Decent breakfast – good kippers. R’s camera is playing up: it won’t power on. Google reveals a camera shop in Lerwick which we’ll visit in the morning.
We went to Hillswick and parked opposite the St Magnus Bay hotel. We walked around the Ness of Hillswick. Five miles in total, spectacular scenery all round. The Ness is a hill connected to the mainland by a short narrow spit. The coastline is dramatic red granite cliffs and jagged red fingers of granite stacks stick out of the sea. It was bright sunshine and windy. Half way round a storm brought fierce horizontal rain and salt spray which soaked us through, but it only lasted 10 minutes or so and the wind soon dried us off.
At the top of the Ness was a bonxie nest. They dive-bombed us for a bit.
Almost back at the car we stopped to talk to an old man dressed head to foot in tweed outside a farrier’s farm. He was called Bruce, and talked to us a lot about the local wildlife and Russian submarines. He’d moved here in 1975 from Yorkshire. He told us of a place to see merlins.
We drove west past Braewick and found a scenic spot next to a farm with panoramic views of the dramatic coastline where we ate our now familiar lunch of cheese, bread, oatcakes and apples. Then we returned to Braewick and parked in the cafe car park and walked down to the beach. Braewick is on the edge of Esha Ness, a large extinct volcano, and here on the beach the red granite rock to the west meets the black volcanic basalt to the east, with the join clearly visible.
On the way back we found the place Bruce had suggested, and indeed we did have good views of merlins. They were nesting there in the heather above the road, and we watched them flying between two low peaks.
We stopped again at Mavis Grind, near the hotel. J went to look at a chambered cairn while R went along the shore looking for otters. In the end, neither the chambered cairn nor any otters were spotted.
Nice beers (Simmer Dim), then dinner in the bar slightly better than last night. Nice bottle of Chateau Musar wine. Still no need to smother the lamb with honey sauce…
After dinner we went down to the jetty to look for otters. J went back to fetch her fiddle, at which point an otter appeared. J returned and played the fiddle for a bit. The otter didn’t come back.
