And so it begins! Early start today fuelled by our local Unst host Willie McLeod’s excellent cooked breakfast. We rode our bikes on a dry but windy morning out to Britain’s most north-westerly road head at Hermaness, where a boardwalk path leads over the hillside to emerge dramatically on the edge of sheer cliffs above a pounding sea. The caps of the jagged sea stacks rearing from the sea are white with a mixture of guano and hundreds of perching sea birds, while the air above is full of wheeling gannets. It is quite a spectacle of nature. But the best was yet to come. One by one, puffins appeared on the grassy slopes at the top of the cliffs where they nest in the hundreds of rabbit burrows. They ignored us completely and allowed us to sit very close by, almost within touching distance. You have to adore these comedic little birds with their brightly coloured beaks and legs. I could have sat and watched them for ages, but we had to go a little further along the cliffs until a group of small islands appeared to the north of us, the farthest crowned with a seemingly impossible lighthouse. That is the wonderfully named Muckle Flugga, Britain’s most northern extremity, and unlikely home to 3 lonely lighthouse keepers right up until 1995. What a life that must have been.
Then it began to rain. Not hard, but whipped horizontal by the strong southerly wind from the sea. It was time to leave. We got quite wet on the way back and dried out in the Unst Heritage centre in Haroldswick, before a warming and welcome stop at the Final Checkout shop and cafe back in Baltasound. This is Britain’s most northerly shop, a fitting place to buy Pot Noodles for tonight’s dinner! Tomorrow it’s maps 2 and 3, a long day into the wind back to Lerwick. Early bed, early rise!