Shetland and its ponies

Day 5   Lerwick  Friday, Sept 15, 2017

We finally had a sunny morning! (But later on it POURED rain.) Here in Lerwick, there was no deep-water port, so everyone going ashore had to shuttle in one of the ship's tenders (which also serve as the lifeboats). The Shetlands are part of Scotland, and consist of over 100 islands far north into the Atlantic/North Sea.

Interestingly, the "boundary" of the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea runs among these islands, and our tour guide at one point told us that the water we see over there is the Atlantic, while the water we see over there is the North Sea.

An artistic anchor on the wharf, with the Jade anchored out in the bay. This photo was taken early in the afternoon, while it was raining. No shadows in the photo this time!

The Shetlands have a Norwegian and Danish past, but were gifted to Scotland in 1469 as part of the Norwegian king's dowry when his daughter married James III of Scotland. That sort of thing always cracks me up. (We later learned when visiting the Orkney Islands that they too were part of this same dowry from the Norwegian king.)

The Shetlands have 22,000 population, and this capital town of Lerwick has 7500. Most famous is probably their Shetland ponies, and it was fun to see them out and about during our bus tour later in the day.

 As we left the pier from our tender ride, we saw this mini Viking ship they use for tourists. We also saw it in one of the tourist brochures, floating out in a bay

Since our bus tour would not start for a couple more hours, we strolled around the town. Our first stop was Fort Charlotte (1761). To take this photo, we had to wait our turn while the many Chinese tourists took their photos, as each person in a party took a turn being in the photo or taking it.

Many cannon, preparing to bomb our ship out there.

From the fort we walked to the library, which was jammed with our ship passengers wanting its free wifi. Janet did the same, to check on Brandon's health and any other incoming e-mails. While she did that, I took pictures of the library's stained glass windows. This was one of them.(We later saw this in one of the Shetland episodes on Netflix.)

We continued our stroll and came upon this church. The door was ajar, so I peaked in and we got a treat.

Not only was the stained glass pretty, but a soprano was rehearsing and she kept right on singing while we sat down and watched.

We continued back to the main shopping street by the wharf and it started raining pretty hard. We ducked into a candy store, and pretended to be shopping. I struck up a conversation with the clerk, mentioning my Nestlé connection, and finally felt guilty enough to purchase a bag of Kit Kats. (That bag lasted more than a week. We just rarely partook.)

This little spot was designated a "beach"! The stone buildings like this one were all over the island. It was strange to see abandoned homes out in the countryside with nothing left but their four perfectly preserved stone walls.

Note: It is now Nov 12, and Janet and I have watched eight Shetland episodes on Netflix, and this building is shown in every episode because it's where the star, Inspector Perez, and his daughter live. Oftentimes, they show Perez and someone else sitting in the little boat there in the background, relaxing and discussing something. Pretty cool that we took this photo not knowing about the Shetland series, and then this scene was famous!

Finally we departed on our inland bus tour, and this was a typical view from the bus. We loved our guide because he was born and bred a Shetlander and told lots of cool stories about what it was like to live and grow up there.

This photo hadn't meant anything to us yet, but the guide said it was used in the Netflix murder series, Shetland. I took the photo in case later we would watch the series, and sure enough, we later saw this home in some of the Season 2 episodes.

Two Shetland ponies! Not too bad a picture taken from a moving bus. All 1500 ponies on the islands are privately owned; they're not wild. There are about 100 breeders in all. The ponies have been here for 2000 yrs, and evolved their short stocky frames to cope with the harsh winters with little to eat. They were used as work horses during the past two centuries.

Part of the tour was the mandatory visit to a jewelry factory out in the middle of nowhere. We couldn't really understand the guy explaining the process due to his heavy Scottish accent. The whole thing wasn't too interesting, other than just getting to see some of their attractive pieces for sale. I decided to take this photo of a photo of one of their guys working.

I also took this photo in their display because it showed Shetland ponies, and their little pony necklace back there. Our visit to the tour guide's cousin's factory was soon complete, and on we went.

We then arrived in the coastal town of Scalloway, the capital before Lerwick. We explored the 16th-century castle ruins in the center, but first toured the new museum to its right, where we learned about the clandestine "Shetland Bus" rescue operation during WW II. Shetlanders undertook sailings back and forth to Norway to smuggle Norwegian refugees away from their German-occupied country, and deliver weapons and supplies to the resistance movement there.

Crossings were done mostly during the winter under cover of darkness, meaning that the crews and passengers had to endure very heavy seas, with no lights, and with constant risk of discovery by German aircraft or patrol boats. The boats were disguised as fishing boats and the crew as fishermen. The operation was under constant threat from German forces, and several missions went awry. Several fishing boats were lost during the initial operations, but after receiving three submarine chasers from the U.S., there were no more losses.

The Shetland Bus made a total of 198 tours to Norway, transporting 192 agents and 383 tons of weapons and supplies to Norway, and bringing out 73 agents and 373 refugees. Forty-four members of the group were killed.

The Scalloway harbor was its base, and many miles back in the middle of nowhere, our bus drove past a farmhouse that served as the headquarters for the operation. Interesting history I had never heard about before, and the museum was a brand-new memorial and historical presentation to honor the heroes and those lost.

This old castle from 1600 was built by Patrick Stewart, who later was beheaded in Edinburgh for treason. The story goes that when the authorities came to get him, they couldn't find him. But then a soldier smelled some tobacco smoke, which led them to a secluded bathroom where he was hiding. But dang, he just had to have that pipe!

A view from its inside. This was in a scene in Shetland also.

Janet is trying to find that hidden bathroom!

What a steep, narrow staircase! Actually, there were several other staircases like this in other castles we visited in Scotland later on, but I never got as good a picture as this one.

This loch (lake) photo reminds me of all the stories our tour guide told of how great the loch fishing is here. Apparently the trout are commonly 3 lbs, and so plentiful that the fisherman are more likely to just switch to a new loch when the fish aren't biting than to change flies.

After the return trip in the ship's tender, we of course had dinner, and this was one of many meals we ate at the 24-hr pub called O'Sheehan's. Except that I kept calling it O'Callahan's, and Janet always called it Shenanigans. But we always knew what each other meant.

We departed at 5 pm, so there was plenty of daylight to view various islands on our way back out to the high seas.

One final shot of their dramatic cliffs. We now faced about 40 hours of heavy seas as we sailed northwest to Iceland.