Day 6: My God, the wind

As soon as I took my bike off that boat I went right over to the local grocery store, got my food and was rolling. No time wasted! My biking started around 8 a.m.

I jetted right out of the Shetland capital of Lerwick, but we’ll see it again on my return. Shetland was rural, full of farmland, beautiful all the time. Like most of Scotland, it was hard to know when to take a picture because it was non-stop gorgeous.

But my God – the wind! It was 27 miles to the southern tip of Shetland. I wanted to get there and back my first day. I was seriously questioning my fitness that first day. The wind abused me horribly. Sometimes it would hit me sideways and try to push me into traffic; but mostly it would try to push me the hell out of Shetland. (Or further in?) I was downshifting on a lot of downhills because the wind was often stronger on the descent than the ascent. I swear there were times that if I stopped pedaling it would have pushed me back up the hill.

I did still manage to swing by a few awesome sights though.

Saint Ninian’s Beach is the most famous beach in Shetland, which, like much of Scotland, is full of beautiful beaches with very cold water. It’s a strip of land which connects mainland Shetland to Saint Ninian’s Isle. A great treasure of medieval silverwork was found there in 1958, which the Scottish government did not let them keep, but instead put in a museum in Edinburgh. Big guy always picking on the little guy.

Continuing on, and fighting horrific head- and cross-winds, forged ahead to finally see some neolithic ruins. About 8 miles further on I got to Old Scatness Broch and Iron Age Village. It was closed, but the gate was easily defeated! It was a wonder to see these homes, which were thousands of years old.

A bit further on – after biking across the gated runway for Shetland’s airport – I found some more touristed and open to the public ruins – the Jarlshof Prehistoric and Norse Settlement. Depending on how deep we have dug, there are ruins from samples from thousands of years of history, from neolithic to Norse to the 17th century castle of Earl Robert Stewart (of whom I heard much in Shetland and Orkney – he was apparently a most unpleasant man).

And then, it was a hop skip to the lighthouse, at the very ends of the earth (or the part of it in Shetland. Supposedly once can say whales, puffins and other wildlife there, but I just saw seagulls. There was a neat exhibit on the foghorn.

Coming out of the lighthouse, I very seriously thought about asking strangers if anyone could give me a ride back with my bike. It was so hard to bike there with the hills and the wind. But I sucked it up and started biking back anyway. See, I have a trick to biking long distances. The trick is, you bike until you get tired. Then you keep biking until you get even more tired. Then you keep biking anyway.

And it was a dream! The wind had stopped. (So no tailwind – but no headwind.) The miles flew by. I made it most of the way back to Lerwick before I decided to make camp. felt like I could have done another 60 miles, and maybe I could have. Yay! It wasn’t that I was out of shape, it was just that soul-sucking cocksucker of a wind.

Scotland allows camping in any non-enclosed area. However, there is a complication – goddam everywhere is enclosed. Miles and miles of fenced yards, fenced pastures, and fenced farmlands. It was getting a bit late, so when I saw an older fellow taking care of his lawn, I pulled over to ask for help. “Hello! I said. Do you happen to know a good place to camp for the night?” “Well, anywhere, really,” he replied. He walked me around behind his house to a part where the grass had grown wild over the ruins of a house. He asked if it was OK and even weed whacked it for me! He then told me quite a bit about the history of the Shetland isles.

He invited me in to have some whiskey and tea with his wife. We had a good chat about Scotland, Shetland, politics and the evolving society. And his wife gave me a bag lunch for the morning. It almost made me feel bad, because I don’t think Americans would be as nice to him if he biked up and asked to camp on their lawn. (Or near it.) I’ve done that in America, and they’re not as nice!

Scotland is a great country, and the Scots are wonderful people.

Day 7: Lerwick calls

I woke up and decided to get the ferry to Orkney. Yes, I would love to bike around to Shetland’s smaller isles, and take ferries to Shetland Reel, the UK’s northernmost distillery; but if I stayed another day, I’d have had to stay three days, since there was no ferry on the weekend.

Just outside of Lerwick, I stopped at the Broch of Clickimin. These brochs are as old as 500 B.C. and unique to certain parts of northern Scotland. No one really knows exactly what they were for, but they seem to have been the leader’s house.

And then it was on to Lerwick – the greatest city in all of Shetland! Everywhere in Shetland, including here, I left my bike just standing unlocked. No one steals here, where would you go? At one point I leaned it against a wall to go in a shop on a narrow road. A motorist couldn’t quite get by my bike’s enormous ass so she stopped and started to move my bike, apologizing to me when I came to move it for her. My God, block traffic with your bike on a road in America and you’ll be lucky if all you get is a crowbar to the head.

And then it was on to the ferry to Orkney! I enjoyed that the guy managing traffic to the ferry was wearing a kilt: