Day Three - The West of Mainland

We decided today that we would re-do Lerwick town centre and then go across the the west of the Shetland Mainland.

This is (we think) the oldest house in Lerwick and is the one where DI Jimmy Perez (he from the BBC TV Series Shetland) lives.  Clearly, they don't use the inside of this - but one can sometimes see him going into that front door. 

Beside this house (although not on the TV) are the Lodberries or rock landing stages which were the way that goods were delivered to the houses here.  Out in the Bressay Sound is a remodelled Viking ship that's used for show and competitions ... in this shot, the Bressay ferry is passing behind it.

We also visited the Lerwick Town Hall, which is an amazing place.  Even though a meeting of the Council was in session, we could wander about and look at the place.  They are justifiably proud of it.  The pic on the right is one of the entrance pillars.  On the left is just one of the fantastic stained glass windows that surround three sides of the main hall which depict the history of Shetland with its Norwegian past.  The Vikings are in evidence as you'd expect, and the links to Orkney are important too.  But what we found particularly interesting was the history of 1066 ... not the usual history, but one that was going on at the same time as the events down south!

We popped across to Scalloway again to visit the North Atlantic Fisheries College's Marine Centre.  NAFC is part of the UHI and concentrates on short courses for those who need specialist skills for the fishing industry which is so important here. There are courses from "Basic Firefighting and Prevention (Seafish)" to "Fishing Skipper" and "Fishing Engineer" to "Sea Lice Identification and Recording".  They also do a great deal of important research about fisheries here.  And they have an interesting little museum and a cafe, which we visited.

Then onward towards Papa Stour, for no other reason than it sounded interesting!  We didn't want to land on the island - although you can fly to it from Lerwick.  Wikipedia notes: "Papa Stour Airstrip consists of a gravel runway and a small wooden shed. Access is via a metal gate with a notice warning people of the airstrip."  We could also have taken an inter-island ferry across, but since we're not really into birdwatching or little flowers, we thought we'd just look at it from the mainland.

That's Papa Stour behind us.  And here are some better pics of the island and the western tip of mainland:

And finally, on the way home we saw this, but we don't really know where Clousta is either: