Author Archives: Jack

There’s a lot of hype about the Mousa Broch. We started hearing about it while we were still on the mainland. Biggest, tallest, most complete kind of talk. We headed south to stage ourselves for a ferry ride over to Mousa Island where there are no cars or roads, only to run into the most sustained bad weather we had in Shetlands. Current weather reports indicate that by Saturday, when the ferry doesn’t run, we might expect a break. This calls for a new plan.

Weeks later, heading back to the mainland after touring Unst and Yell, we saw an opportunity to catch that ferry to Mousa on a nice day, assuming that it ought to be running. By mid morning we were backing Escape Velocity into a tight parking spot in the tiny village of Sandsayre where the Mousa boat is docked.

The pier is located in the shadow of a Laird’s stronghold palace who, if you can believe local lore, once owned most of Shetland.

The happy crew showed up and led a brief conga-line through a shallow tub of disinfectant due to a worrying outbreak of bird flu elsewhere in Shetland. Much more than just a ferry to the island, Skipper Rodney gave us a closeup history of shipwreck sites and roosting birds, including these gothic shags.

Pulling up to the pier at Mousa you are faced with a choice, clockwise or counterclockwise around the island. We went right for a counterclockwise tour and a somewhat quicker view of the famous broch, hopefully before exhaustion sets in. On the trail we took advantage of a wooden bench marking 60° north latitude.

Turns out only half of the bench is at 60 degrees while the front is 59.599 whatever degrees. I was reminded to get a move on as we had a date with the return boat. At last the Mousa Broch rose up before us but we still had a way to hike.

This thing is one big mother. Over forty feet high. (Technical details and historic significance here.)

Ducking to enter you’re immediately struck by the mystery of it all. This is not a restoration or reconstruction. The only additions to the original structure are an entry door and safety features at the very top.

It even has a small pool in the center of the floor.

Chambers line the walls and there are stairs inside the the double walls that very carefully spiral up to the top.

Roof or no roof? Typically no answers, no one knows.

One wants to spend hours contemplating what the hell all this means, especially when you look across the strait to see that there is an identical broch now in ruin just a few hundred meters away. Entering these waters with a huge broch on either side would be mighty impressive, you could even say intimidating.

Once again I was reminded to keep a move on so we stopped for one last look and headed out.

The scenery changed very quickly and ruins of Mousa’s past began to show up along with massive chunks of several boat wrecks, evidence of a notorious coast.

Just when I was ready to call for the sag wagon the welcoming hut and boat hove into view. A small group of colleagues were milling about so you could say we weren’t first in, but certainly not last.

Captain Rodney was excited to show us guillemot “tumblers” and motored across the strait to a cliff with hundreds of nesting guillemots. The little buggers tumble out of the nest before they’re fully fledged to where their dads are anxiously waiting and calling to them, ready to explain the facts of life to their offspring.

“And together they swim to Norway,” the skipper told us.

They say it takes about five days. I personally would’ve chosen the south of France.

After improvising a parking spot at the side of a one lane gravel road we were confronted with an orange plastic pumpkin face impaled on a wooden stake and two microwave ovens arranged like objects d’art at each side of the sheep farmers fence where in another time or place one might expect to find a white plaster lion or Greek gods.

I hope at least one of you Escapees remembers that Yours Truly has mentioned that it’s the payoff not the hike that I’m partial to. An agonizingly long, wind buffeted, ankle twisting, sheep-dung carpeted hill-and-dale with soft mushy rivulets running across our course every few yards holds little allure for me. But our lovely activity director sweetened the deal with promises of several abandoned major extensive estates to explore on the way to a remote and lonely broch stuck out at the end of a bight of land, or as we yachtsmen call it, a big stickout.

From the fence through the steeply pitched sheep farm we had to negotiate all the way down into a deep valley without a path to guide us.

It looks like we could use a crescent shaped sandy beach for a while that might speed things up, but then it was back up into the ankle-buster lumpy meadow.

You could see the Broch perched out at the end of the peninsula with binoculars. The problem is that with all the lichen covering the stones they take on the same shades as the surrounding environment which, as it turns out, is very effective camouflage.

Did I mention the rabbit holes? There were more rabbit holes than Youtube.

