Shetland: exactly as it ought to be

There’s something satisfying about going to a place for the first time and finding it exactly how you’d expect it to be.

That’s how I felt on my first visit to Shetland this week.

There wasn’t much sun, but when it appeared, it was truly a burst

We – that is, my colleague Katie and I – due to hold three training sessions in the local hospital, arrived by tiny plane, just three seats wide. There was only one cabin attendant, which meant that there were more crew members in the cockpit than in the cabin. The plane was driven by propellers, which isn’t something I’ve seen all that often in recent times.

It came down low on its approach to the airport, so we were practically skimming a slate-grey sea that looked bitterly cold. And suddenly, looming out of the water to our left, was a first island – a mound of rock crowned with grass, uninhabited and sinister in its sheer black sides.

We saw more fog than sun.
And no puffins, though we looked and looked

Just then the wind caught us shaking us from side to side until we were a foot or two above the runway. As soon as we touched down, the pilot hammered the brakes, and we stopped just before the runway ran out – as we turned away I could see the black sea just beyond the end of the runway, too close for my liking.

Not sure whether they were Shetland ponies
but they were ponies, and on Shetland

As we got off the plane, straight onto the tarmac, the wind came howling back. There were even airport staff holding the propeller tips on both sides of the aircraft to stop them being whipped round by the wind and potentially injuring someone.

“Really?” a Scotswoman behind me wittily remarked, “Shetland and there’s wind?”

“Quite,” her companion quipped back, “who’d have expected that?”

There’s only one carousel for luggage inside the terminal, and it was out of action. So a woman standing by the door hauled our bags in, one or two at a time, and we collected them from her.

On our way, Katie and I had debated whether we ought to hire a car. We’d been told taxis were expensive. So we went online looking for car rental sites. The one she generally used announced that the driver had to be aged 30-65, and I’m just outside that range (for clarification, I’m not 29). So it wouldn’t hire me a car, but I had to be the driver, as she was only staying one night while I was staying three.

We decided to take our chance on arrival.

The car hire counter was inside the terminal baggage hall. But then the baggage hall is also the arrival lounge and the departure lounge. In fact, the whole terminal building is one long hall with various bits playing various roles. One door leads in from the tarmac for people arriving, and another, for departing travellers, leads out to the same tarmac by way of a security scanner. Indeed, at one end of the hall, behind a gaily decorated partition, there is even the Caffé Volare, which looked cheerful enough.

No surprise, then, that the car rental counter is also inside the building. We approached it while we were waiting for our bags. I explained we wanted a car but I was just a tad over the age range.

“Oh,” said the man behind the counter, who looked little younger than me, “I expect we’ll be able to come to an arrangement.”

We did.

One of the annoyances of hiring a car is that you’re supposed to return it full of fuel. I asked whether there was a filling station nearby.

“There is,” he said, “but don’t worry. If it isn’t full, we’ll fill it for you. And it won’t cost you any more than if you did it yourself.”

This was unusual. And unusually pleasant.

“In fact,” he went on, “seeing how early you’re going to be leaving, I doubt you’ll find the filling station open. Just fill up in Lerwick and don’t worry about the drive here.”

Lerwick, the main town on the islands, is about 40 km from the airport.

We got to the hotel at about 8:30. It was a physician who’d put Katie in contact with the people at the island hospital and he’d also recommended somewhere to eat: The String, he’d assured, us was outstanding. She rang.

“We stop serving at 8:00,” they told us.

Having turned up in Shetland from Spain where people look at you as though you’re mad if you want to eat before 8:00, this was a curious experience.

We had the same response from two other places. There were only two or three places prepared to serve us after 8:00. Since one was our hotel, we ate there.

Eventually we made it to the String
But for lunch. And very good it was

I felt slightly awkward about that because my boss has a rule for us when we’re away from home: “never eat in your hotel, never eat in a restaurant that’s part of a chain, and never eat in the same place twice.” It’s a good rule, and I try to stick to it. But it wasn’t made for Lerwick on a cold weekday evening.

As we were finishing our meal, the cheerful and friendly woman who was doubling up as reception clerk and waiter in the dining room, asked us whether we were planning to go out for the evening at all. We told her we were considering the possibility.

“Oh,” she said, “there’s live music in one of the pubs. Shetland music. If you feel up to it, you might try that.”

Live Shetland music
Though the woman with the fiddle is Danish and the man
holding the guitar beyond her is her husband, from Indonesia

We did. And it was excellent. Although I was amused to discover, from talking to him, that one of the musicians was from Indonesia and his wife, who was playing one of the fiddles (they may look like violins, they may even sound like violins, but when it’s playing a jig, Irish or Shetland, it’s decidedly a fiddle), was from Denmark.

We had a great evening. And Shetland got another opportunity to show its worth: as I left the pub, I realised I’d left my bag behind, with my wallet and my passport in it. But I’d barely started to climb the stairs again before I met a man clattering down them holding my bag out to me.

“Did you forget this?” he was saying.

Nothing was missing from it.

And that wasn’t the last opportunity for Shetland to display what it’s made of. As we walked back, we were hit by the cold of the wind off the North Sea (Lerwick is on nearly the same latitude as Bergen in Norway, which is closer to it than Edinburgh, ostensibly the capital, Shetland being part of Scotland). Rain was spitting down too, and as we emerged on to the harbourside, we could taste salt in the water hitting our faces. The sea, sleekly black and cold, looked troubled, uneasy even, as though it was a bit irritated by this lump of rock sticking out of it and troubling its flow. So it was going to have a go at worrying it a bit.

Practically in Norwy

Pure Shetland. Exactly as I would have expected. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

The view from my hotel room
Great to wake up to. If it were always this sunny...