Escape Velocity

I believe we’ve already discussed in a previous work my disdain for long hikes without a decent payoff. Marce assures me that at a certain point the path on Muckle Roe bifurcates making one loop shorter than the other and if we begin to flag we’ll take the low road. After all, it’s a tour of Muckle Roe Island, not a hike to anything specific. I think something about cliffs was mentioned. Now I’m nervous. I think, dear Escapees, we can all agree to call this rule #3. The hiking poles don’t come out until the payoff is identified. It’s a distance to payoff ratio thing.

Marce packed sandwiches, a banana, and water for lunch, something we’ve hardly ever done before. I said, “Surely we’ll be back before lunch.” She just smiled.

Scotland has a “trespass if you like” rule. I wonder what number that rule is? They find posting a sign redundant and they damn well aren’t going to tell you where to start. We wandered around a field, really somebody’s back yard but with sheep dung, until we found a likely looking track. It began with a steeply pitched slog up a hill paved with ballast rocks.

Heart dancing a quick tattoo, we climbed with hiking poles skidding off the rocks. Bleak desolation has a peculiar beauty and Muckle Roe has it in spades. We began to feel like we were the only two people alive in the world, an “On the Beach” moment.

A thought crossed my mind that it’s a very good thing there are no predators in Scotland because we’d be easy pickings out here. The quiet is deafening. Summiting the first major, let’s call it a mountain, we saw something awesome but terribly disappointing. The path continued to stretch out before us as far as the eye could see.

So far we couldn’t even see how far “far” was. Up and down we plodded. At every summit we faced the same awesome but spirit-crushing scene.

The path wound beautifully through the hills around little lakes and streams until bottoming out, and we trudged up again until it crested, offering another stab of disappointment.

Finally we found two large but pointy rocks to rest our shattered bodies on. It was about this time we heard something strange. Voices. A dozen or so people cheerfully gabbing while overtaking us at a relentless pace. I’m not ashamed to say we stared at them coming over the hill like they were the Wild Bunch. Turns out they were on a week-long guided tour, a kind of Holiday Walking Group. The guide stopped long enough to tell us some history of the village in this valley and admonished us that we really should have a map. We do. We also have lunch.

Not long after we did in fact miss a turn but it serendipitously led to a magnificent payoff and a sit down lunch.

With no idea which way to go, after lunch we promptly headed off in the wrong direction, due to our previously mentioned questionable turn, which took a while to correct. All we had to do now was repeat our day long slog in reverse.

You know how things look different going in the opposite direction? We knew we were close to the field where we started, but we realized we didn’t know which fork in the path to take to get back to Escape Velocity. Not being in the mood to wander aimlessly we were glad to see two young girls coming up the hill. They thought it was amusing that we could get lost so close to the car park and they got us turned around.

Boots off, feet up. Home never felt so good.

Since we bought the campervan we’ve spent precious little time in cities or towns for the simple reason that parking a larger vehicle is challenging in this land of narrow lanes and small car parks. Before we enter a town I scour Google maps to find a likely place to park where there are either designated places for motorhomes or where we can reverse at the back of the lot and overhang to a grass strip or walkway. It’s possible to incur a fine for taking up two spaces, and at 20’ we’re just that little bit longer than a normal car space.

We wanted to explore Lerwick, the capital of Shetland, and couldn’t find any nearby overnight parkups but I did find a large municipal lot on the waterfront where we can spend the day for £4, then drive somewhere else for the night.

Lerwick is a compact town, all stone and tides and flowers, with a selection of cozy cafes, shops, and narrow alleys to explore.

We found the perfect throw pillow to remind us of our time at Sumburgh Head.

On our way to the museum we stopped to chat with the owners of an unusual motorsailor we’d noticed earlier. They are Americans and just arrived from the Faroe Islands. We were excited to indulge in some sailor talk after so long and agreed to meet later for more, depending on our parking situation.

At the museum we watched as a young crew readied a replica boat for its maiden voyage.

The name of this traditional fishing boat reminded us we have unfinished business in Shetland. The island of Muckle Roe awaits.

