There are no trees on the Shetland Islands.\u00a0 The reason is shallow acidic soil and high winds.\u00a0 Plenty of grass though, which is great for sheep which outnumber humans more than twenty to one (not counting tourists).<\/p>\n
I went on an excursion to Mousa Island (Moss Island), an island off Shetland\u2019s \u201cMainland\u201d.\u00a0 It is uninhabited by humans today, but about 2500 years ago people there built one of many stone brocs, cylindrical stone towers.\u00a0 The one on Mousa Island is the best preserved.\u00a0 There is some argument among archeologists about their exact purpose(s) but they were probably used for food storage, community gatherings and protection from attackers, like the Romans.\u00a0 They were all built within sight of each other, so they may also have been used for signaling or other communications.<\/p>\n
No people on the island, but plenty of sea birds.\u00a0 I saw puffins, storm petrels, loons (a Shetland variety), guillemots, arctic terns, and others whose names I forgot, and all kinds of gulls.\u00a0 We also saw porpoises, apparently rare around the Shetlands, and seals which are not so rare.\u00a0 Sheep graze on the island with a sense of ownership that is very inconsiderate to the nesting terns.\u00a0 Terns are extremely aggressive in defending their nesting site.\u00a0 When a sheep gets near-by, terns dive-bomb the sheep, pecking at their heads.\u00a0 A woman in our party also got attacked by a tern, pecking her jacket.<\/p>\n
My excursion was blessed by calm weather and placid seas, rare in Shetland.\u00a0 But some time into our walk we had a downpour.\u00a0 No place to hide in the open Shetland landscape.\u00a0 Our party started to resemble a collection of drowned cats.\u00a0 I will walk in freezing cold, howling winds and blizzards, but somehow I never enjoyed walking in the rain because I don\u2019t like getting home in wet clothes.\u00a0 But I learned something new \u2026\u00a0 if you keep walking until after the rain has stopped, you will<\/u> dry out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are no trees on the Shetland Islands.\u00a0 The reason is shallow acidic soil and high winds.\u00a0 Plenty of grass though, which is great for sheep which outnumber humans more than twenty to one (not counting tourists). I went on an excursion to Mousa Island (Moss Island), an island off Shetland\u2019s \u201cMainland\u201d.\u00a0 It is uninhabited … Continue reading “July 5: Shetland Islands”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-cruise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":436,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions\/436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}