Esha Ness

Villains of Ure, the cliffs that is

Calder's Geo

Esha Ness coast

Villains of Ure again

Latent Electricity

Holes of Scraada

Shelter is not easy to come by

Stenness

Stenness

A passing rainbow

Esha Ness is claimed to be Britain's most dramatic coastal scenery and on a day when a Force 8 was passing through I was told by locals that it was not the best day to visit. This was just the challenge I needed, dramatic scenery is usually enhanced by wild weather. I had three attempts at parking the car; on the first  it was almost impossible to open the door, the second almost took the door off its hinges. The wind was accompanied by a power shower that Mira could never emulate. Fully clad in Goretex I eventually emerged, got soaked and walked with the wind at my back along the sea ravaged coastline. 

The Calder Geo by the Esha Ness lighthouse is an enormous cleft in the cliffs with the sea charging in making the Severn bore seem just that. The sea was in turmoil and as the sun flickered on and off the Villains of Ure hove into view. They are the residual rocks following the erosion of the cliffs. This is a geologists playground with all types of volcanic rock providing hard rock that is still being devastated under the constant attack by the sea.

Hardy sheep were mainly sheltering behind walls and shelters but one flock hurried across and harassed me to turn off the wind.  Rabbits and sea birds occasionally took off when they saw me coming but quickly returned to their places of shelter. When I reached the Head of Stanshi I found a wall to shelter behind but then I had to begin the walk back and face the wind head-on. I was immediately assaulted by rain, hail and seafoam in globules as large as cricket balls. So I headed away from the cliff edge and happened upon the holes of Scraada, a subterranean sea passage, that shoots the sea up an inlet on a day such as this. It was watching the earth's crust transform on fast forward.

I went round to the nearby beach at Stenness which was a fishing station from where sixareens, open wooden rowing boats for six men, were rowed out 60 or 70 miles to the fishing grounds at the edge of the continental shelf. Stenness is now scoured for agates and other precious stones. About twelve seals kept me company swimming about 10 metres away as I beachcombed and dodged the occasional big wave and the passing showers by the simple expedient of putting my hood up.  Perhaps I should revisit Esha Ness on a good day but stripped of its wildness would it be so lightsome.

Seal friends

I had spent 3 hours in the wind and rain and I was damp but happy so I returned to Lerwick via Sullom Voe and I managed to catch the last half hour in the new Lerwick museum before closing time.  There is a quite superb collection of exhibits in an awesome new building by the harbour which tells the history of the isles. After a ten minute discussion with the curator, I was asked to the opening of the lace exhibition this evening.  I had to pass up the opportunity as I had a dinner appointment but I will be back to learn more about the history of these amazing communities, the buildings, the fishing and the local produce.

First Year of Blogging

It was exactly a year ago that I started a blog, mainly to share news and pictures with my son as he circumnavigated the world.  My intention was to do about 4 blogs a month, and it was restricted to the extended family. I have since deleted some of the early blogs, though I was pleased to see I had managed 60 in a year.  In April, I opened the Blog to anyone, partly because I was writing about wider issues or about activities involving others, and I wanted to share the content with them.

The content has changed, originally it was about my activities in post-retirement mode, but then I started blogging about politics as the election approached and then some profiles of friends and ancestors.  In June, I spent a couple of weeks trekking the GR20, Europe's best high-level mountain walk. I had kept timings and taken pictures and had promised to share them with otherfrom France, Austria and the Netherlands whom we had met on the GR20. I realised that the best way to do this was to make a blog post of the walk. That in turn made me realise that I could keep a record of all my hill walking trips on the blog and add photos to the log, which until now I had recorded as Word documents that lay dormant. 

In June, an update of the Blogger software provided an analytics tool which allowed me to see which blogs were being visited.  The number of hits per month had increased from 265 in June to 635 in September. There have been over 2000 hits since the analytics became available. 79% of the audience were from the UK, with 7% in the USA, 3% in Canada, 2% in France, Italy and the Netherlands and double figures of hits from  Russia, China, Slovenia, and Denmark. The greatest of all benefits was having easy access to my hill walking log, complete with photos, to stir the memories.


By far the most visited has been the GR20 blog which usually reaches a double figure of hits everyday and scores 36% of all visits .  Eva's wedding comes next and then, somewhat surprisingly, the one on my Grandad. The blogs of hill walks usually achieve more than 30 hits.  Politics are less popular although the ones on News International, Waltzer Economy and Strange Days have been well read.  Travel logs and everyday outings, GR20 excepted, are the least visited but many of these were early blogs and were not openly available when first published. 


So what next, well I will probably continue.  I was told by an old acquaintance whom I bumped into earlier this week that they had started with the most recent and had systematically worked backwards and had really enjoyed the politics.  Conversely another political friend said her favourite was Little People. 

I have also registered a website which I intend to use to download my hillwalking files, partly as a response to the large number of hits on the few I have put on the blog.  I have over 450 logs of all my munro outings over twenty years with spreadsheets that tell the timings, length of walk, ascent and the routes which may sound dry but are very useful to like minded anoraks. Some of these are on an old applemac and others on various memory sticks. If I can find them and download them, match them with the thousands of old photos that I am slowly scanning in I will be able to provide at least 4 illustrated trips up every munro in Scotland.  The problem at the moment is that I am back to working 50 hours a week so I may lack the time to do these things but its the end of summer time tonight so who knows.

Mallorca

Miro in the permanent exhibition at the railway station, Soller

More Joan Miro

Palma Cathedral - second largest in Europe

Orient in the Serra de Tramuntana

Cap de Formentera

Badia de Pollenca

s'Illeta

Coast north of Port de Soller

Puig Major, highest mountain and site of USA Radar Station

Pollenca and another cycle race, the island is a cyclist's paradise

Soller Market

And the walking is pretty good too, Soller and Port de Soller from Serra de Alfabia

Picasso pottery in Soller museum

I had agreed to an extensive period of work in Shetland and we decided to take a holiday before I started. Aileen was keen to go somewhere warm and there was not much on offer. Much as we enjoy visiting Mediterranean islands, Mallorca had never been in my sights until someone bought me a walking guide to Majorca last Christmas. Maybe it was hearing about Magaluf and English breakfasts or just seeing those checking in for Palma at various airports. So with some trepidation, I made a late booking even by my standards to take a couple of weeks there in October. Apart from the weather which was much the same as Scotland but with thunderstorms, it exceeded our expectations.  There was a common courtesy, good quality of accommodation and food and the scenery was quite outstanding and, being October, it had fewer visitors so it was possible to get about with ease.

We stayed the first night in a Finca high in the Serra de Tramuntana mountains and enjoyed the instinctive customer focus, fine food and stunning location.  Several people had highlighted it as their special retreat on Trip Advisor and we could appreciate why.  Then on to Pollenca, a pleasant working town close to the beaches but a good base for touring.  After the first day when reading and swimming competed for time, the rains set in and we were limited to visiting places and testing the local restaurants which were universally good but quite expensive as were most things on the island compared to the UK.  It was a remarkably relaxing place, even dawn seemed to be late with the cockerels crowing at 9am.

Trips to Arta, Formentor, Inca and Palma were made to save the mountains for week 2 when we moved to Fornalutz.  Palma was clean, busy but easy-paced, full of street art and surprises as the townscape revealed its treasures.   The cathedral was immense, the second tallest in Europe with flying buttresses and pillars so slim that structural engineers, if asked, would want scaffolding to be erected.  Instead, they brought in Gaudi to modernise the interior which he did in his inimitable style.

The seascapes along the road to Formentor were quite amazing and for once I could enjoy the scenery as I was not driving.  I had not managed to replace a stolen driving license in time; apparently, someone is hiring cars in France using my old license which disappeared from my passport at CDG airport back in the summer. At the end of a road which had more switchbacks than hatchbacks was the old lighthouse, a place for a snack and with spectacular coastal perspectives.