We’re surprised at the number of cruising sailboats crowding the small harbor, with boats two, three, and even four deep in some places. Most are from Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands. There are also near daily cruise ships, tour boats, and classic training ships to watch coming and going. Add in the constant ferries from near and far and you’ve got a busy port. We love it.

Toward the end of the day I spied a parking official on the wharf and asked for clarification on the rules. He looked at Escape Velocity and assured me we could absolutely spend the night, and so we had a fun evening on the harbor front, and the next day we met up with our new cruising friends, Judy and Victor, for brunch. It’s always a joy to immediately bond with people you meet by chance in unusual places. We promised to return to Lerwick and meet again before long.

Now it’s off to Muckle Roe for the escapees. Adventure awaits.

We decided long ago that Rule #1 is “we don’t go back.” There are so many amazing things in this world to see and so little time or energy to experience them that going back to someplace we’ve already been to doesn’t make sense. For example, we skipped the Bahamas when we first started sailing because we thought it’s too easy, too expensive, too many islands, just too too. We’ll catch it on the way back. Turns out we never had the chance to enjoy the Bahamas on the way back in. The system isn’t perfect.

Lighthouses were the first to break Rule #2. I remember we used to seek them out, drive for miles, hike the inevitable hill up to the site and breathlessly climb the spiral stairs to the top. Yep, look at that view from up here! We’d take the shot then discuss on the drive home whether the one before was better.

Rule #2 has always been some version of “don’t become jaded or blasé.” It goes something like “I don’t know which waterfall was better and why hike up to another if it’s not supposed to be as beautiful as the last one?” We try not to do that.

Now, dear Escapees, we’ll move along to the point of this missive. While we were pondering, mouth agape, at the amazing Jarlshof Neolithic site we couldn’t help but notice, high above us, at the end of an endless peninsula, a lighthouse perched at cliff’s edge.

Very picturesque. But there’s a long and winding single lane road up to a parking lot in the sky and without passing areas on the way up, what does one do if one meets someone coming down while you’re trying to go up? Besides, we were tired and we still had to negotiate crossing the airport runway again, if you remember, and after all it’s just a lighthouse. A nice one maybe, but still just a lighthouse. At this point Dear Reader, and I’m not proud of it, you may want to refer back to Rule #2.

Weeks later Marce discovered that you’re allowed to park overnight in that car park in the sky, which changed the equation for us. While technically not an infraction of Rule #1, it’s close. On the other hand, there were rumors of puffins up there. After successfully crossing the airport runway again and winding our way up the one lane access road without once tumbling over the steep cliff (Marce’s greatest fear) we found ourselves trying to get EV level in the not-so-level paved parkup. Not a puffin in sight but there were new rumors of a nice cafe beside the lighthouse. While I wouldn’t even consider hiking up that mountain to climb those inevitable spiral stairs for a lighthouse, I would for a nice toasty cafe.

The hike up the mountain was quite relentless and I thought to distract Marce while grabbing a little breather by pointing out thousands of guillemots nesting on the cliffs below.

We were too far away to see the little tumblers though, and of course no puffins. When we finally got to the cafe it looked like a wildlife photographer convention with lots of camo and massive telephoto lenses. Those guys know a good feed when they see it. The wind was tossing gulls about as they tried to see what we were eating, many just hanging on the updrafts.

When we left the cafe I saw a raised wooden platform and imagined there must be a great view. We scrambled up the stairs and found puffins. Lots of puffins, just a few feet from us.

They seemed completely at ease with us in their midst, which may explain their dwindling numbers.

What a lucky find!

The trip down the hill strained the knees but as we approached EV we noticed our neighbor and fellow Adria owner Colin crouched up at the edge of the cliff with some serious gear. It turns out he’s a wildlife photographer and he was waiting for a baby puffin to come out of its burrow. Apparently he’d been waiting for quite some time. There are lots of ways to do this and we sat with him for an hour or so, just watching and talking, the puffins undisturbed by our presence. His wife Maureen joined us and we sat for awhile longer, enjoying the place and the company and the puffins until it was time for dinner.