Dear reader, I will spare you the gory details of the hike but suffice it to say this particular farmer’s sheep have quite a productive digestive system. The hike turned into a slog as the biting wind began to rip at our jumpers and down filled bubble jackets. It was a head-down POR moment. All we wanted to do was find someplace out of the wind where it was quiet enough to think. Plotting an efficient direct path was impossible.

When we reached the broch I realized it was solidly filled with stone and earth. Not a bad exterior but it all adds up to another closed antiquity. This is not what I paid for. Tell them what they won, Don Pardo!

Since we lacked a decent payoff at the broch we decided to improvise a win by taking a shortcut through the ruin of a massive stone-walled enclosure with many outbuildings making up a complex estate.

We finally made it back to the beach only to face a nasty headwind that whipped the sand in stinging waves in our faces.

Will this slog never end? Head down. Think of the Caribbean.

We made our final push through the sheep farm where the bunnies had been working overtime perforating the last steep uphill section. Escape Velocity was patiently standing guard in front of the orange head and both microwaves, with the promise of an adult beverage inside. But first we had to sit on our stoop and dig the meadow muck off our besmirched footgear.

So tell them what they’ve won, Don Pardo!

So far our castle touring in the UK has been thwarted by comprehensive fencing and warning signs. Fair enough. I grew up in Pittsburgh where in the last few years entire buses have been swallowed right in downtown and bridges had so many large chunks falling onto traffic below that they built a covered bridge under the bridge to protect the main artery underneath. I never saw a warning sign or a fence so I’m just saying that I took my chances. But it’s good to know that the kind folks in the UK are on the job and being so careful. After all, these structures are quite old and it seems prudent to inspect something that was built in the 1600’s. In all honesty some of these are just a pile of orderly stones but many are absolutely sublimely magnificent. Some look like they were thrown up because somebody was trying to kill them and it’s harder to kill somebody who was clever enough to build a stone wall to hide behind.

Here in Shetland they built exclusively out of stone because back in the early days there were far fewer trees than you can find today. But you really have to work hard to find a tree in Shetland, even now.

When Marce found a castle way up here in Unst structurally sound enough that you can go inside and have a nosey just to feel the space and the wonder of it all, I jumped at the chance. Like anything on Unst it wasn’t far and you can even park overnight.

The castle was built in 1598 for the ruthless Lawrence Bruce, who Shetlanders say used blood and eggs as mortar. Their blood and their eggs apparently. Unloved in Muness, Larry borrowed Earl Patrick Stewart’s master builder Andrew Crawford who was supposed to be working on Stewart’s castle in Scalloway. This annoyed Stewart who was even more ruthless and corrupt than Larry. Turns out Andrew Crawford had mad skills as a builder in stone and it shows in both structures.

Muness is the UK’s most northern castle. A lot of things in Unst are UK’s “most northern.”

This is one of the earliest uses of straight (scale and platt) stairs instead of the previously almost universal spiral staircase.

You can see a weapon port on bench, many were fake throughout the castle.

The great hall shows the replacement lintel above the huge fireplace. The original carved one is in the national museum in Edinburgh in an effort to preserve the fine oak carving. The well thought-out spaces that interconnect to stairways with magnificent craftsmanship and balance attest to the skill and taste of the builders.

It was a privilege spending the night next to this beautiful icon. You might think it’s spooky or possibly risky but I don’t know. I’ve driven the streets of Pittsburgh without a care in the world.

This next trick has amphibious elements that, with the great precision of any military campaign and any luck at all, dovetail into the master movement of Escape Velocity all the way north to Hermaness. It all starts with a romp across Mainland Shetland to Toft and meeting a smallish ferry where, if our tipsters are correct, one can purchase a ticket to Yell and if you keep driving north on the road up to Gutcher you can hop the even smaller ferry to Belmont in Unst, continue the length of Unst to the northernmost settlement in UK, all for the low low price of one ferry ticket.

It’s very popular. Admittedly it’s better without rain but then again, it takes the better part of a day so you’re going to have to deal with rain at some point. Nobody comes to Shetland for a suntan.

At this point, dear Escapees, I imagine you’re wondering why we came all that way.

And that’s just the view from the parkup. Tomorrow we plan a four hour hike up into the clouds. Yours Truly takes no solace in that cloud business.

You can tell the serious nature of a hike when the poles come out of the garage. We also packed water, gingernuts, binoculars, the GPS tracker and rain jackets. We’re learning.

Much of the main trail was prepared with a boardwalk over the boggy bits but there were also steep hills and long flights of stairs. This hiker never enjoys giving altitude back after slogging up a long slope but whoever laid out this trail was from the Up and Down school.

It was a long tramp across the width of the peninsula and when we crested the hill to the cliffs there was the Atlantic Ocean stretching out before us. Next stop Greenland.

I love a hike with a good payoff and this had it in spades. We were chuffed. Birds, I’m guessing gannets because we heard there were a lot of them, were circulating back and forth on the updraft hardly needing to flap and we could even see the occasional puffin nesting in the ledges.

While we were oohing and aahing over this magnificent scene a German hiker turned to us and over her shoulder spat, “Forget the cute little puffins. This is nothing. Go south along the ridge.”

I hadn’t noticed that a preponderance of the hikers had turned to the south and were marching up the steep and lumpy, sheepdung-infested, ankle-twisting slope. We followed.

As we approached the top we smelled the gannet colony before we saw them, but nothing prepares you for the tens of thousands of gannets, squawking, flapping, soaring, circling, diving.

Then you notice tens of thousands of bright white dots covering the massive craggy cliffs, each dot a gannet nesting just out of pecking range of her cranky neighbor. We both gasped at the sight, the sound, and the smell.

All we wanted was to sit in comfy lawn chairs with a cup of coffee and perhaps a pastry and soak in this drama for the rest of the day. It was mesmerizing. But we knew we faced the long trudge back across the peninsula before the inevitable rain. We watched for a long while, then turned for home.

It was a rare sunny but blustery day when we crested a steep blind summit on the one-lane road leading to our next parkup. Dear Reader, I think you should just assume that the first or second sentence of all of our blog posts from Shetland will have the word ‘blustery’ within, just so we don’t have to keep writing it and you don’t have to read it.

So where were we? As we started down the steep road a vast green valley was arrayed before us. Somewhere down there, tucked into a corner of the bay, was our next parkup. How can such a small island constantly convey the profound sensation of vast space? You’d think they’d be jamming stuff in every square meter instead of letting miles and miles go by with hardy anything in it. But it works. It really works. This place is beautiful. Details near a corner of the bay started to come into view.

A collection of a few buildings came into focus and maybe a vehicle or two. Things changed as we pulled in. It was a tiny, rough parking lot with campers parked at all angles, spoiling the view and limiting space for others. Day trippers in cars parked inbetween and around the campers. Words were exchanged. The situation perturbed a certain member of the crew.

Eventually most of the inconsiderate people got the picture and left. We moved our camper to the outer edge, setting an example for how best to use the small space. Order was restored.

This is a popular spot. Free is always popular. Campers and day users continued to come and go. We set up spotting shop with binoculars and soon we could watch otters and seals and, wherever there are fish, the ubiquitous cormorants.

The following day we opted for a spot of hiking around the tiny community on the peninsula.

At several points there wasn’t much path left.

We were reluctant to move on, but new arrivals followed our established parking scheme, so our work here was done.

First order of the day was a food run so we’re looking for a market with a US size parking lot. As luck would have it there’s a Tesco in Lerwick where we can stash the van, shop and then walk to a fairly complete restored broch and that, dear Escapees, is a trifecta of the first order in vanlife.

With our little treasures sorted in the van we headed out on foot toward the broch, located on a tiny island at the end of a straight but windy stone causeway, reaching out into Clickimin Loch. It’s kind of a ready made moat.

Quite fascinating, this Bronze Age construction. Almost every detail is defensive in nature. It suggests that maybe some people didn’t care for these folks.

The feature event for the day was not far away, but then nothing is very far. It’s a small island, so small that to get to the British Isles’ most important archaeological site one has to carefully cross over their airport runway, after looking both ways of course.

Prehistoric Jarlshof has Neolithic remains over 4,700 years old and was first visited 6000 years ago. It was successively occupied during the Bronze Age and Iron Age, and by the Picts, the Norse, and finally a 16th century Scottish Laird.

So much of ancient daily life can be imagined from wandering through these dwellings. Iron age built right on top of Bronze, the Picts and the Norse in the same space. The audio tour guided us through the site and described the features of each era. Except the Picts. “We don’t talk about the Picts in this tour,” said the voice in our ears. Why? What did the Picts do to get erased?

