house, we passed Bobby’s Bus Shelter! It is in all the tourist material on Unst. This iteration, it was all duded up for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
Back home, we observed this seemingly-harmless bunny. A little later, another bunny came nearby. We were just commenting on how sweet they were, when all of a sudden, they were both in attack mode! They had a kicking fight, jumping way up in the air. This went on for a while, but we were too gobsmacked to film it.
21 June, 2022
Debkakes in the UK 2022 
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