Many of the other campervan and motorhome people we speak to have been to Shetland before, some many times. The place has a magnetic pull, and while we think we should be moving on, we just can’t seem to tear ourselves away. We love driving the one lane roads, rounding a bend or cresting a hill and finding a breathtaking vista laid out before us. We love poking along two-track dirt roads to find a parkup overlooking a beach where we can spend a day or two watching the tide come and go. We love discovering out-of-the-way honesty boxes and we’re reminded every time that there are still places in the world where the first instinct isn’t to steal or cheat. It’s been months since we’ve seen any graffiti, unless you count the rare 11th century runes carved by Vikings here and there.

Don’t get me wrong. Neither of us is thinking of relocating to Shetland. The weather is challenging for those of us used to living in T-shirts and shorts. The near-constant wind can be wearing even for us sailors. Nevertheless we often find ourselves silenced by the raw beauty of the landscape, delighted by unexpected sightings of seals or otters, humbled by ruins and standing stones erected thousands of years ago by people we think of as primitive, and warmed by the kindness and easy humor of today’s Shetlanders.

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.

Just like on Unst, we had no trouble getting into the rhythm of the island of Yell, if you can even sense a rhythm. The weather continued its cruel and capricious ways but we moseyed here and there, enjoying the untamed landscape.

I saw that some strong winds were predicted and looked for a bit of shelter while we wait for better conditions.

When the parkup apps fail us I turn to Google maps and follow the roads looking for a layby or car park that’s away from houses and likely to be quiet overnight. In Shetland the small marinas where locals keep their fishing boats often have a level place to pull in, with the bonus of a harbor or sea view. In high winds, being down at sea level can also mean shelter from surrounding hills.

I found us a likely spot in a quiet marina car park with a boat ramp that looked like it didn’t get much use. We parked Escape Velocity to leave as much room as possible just in case someone wanted to launch a skiff in the morning.

Sure enough, after a stormy night we were awakened by a van and utility trailer backing up past us to the ramp.

It was rainy and muddy but I jumped out of the van to talk to the driver.

“Do you want us to move?” I asked.

“Nah, you’re fine. I can get past you,” he said, or the Shetlandic equivalent. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”

He told me he and a friend keep sheep on a small island out in the strait and it’s time to clip them. Rather than bring the sheep back ashore, they set up a mobile sheering station and on this day they’re transporting everything they need out to the island.

“We’ll be back and forth all day,” he said, and we watched as they made trip after trip, transporting ATVs, lengths of fencing, and whatever else they’d need to corral and sheer the sheep. It was bitter cold and wet and their hands grew red and chapped but they carried on cheerfully, working together as a practiced team.

“Now we just have to wait for better weather,” they told us as they left at the end of the day. “Nobody else will be down here. You’ll be fine.”

We stayed a second night to wait out the worst of the weather, then feeling the need for hot showers and laundry, we checked into a campground. It’s payment by honesty box, like so much here, and the amenities block has an old lifeboat for a roof, not an uncommon sight hereabouts.

During the day we saw the Google Street View car drive down to the water and back again. It’s the second time we saw the Google car on Yell and I was happy to see it. I often travel the roads virtually with Street View to make sure a route is suitable for our van or to scope out a potential parkup, and Yell’s coverage needs a bit of an update.

Our Ordnance Survey map and the AllTrails app both recommended a hike up to the nearby cliffs and despite the spitting, gusty weather we determined to do our best imitation of the locals and tramp the soggy sheep meadows.

The payoff was a fun half hour of watching puffins, who seemed as interested in us as we were in them.

Eventually the damp chased us back down the hill to a warm Escape Velocity and clean clothes.

We ended our time on Yell with a visit to the Old Haa Museum, housed in a historic house furnished as it was in the day, and displaying portraits of notable Yell-ers.

I hope they find a photo of Nancy Johnson. We never did see her “poems on da po” though we did see others’ in various public toilets around Shetland.

Weeks ago I made our reservation for the ferry to Orkney but we realized there’s so much more we want to do in Shetland so we rescheduled it. We took the small ferry from Yell back to the Shetland mainland, determined to make the most of the time we have left.

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!

We drove directly from the ferry to a shop in northern Yell where we’d been told we can swap our propane bottle. “No problem,” they said, and while Jack pulled around back to get the new tank, I perused the well-stocked shelves of yet another surprising store on a remote island. There were items here I had trouble finding even in shopping Meccas like Sydney and Penang, not to mention the usual eclectic array of household and utility wares.