By the end of the week, we were ready to seek new locations and we headed into the Serre de Tramuntana mountains on switchback roads following a cycle race until we arrived at Lluc, a monastery in the mountains. And then over the highest roads and under Puig Major where the United States has constructed a massive radar station at the top and excluded the public from enjoying what would be the star attraction of the island.  We arrived at Fornalutz, a village in the heart of the mountains but just a couple of miles walk from Soller and its Port.

Soller is a superbly located town with great facilities and a sense of place. It was first inhabited by the French but now hosts many Brits and Germans. The Soller railway station hosted exhibitions of the paintings of Miro and the pottery of Picasso, a free gallery which rewarded us with a couple of hours of amazement at a place on a human scale which seemed at one with the works on display. We left the exhibition elated whereas the big museum often leaves you jaded after tramping around collections which are too large and leave you feeling that you have missed the essence of the art.

The poor weather continued until a massive thunderstorm cleared the air.  We visited Deia where the celebrities hang out and Valdemossa where Chopin wrote many of his works. We managed 3 days of walking in the high mountains and along the beautiful coast.  The terrain was tough with limestone ridges fluted by water with the clints and grikes of the Karst topography requiring sure footwork.  There is an alternative to the high tops, the  GR221 which provides a 7-day walk through the mountains and utilises superb limestone paths constructed over many generations.   But it is overrun by large groups of German happy wanderers singing,  "Valderee Valderah ha ha ha ha ha"  as they click their walking poles and swing their knapsacks on their way to the next refuge.

So altogether Mallorca proved a safe, well-organised, civilised, tourist-friendly island which could serve as an example to most British tourist haunts. It probably lacks the edginess of other islands but I can understand why it is full of domiciled British and German citizens.

Shetland

Lerwick Harbour

My first trip to Shetland and I arrived at Sumburgh in the late afternoon on Sunday. Shetland was tinted by a colour palette of greys and accompanied by episodes of rain and a fresh wind.  But being 60 degrees north means that there is a constant refreshment of the weather. Early the next morning the landscape was washed clean and the green hills and grey stone of Lerwick were squeezed between two bands of bright blue. I walked for over an hour before breakfast and was completely captivated by the townscape of Lerwick nestling on the Bressay Sound and almost surrounded by the sea. I met an elderly couple walking around the Knab and they were made up when I told them how privileged they were to have this as their morning walk. The cemetery is executed to perfection with a view across the Bressay Sound to die for.

Although autumn the town was quietly cosmopolitan with people of many nationalities working in the thriving industries of oil, marine engineering, fishing and tourism. In the hotel, an Indian businessman was meeting with a Russian and an American to discuss aeronautical equipment. The waitress was from Kazakhstan and several Scandinavians were passing through. The worldwide network of business that emanates from Shetland seems almost as important to the thriving economy as the natural resources that abound in the North Sea. 

I was spending a couple of days meeting with a colleague who had been asked to manage the Council after it had been found to failing by the Accounts Commission. He wanted me to assist in looking at the underlying causes of its financial and structural difficulties. I met the senior Councillors and began to examine the fairly incriminating evidence that had been issued by the Accounts Commission. There were a lot of issues that needed resolving and after several sessions exploring these, I was asked if I would be prepared to spend a few months helping to address the issues. In effect, I would be riding shotgun for my colleague. 

I returned home to mull over the proposition, a winter in Shetland was not exactly what I had in mind after retiring but the short time I had spent there had whetted my appetite for doing what I always enjoyed most about work, the chance to diagnose problems and find solutions that improved an organisation for the benefit of its communities. And the chance to explore some wild landscapes whilst working with wildsome but friendly people.

Commercial Street

Town Hall

South Lerwick from the Knab

Lerwick Cemetery

Lerwick over an upturned boat