When I was planning this holiday in Shetland back in September last year, I decided I would like a week in Shetland to allow us time to travel to different parts of the islands and also investigate my family history. I figured Shetland was just too far away and too remote to restrict our visit to anything shorter. I wanted to book something in Lerwick that was within a few minutes of Commercial Street, so we could shop, dine and be tourists by basically stepping outside our front door. The problem was that I couldn’t find seven nights in a row in any single accommodation, most likely because we’re now at the beginning of holiday season. So I split the week into 4 nights and booked an AirBnB, and another three nights and booked into a second AirBnB, just a couple of streets away.
This morning we had to check out of the apartment in Queen’s Place and move to the one in St Olaf Street. Neil and I loaded up the car with all of our suitcases, backpacks, bags of wool etc and drove around to our new lodgings. A few minutes later Marg and Janie joined us there. They’d walked the few streets to the new address.
The new place is really nice, just as the last place was, although there are one or two problems. For starters, the cistern on the toilet doesn’t fill unless you take the top off the cistern and manually push the float down to allow the cistern to fill. We have a small saucepan sitting nearby in case extra flushes are required. Secondly, it has quite a few steep stairs to climb, which is not so easy with a heavy suitcase. Thirdly, one of the bedrooms is very small, so small that only one of our suitcases will fit in the room. Mine is sitting in the lounge room next to the couch. And the fourth issue I will get to soon.
We are staying near the western exit to Lerwick, so today we opted to eat at a couple of the dining places on this side of town. For lunch, we decided to walk around the waterfront area known as The Sletts to Fjara restaurant. This side of Lerwick opens up onto a large bay, which is quite sheltered, although the large, rocky breakwater here indicates that it might still occasionally be battered by fierce storms.
After lunch, we crossed the road to Clickimin Broch, a very well preserved broch only five minutes from the heart of the town. We were quite surprised when we approached it to see that there were no large signs, no ticket office, no gift shop or souvenir sellers, and very few information panels. You can just walk up to it from the street and walk through it at your leisure. There are no signs saying Do Not Touch or Please Stay Behind the Barriers. This surprised me, as I assumed the broch to be a major archaeological site. I did some further reading.
It seems the broch was originally situated on an island that jutted out into Loch Clickimin. It was first discovered and excavated in the 1860s. Half a century later, vandals and exposure to the weather had reduced the broch to a dwindling pile of rocks, so restoration work took place. It was excavated again in the 1950s.
At this time an archaeologist proposed that the inner circle was a bronze age farmhouse, constructed about 2,500 years ago. A few hundred years later he wrote that a larger iron age farmhouse was built around the smaller bronze age one. Some time after this a stone walled fort was built around the farmhouses, and eventually in the first century AD he thought that the broch itself was constructed. Today these theories have been challenged, and archaeologists think that some of the structures are much more contemporary than was first thought. Nevertheless, it is considered by Historic Scotland to be an ancient iron age site and a number of historic artefacts have been found here. Unfortunately, we don’t know a great deal about who built it or what its purpose was.
Across the road from the broch was a Tesco supermarket. We did some shopping there, as we will need packed lunches for our day tour tomorrow and we also plan to eat at home tomorrow night. We walked back to our new apartment, put the key in the lock and turned it. Nothing happened. We tried again and again and still nothing happened. This became the other problem with our new lodgings. We were locked out!
After many failed attempts we rang our host, Denise. When I told her we were locked out she said she’d come straight away, and in a few minutes she was there. She couldn’t get in either. She rang her mate Steve, who had apparently replaced the original lock for her just over a year ago. He turned up a few minutes later and got to work on the door frame and the lock. After a few minutes, he had the door opened and was standing inside. We all breathed a sigh of relief.
While Steve was working on the door and the lock, making sure it wouldn’t happen again, Denise hung around for a chat. She was lovely. And Steve kept joining in too. Then the next door neighbours turned up. They were also really nice people. We must have stood outside the front door for almost an hour laughing and chatting. The neighbours mentioned an issue with their door, so Steve fixed that too. What a guy! It seemed appropriate to ask everyone to pose for a photo.
On The Road With Garry 