I’ve started asking locals for suggestions on places we can park for the night. Most aren’t tuned in to the wild camping culture and point us toward any nearby campground they know. Sometimes, though, we get some pretty good suggestions. The woman in this shop proposed the community hall down the road and said they had electrical hookups and the usual campground amenities. That was surprising because it isn’t on any list or website or app that I use. I filed that one away for the future and asked if there was a more remote place. She suggested a cemetery a few miles away. We’ve been in Shetland long enough to know that graveyards are usually on a windy hill overlooking the sea, the churches they were built around are generally in ruins, the car parks are mostly level, and we’re almost always the only ones there because most people, for reasons I’ve never understood, find it creepy to spend the night near a graveyard. I plotted our course.

The graveyard fit all the criteria and we settled in for the night to plan our exploration of this new island. In the morning I walked among the gravestones and saw the usual pattern of a community that relies on the sea for subsistence.

I find markers with “lost at sea” or “drowned” in every churchyard I visit, but there are also mass disasters memorialized on these islands. One of the most poignant is the Gloup Disaster in 1881 when 58 men were lost, all from these small communities.

Not all of the sea disasters involve the fishing fleet. In 1924 the cadet barque Bohus, sailing from Göteborg to Chile with a crew of 38 aboard, was caught in a storm and dashed to pieces on the rocks. Those who could swim ashore did, but those who couldn’t stayed with the ship and awaited their doom. Local men mustered to the rescue and were able to save all but four of the crew.

Five months later the wooden figurehead floated to the surface and washed ashore. It was erected overlooking the sea as a memorial to the shipwreck and is known as the White Wife of Otterswick.

I felt the need to pay my respects to the lives that ended on that windy outpost. As a sailor I know that the sea gives and the sea takes away. Whatever your level of seamanship and experience, you are at the mercy of the sea, and the sea will always win.

On an island the size of Unst with a population just over 600, you won’t find a packed itinerary of sights to keep you busy every day. Instead, aside from the obvious historical places marked on our tourist map, our days are spent exploring the few roads, stopping in at the few stores and cafes, as much to have a chat as to shop or eat.

The shops — there are three main ones on the island — are phenomenal, small but surprisingly well stocked in range and variety. Combine a supermarket, a DIY store, a pharmacy, a liquor store, a craft center, gift shop, electronics store, and sporting goods store, and squeeze them all into a space the size of a suburban living room, and that gives you an idea of how good the provisioning is in Unst. It usually takes us close to an hour to inspect the aisles and shelves to see what we might need that we hadn’t thought of, all the while chatting with the proprietor or other customers.

We passed by the small boat museum a few times before deciding to visit. Actually we wanted to have lunch at the adjacent cafe, but when we couldn’t find enough room to park the van, we stashed it in the museum lot while we ate, then felt obligated to visit. We’re glad we did.

The collection, as is usual with most small town museums, is a community effort, a gathering of bits and pieces donated by this family and that, in honor of this person and that. As you make your way around the room reading the placards you get to know the families and the revered elders. There are boats, of course, but also the tools used to build those boats, and the fishing lines and hooks that were used on those boats as the men went to sea to make a living. There are the tools used by the women who gutted the fish and sent the catch to market. It was the story of a way of life and worth the visit.

One drizzly day we took a road we hadn’t followed before that led to a long-ruined church on a promontory overlooking the sea. There are a lot of these church ruins, complete with graveyards, and I’m always ready to walk among the memorials, read the names, and think about the families who lived and died within a few miles of the spot.

The road also led us to one of our favorite standing stones so far. It’s magnificent and has stood sentry for thousands of years.

In a fun twist on the honesty cake fridges, we came across this honesty cafe but it was too rainy and windy for us to sample the wares. Right next to it is an honesty rock shop, but I didn’t buy any rocks or get a photo.

One of our propane tanks ran out and we learned the closest place to swap it is in Yell, the next island to the southwest. The weather really closed in on us, and after a chilly night on the waterfront we decided to catch the ferry. On to Yell.

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.