The extensive Norse settlements have typical rectangular long buildings as if chosen out of an IKEA catalog and while not nearly as old as the earliest settlements you really have to work to get any history out of the notoriously stoic Norse, with the possible exception perhaps of certain long winded poems.

The Laird’s fortified manor house, built in the 16th century, stands guard over all the millennia of history.

Back at the visitors center we asked about the line in the audio tour of not talking about the Picts. We said it sounded like they were outcasts. The young lady rolled her eyes and said, “I know! But really it’s only because the Pict layers are underneath other layers they don’t want to disturb, so they haven’t actually investigated that part.”

I guess that makes sense. But Marce has been singing, “We don’t talk about Picts, nix, nix” to the tune of “We don’t talk about Bruno, no, no.”

I will admit to circumnavigating this tired block in Fraserburgh a few times. The GPS says “you’ve arrived” but other than a tiny marina jammed with huge shiny fishing boats there was hardly a soul around and no obvious place to park. Trust me, this neighborhood was never featured on a Fraserburgh brochure. It’s strange to arrive at a stop sign with a one way sign on your left pointed to the right and a one way sign on your right pointed to the left, and yet here we are. Which law should we break? I looked up and saw a rather impressive lighthouse high above us on a prominent point of land. Our parkup must be over there.

Turns out to be a less than level gravel leftover lot, with poor quality graffiti sprayed about but featuring a beautiful view of the waves crashing onto the rocks. I pulled up rather close so we could all enjoy the power and majesty of the sea, failing to appreciate that, in some people, the level of appreciation diminishes with proximity.

I guess we’re still drawn to the sea. We often end up in a similar place with a similar view, except for the graffiti.

We settled back and I noticed a line of red flags close to shore and we knew that had to be a fishing net. A plume of spray caught my attention just at the edge of my peripheral vision. I hadn’t seen what caused it, but I already knew what it was. Suddenly energized I yelled, “Thar she blows!” Marce hurriedly joined me and the binoculars came out of the drawer as we both scanned our little bay. We knew that it’ll be surfacing in a few minutes due to the shallowness of the bay. There it is right in front of us. The whale had all the characteristics of a humpback when diving but was probably a minke. It seemed to be working a parallel line next to the fishing net right in front of us. I’m not sure how long we watched this whale but it took us back to magical times in Australia with so many close encounters with humpbacks zooming under Escape Velocity, mama whales tending their babies and heavy breathing 20ft away from us while we were waking up to coffee, Escape Velocity’s hull reverberating with a symphony of whale song. Yes, whales are special to us.

Later that day the wind picked up as the tide rolled in. For the first time we could feel the van get buffeted in the gusts. Our semi private rocky ocean view was getting rather boisterous. I’d done a lot of driving so I said I’m turning in but Marce pestered me with, “How can you sleep in this wind!?” and “It’s dark and I have no idea how bad the waves are getting!” I assured her there wouldn’t be a problem.

Someone periodically kept me up to date on the wind direction and velocity which by 5:00 am had gotten much worse and shook the van like a space shuttle lift off. It was suggested that a change in relative wind angle might do the trick and as I can’t control the wind I opted to change the angle of the van. A 35° realignment toward the north and we were facing directly into the teeth of it. Peace and harmony was restored in our happy home.

Reluctant to do a few more laps around Fraserburgh’s contradictory one way snafu, we slept in. Later, when we did leave, we crept down a one-way alley the wrong way, and around the corner from where we slept we saw a 20ft sea wall that said “Caution: waves can breach this wall.”

Good to know.

You can always tell you’re in for it when traveling in Scotland if every time you make a turn the road gets narrower. This was one of those times. It didn’t help that we were heading towards a place called “Sandend” to find a castle called “Findlater.” Always a joke with the Scots.

After a while they didn’t even bother with occasional passing spots on the one-lane road, but with our nearly unblemished record intact we pulled up into a small gravel car park behind someone’s house. There were several vehicles in evidence, but no people. Where’d they go? We were on top of a high plateau with acres of nothing but waving fields of grain.

Has to be barley right? After all, this is whiskey territory. There is no castle. No sign. Just a path leading through the field toward the ocean.

The only interruption in this ocean of barley was a cone shaped thing sticking up out of the grain. We couldn’t tell how big it is, or how far away.

