And another day or so gone.

On the 18th it was foggy!!!!!  We were at Betsy's by 10AM.  We then headed to the south mainland to visit Andy Bairnson and Betsy's two sisters.  The first thing I was dropped off with Andy to discuss "stuff" wink, wink, nod, nod.  Betsy and Denise toured the museum croft house which had been a Bairnson dwelling.  It was a home until the early 60's by Betsy's grandparents.  We all had lunch at Andy's home.  His home is 200+ years old but has been completely rebuilt by Andy to a modern standard.
After lunch we drove to Jarlshof an archeological site dating back some 5000 years.  The tour lasted about an hour using a device that looks like your TV remote that tells a person about the settlements and their progression through the years.  We left to visit Betsy's two sisters Robina (Ina) and Catherine. Their homes were also extremely old as the writer had to keep his head down. Catherine is the family historian so Denise garnered as much as she could in the way of information.  Left there and went to Quendale mill and I toured the mill while Denise read the various submissions of family trees .  Quelle surprise.
We left when the mill closed and headed for Lerwick to get "take away" from a place called the "Happy Haddock".  We headed back to Walls and were dropped off at our car to head back to the chalet.  Most tired!

And so on

Monday, the 16th:  We had a minor computer situation as the adapter I was sold in Collingwood did not fit the 240V plugs here.  While I was able to communicate for a while the battery reading 20% was unnerving.  So we drove into Walls and caught the municipal bus into Lerwick (29 miles).  We found a computer store on Commercial street and just purchased a 240 volt power cord as the charging transformer is capable of handling 240 or 110.  So the minor issue is resolved!  We walked around .downtown and found the Tourist information centre that I had viewed via internet webcams for years.  More on that in another post, as they are presently not working. 

We stopped and took a picture.  
We visited the Shetland Family History Society (SFHS) and the volunteers.were marvelous.  It is a well organized office!.  Denise had smoked Haddock for dinner while I had something other than fish.  :-) Surprise!
Caught the return bus to Walls and drove home.  The single lane roads and the driving on the other side of the road is unnerving!.  We did stop and take a picture of the Weisdale Voe.  To use a sentence worthy of Yoda; scenic beauty it is.

Tuesday, we toured around Mid Walls (north of Walls), Betsy's husband Arthur's homestead, and to Sandness where we visited & toured the Jamieson Woolen Mill.  We saw a vast variety of Shetland wool products and have mailed one home for the rocking chair. We toured a nearby church graveyard with a WW 1 military memorial.  The location looked over a very large body of water. (the Sound of Papa)  Lovely setting!  We then went to Turriefield Farms where I toured the farm.  The noteworthy thing about this farm is they are trying to grow produce, in an environmental and sustainable way, that is not very successful is Shetland (cucumbers, squash etc) due to the weather but under plastic greenhouses they grow.  The framework for the greenhouses is discarded piping from the fish farms. There is good soil but like most of Shetland there are a lot of ground knots. (rocks).  It is obviously very hard work!!  I do admire the Robertsons for their efforts.  On the return to Betsy's home we met Christine Murchison (nee Leask) that was working at the travel agency I was using for Shetland & Hamefarin in 2010.  We had a wee chat right in the middle of the road.  Back to Betsy's for "tatties and mince".  Betsy did all the driving as this wrong side of the road has proved to be very hard to adjust to  but then again she knows the sites to see and the best routes to get there.  Her school bus driving experience does show!!

Saturday was a busy day

After feeding the "babies" and the ponies we decided to leave and wound up stopping at the Bonhoga Gallery and Cafe.  The water mill building is beautifully converted and the water that drove it is no longer dammed up.  We had cheese, tea and scones and just enjoyed the scenery.  We left and decided to do a very quick tour of Lerwick, the capital.  We briefly stopped at the museum and archives but being as it was the weekend a lot of what Denise wanted to see was not available.  .We toured the harbour, Commercial Street and Market .  The traffic being chaotic, we decided to leave as Denise and I needed provisions.  The chalet is in the middle of the beyond so food was essential for breakfaat.  We wound up in Scalloway to do our shopping.  The shop had food on the first floor and dry good on the second.  We got the essentials, toured the site of the fisheries college and laboratory (where Betsy's dughter Helena works) and finally off to Troulligarth (this is the name of the Leask croft).  We had dinner and called it a day.  Very excited about seeing all the new things but also exhausted.  One needs to appreciate the temperature differential here as the day's high as around 12/13 and our home for the week was cold!  Another coin in the electric meter and cranked up the heat.

