A sunny day in the Garden of Shetland
Jun. 12th, 2019 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustYesterday was brighter, and we took the ferry to Fetlar, nicknamed "the garden of Shetland" because it is so fertile. Certainly, a first impression is that it is gentler territory than the adjacent islands, more green grassland than brown peat moors. The sunshine added to this, of course. At times, I almost felt as if I were in Orkney:
The old sixareen is beached just below Brough Lodge, whose round tower - a folly, surely? - was the first thing we saw as we drove away from the ferry:
Later, in the Interpretive Centre in Houbie - 'museum' seems to be a dirty word, the way people avoid using it - I saw some stained glass from the Lodge, with a label explaining that it could have been installed as early as the 1820s, making it some of the oldest surviving stained glass in Shetland. Pause to consider how recent some of Shetland's oldests are - are how long ago others. Also in the museum, a display case of Fair Isle knitwear, another of Shetland lace, a section about William Watson Cheyne (surgeon and associate of Lister, described as Fetlar's most famous son, though I suspect he's been upstaged by the pair of Snowy Owls that bred here in the 1960s and 70s), a very ornate hnefatafl board as featured on the BBC's Countryfile...
We doubled back to the shop, where there is a café, and lunched on soup and home-baked peanut butter cookies; then down to the far end (the east) of the island to Funzie (pronounced 'Finny') Bay, which gives its name to the Funzie conglomerate, a very special kind of rock - but then, as I was saying, Shetland is full of very special rocks. I dutifully admired the outcrop of conglomerate which runs alongside the little shingle beach at Funzie, and more enthusiastically admired the thrift just coming into bloom in its crevices. But I was distracted by the beach itself, all the pebbles palest grey and white, gleaming in the sunshine. There was one I was very tempted to take home with me, it fitted my hand so well, round and white as an egg, but broken to display a face of frosted marble. But in the end I set it on a log of driftwood and made a still life of it:
By now we were starting to look at our watches and think about the ferry: time for one more stop on the way back, and we had noticed a beach of golden sand at Tresta:
What the picture doesn't show is that the grass in the foreground is a bank running between the bay of the sea, and Papil Water, a loch where great skuas (bonxies) "gather and socialise" in the words of the information leaflet. Nor that someone has put serious effort into cleaning up the beach, and the evidence is stacked in colourful heaps of plastic along the lip of the turf. Nor does it show that the sand glitters (with mica, perhaps?) and so does the shingle you cross to reach it, or that there are gulls nesting on the green cliffs (they might be fulmars). I didn't want to leave Tresta, but we had a ferry to catch...
The old sixareen is beached just below Brough Lodge, whose round tower - a folly, surely? - was the first thing we saw as we drove away from the ferry:
Later, in the Interpretive Centre in Houbie - 'museum' seems to be a dirty word, the way people avoid using it - I saw some stained glass from the Lodge, with a label explaining that it could have been installed as early as the 1820s, making it some of the oldest surviving stained glass in Shetland. Pause to consider how recent some of Shetland's oldests are - are how long ago others. Also in the museum, a display case of Fair Isle knitwear, another of Shetland lace, a section about William Watson Cheyne (surgeon and associate of Lister, described as Fetlar's most famous son, though I suspect he's been upstaged by the pair of Snowy Owls that bred here in the 1960s and 70s), a very ornate hnefatafl board as featured on the BBC's Countryfile...
We doubled back to the shop, where there is a café, and lunched on soup and home-baked peanut butter cookies; then down to the far end (the east) of the island to Funzie (pronounced 'Finny') Bay, which gives its name to the Funzie conglomerate, a very special kind of rock - but then, as I was saying, Shetland is full of very special rocks. I dutifully admired the outcrop of conglomerate which runs alongside the little shingle beach at Funzie, and more enthusiastically admired the thrift just coming into bloom in its crevices. But I was distracted by the beach itself, all the pebbles palest grey and white, gleaming in the sunshine. There was one I was very tempted to take home with me, it fitted my hand so well, round and white as an egg, but broken to display a face of frosted marble. But in the end I set it on a log of driftwood and made a still life of it:
By now we were starting to look at our watches and think about the ferry: time for one more stop on the way back, and we had noticed a beach of golden sand at Tresta:
What the picture doesn't show is that the grass in the foreground is a bank running between the bay of the sea, and Papil Water, a loch where great skuas (bonxies) "gather and socialise" in the words of the information leaflet. Nor that someone has put serious effort into cleaning up the beach, and the evidence is stacked in colourful heaps of plastic along the lip of the turf. Nor does it show that the sand glitters (with mica, perhaps?) and so does the shingle you cross to reach it, or that there are gulls nesting on the green cliffs (they might be fulmars). I didn't want to leave Tresta, but we had a ferry to catch...