After about ten minutes of walking the path bifurcates. With no sign to guide us we chose straight ahead and walked directly toward the cliff overlooking the sea. Still, we saw nothing.

We reached the precipice and down over the rocky edge was a sight so mind blowing that we gasped and had that knee wobbly, will-I-jump or will-I-not moment. There was the ruin of Findlater Castle, clinging to the rocks far below.

The castle started as a stronghold in the 13th century, then grew and changed hands in bitter feuds, something of a Scottish specialty, until it was abandoned in the mid 1600s.

There’s a map showing two paths down the castle cliff, one suicidal and one death defying; most of the reviews on Google Maps suggested you don’t try, but if you must, have at it.

I had the internal talk, listened to my better angels, stayed mostly on top and took photos.

On the way back we took the right bifurcation toward the beehive thing. It’s called a doocot, at least in Scotland, where pigeons were raised in 700 nesting boxes inside. This one pulled double duty in WW2 for plane spotters.

We’re not sure what castle can top this. Now it’s back through the barley field and back on the road in search of a parkup.

Really any regular Scottish bloke, if asked what is not to be missed while visiting his country, will get that far away look in his eyes and softly say “Glencoe.” It’s quintessentially Scotland, not Bronze Age Crofts or stoney castles. Turns out that it’s not far away. Really nothing is truly far away in a country as small as Scotland. It might take you awhile, what with roundabouts every half a mile and share and share alike one lane roads, but it’s not far. So this story is about pictures. Pictures of the Scottish soul.

A Scotsman would smile and say this is normal Scottish weather, but I call it a rising damp.

No one really knows how to build a Glencoe turf house. There are no carefully preserved examples and if you examine the materials mostly found on site you’d know why. Stone, turf cut in a fetching herringbone pattern, and as little wood as possible. The stone ends up in a pile of rubble, the wood rots away, and the turf, well the turf ends up as mud. So while my guess is not as good as theirs, after due diligence and research they’re still guessing. This is a recreation using over 2,000 wooden rods woven into a basket-like structure. They took the wooden rods with the when they moved because trees were scarce. The researchers reckon they’ve got it pretty close. They examined current construction techniques in the area and researched tendencies used during the times they figure it probably looked something like this. It’s still pretty cool.

It was difficult to tear ourselves away after such stunning beauty but we knew we had a rainy drive to what is now known as the £15 lady’s parkup on Loch Linnhe. Even the parkups are beautiful around here.

I think there’s something to this Scottish soul thing.

I woke up and immediately had one of those where-the-hell-am-I moments. The room was missing most of its furniture, and pulling aside the blackout curtains didn’t help much. It was sunny but cold with lots of traffic. I picked up the plastic room key and everything but the lack of furniture fell into place. Today is Campervan Day, and we’re in Glasgow. Unfortunately, the mechanic doing the servicing on the van was hungover from a football game and apparently he was moving kinda slow. We scheduled official handover for 1900 hours hoping maybe the frenzied Glasgow rush hour traffic would be a bit more kind at that hour. We booked another night in our sparse room because we weren’t ready to hit the road and the hotel said we can park our van in their lot.

Next order of business was breakfast. Nothing was open for blocks. Finally we settled for a place called Julie’s Sandwiches, no waiting, no chairs, just across the street. At the appointed hour we Ubered over to get the final instructions, got the keys and I climbed into the driver’s seat.

The 6 speed manual transmission Fiat Ducato drove nicely. It’s amazing how many vehicles have manual transmissions in the UK; it’s got to be around 70%. We made it back to the Travelodge despite the rain, safely parked for the night. Heavy sigh of relief.

Running errands in a twenty foot long camper van is a little nerve wracking at first but that’s exactly what we needed to do this morning. We knew that we’d have to do it before leaving Glasgow where you can find a concentration of shops where you only need to park once. What we really needed was an IKEA new homemaker startup kit. Two of everything, throw it in to a big blue tarp bag. We made do with stops at Tesco, B&M, Marks and Spencer, some kind of Home Center, and TK Max. We felt pretty well equipped.

In the meantime Marce found a parkup in what Europeans call wild camping, in America its called boondocking, meaning no services, self contained vehicles only. We hoped that the 180 watt solar panel on our roof would keep us in power over night. There were two routes up to the small car park, high above the Clyde. We chose the less steep route, pulled in and gaped at the view.

Our first wild camping and we get to wake up to this view. Not bad.