Sunday we arrived at Betsy's around noon and had tea and sweets.  We left and after fuelling up in Bixter, we headed for Brae and later the Braewick Cafe and caravan park.  Incredible view of layered cliffs that show the ages as well as stacks in the ocean itself.  We are up quite high overlooking but the photos do not do the view justice.

Cousin Betsy our Guide Extraordinaire

Denise's cousin, Betsy Leask had stated in an e-mail  in early June, that she was quite prepared to chauffeur us around.  Well, I had no idea that she would be driving us literally everywhere as you will see in later posts.  After guiding us to the chalet, she left us to unpack and get some rest.  We followed her suggestion but first we had to put a coin in the electric box to ensure we had some heat overnight.  The temp. was about 9-10 C so heat was required.

Now, one must realize that it does not get dark at night only what is referred as "simmer dim" thus the bright daylight comes very early and our bodies were still on Ontario.time.  You have probably surmised that our bodies are still primarily on Ontario time so we were up early.  Betsy came over mid morning Saturday and had us follow her to their "croft".  We had a cuppa, talked about what we wanted to see.  In the middle of this discussion, Betsy says she has to feed the lambs.  We watched the orphan lambs being fed from a bottle.  These "babies" were having to be bottle fed either because their mother would not suckle them or the mother died.  There are no other words other than cute for them.

Betsy is in the foreground

There I am helping feed the "Babies"

Following the baby feeding the neighbour's Shetland ponies decided to make their presence felt demanding biscuits.  So we were happy to oblige!

Additional photos

These were the additional photos that I had planned to post the first time.  The Luddite in me would not let me.

A very delayed blog post!

This journey started four years ago but I had to become ill 10 days before departure.  Fast forward, Denise and I started planning this trip, in earnest, April.  Many e-mails and discussions with travel agents and places to put our heads at night we were finally organized or should I say relatively organized.

Thus the journey began on June 11, 2014.  We were to take off at 9:15 PM and finally departed Toronto at 9:30 PM only to return to Pearson Airport within 1 hour as one of the landing gear would not retract.  While they tried to repair the problem we were kept on the plane until 11:00PM.  We then all deplaned and were greeted by airline staff announcing that they were trying to secure hotels for everyone and that we were scheduled for a 9:00 AM flight the next day.   That meant we had to return to the airport by 6:30 AM at the latest so  that we could clear security, again.   We finally were taken to a hotel, ordered a takeout breakfast for the AM and got to bed at 2:35 AM.  

Rising and shining at 5:00 AM, and finished all the necessary morning chores and got to the airport for the 6:30 AM rendezvous with security.  These people have no idea just what danger they were in when they greeted me with “Good morning”!  Anyhow, we finally took off for Glasgow at 9:30 AM on Thursday the 12^th of June and arrived in Glasgow in the expected time of 6 hours and 22 minutes.  Retrieving our luggage was relatively simple and we went to the Holiday Inn at the airport and crashed as our flight was not until the following day in the afternoon. 

Back to the Glasgow airport where security was tighter than Toronto but, never the less, we took off on time and the flight to Sumburgh was noisy but uneventful on a 24 passenger turbo prop.  We were met by Betsy Leask, a cousin of Denise’s (she was a Bairnson) and Andrew Bairnson another cousin of Denise.  After the usual luggage   scramble we left for “da Chalet” nears Walls, Shetland.  It is in a magnificent setting as you can see above.  This is the view from our “chalet” front window.

I will digress for a moment to tell you about our rental car story. I had e-mailed to Shetland to inquire about a “car hire” and received a reply from a gent whose name appears in the family tree of Denise.  So Denise gets on the phone and after much exchange of family information they determined they were indeed related.  So the deal was arranged and when we arrived in Shetland  and picked up the car and this is what we were given.  You can also see additional views of the area and water around the chalet.

Now as for the driving on the “wrong side” of the road, we are not great at it or maybe I should say Denise is not great at it as she has done all the driving while I do the worrying.  Her cousin Betsy has been leading us for the vast majority of our driving so we have an example to follow. 

Twas the Night Before Shetland

The beginning

We are almost ready to shut the suitcases.

The adventure begins!

Itinerary for Shetland and Ireland!

Glasgow

June 12-13

 Walls

June 13-20

Lerwick

June 21-27

County Donegal

 June 27-July 4

Dublin

July 4-5