Shetland

My Nana (on Mum’s side) was born in New Zealand, but all of the generations of her family before her were born in Shetland. My Great Grandmother, Minnie, her brothers and sisters, her parents and her grandmother all came to New Zealand on various voyages in the early 1900s. They had all been born and grown up in or married into the Tait croft (farm) on the island of Bressay. I’ve always known that I am part-Shetlander but Shetland itself always felt like this far-off, mysterious land. When my Aunty gave my kids a book last year called ‘Will There Be Puffins?’ about a wee New Zealand girl visiting her family in Shetland, it made me realise that I would like to take my own kids to Shetland and bring this mysterious land to life.

Getting to Shetland either involves a pricey 30 minute plane ride, or a potentially rough and miserable 12 hour ferry journey from Aberdeen. As Nathan and Michele generously offered us their campervan, we opted for the ferry and crossed our fingers and toes that we’d have a smooth sailing. The ferry is overnight so we took our time over 2 days to drive up to Aberdeen, using the ever-reliable Park4Night to find a camping spot beside a lake in Glasgow. Once on the ferry, I felt really emotional about the journey we were taking to Shetland and the feeling of connecting with my roots only grew stronger with our time there. It was a beautiful evening and we enjoyed our time on the deck.

Our cabin was significantly bigger than our train cabin in France and we all slept like logs. We arrived at Lerwick on Mainland to a stunning blue-sky morning, beyond grateful for an easy crossing.

The first day we drove over to a place on the west coast called St Ninian’s Isle. On the way there, we saw our first Shetland ponies. The kids could hardly believe that we could just reach over the farm fence and pat the ponies. The ponies obviously loved the attention as more of them soon came running over for some cuddles too. The kids soon had their favourites – Zara named hers Biscoff (it was the colour of biscoff cookies), which then led the others to be named Oreo, Cookie Dough…and Midnight.

This was just the first of multiple Shetland pony encounters over the week and we even saw foals – even smaller ponies!

St Ninian’s is actually connected to the mainland via a tombolo (sand bar).

The kids were super excited to be back at the beach and were soon leaping and flipping off the sand dunes and playing in the sand.

In the afternoon, we walked around the perimeter of the island. The cliffs were spectacular and the water below was so blue and so clear.

Early on in our walk, we were saddened to see a wee lamb, aka Lambey, stuck on the rocks below – his wee frightened baaaaa was heartbreaking to hear! Logan tried multiple ways to get down to him but it just wasn’t safe so we had to be hopeful that the farmer would find out and come and rescue him. Lambey featured in much of our conversation over the next few hours so we were so pleased when we saw a farm ute heading his way across the beach and up on to the cliff. After dinner we decided to go and see how the rescue mission was going and were delighted to see Lambey had been rescued and was safely in the back of the ute. Based on the rather questionable knot tying on the rope attached to the farmer’s brother who was still over the cliff, we regretted that Logan had not got involved earlier! However it wasn’t long until everyone was safely on solid ground and Lambey was on his way for a feed and a check over! Phew!

After what had felt like the longest day, we watched the sun set into the sea just before 10pm. We moved locations to sleep on the east coast and I briefly thought I’d get up for the sunrise too – until I realised the sun was rising at 4.16am! Safe to say we didn’t see much ‘night’ over the 7 days we were in Shetland!

The next day we went COASTEERING! Coasteering is a way of exploring the intertidal zone of a rocky coastline by scrambling over rocks, swimming through seaweed, venturing into caves and blowholes, and jumping off rocks into the sea. It was another glorious day in Shetland but the water was only about 10 degrees so we were well suited-up! Our guide Adam was absolutely awesome – he had such a calm, encouraging nature and was so passionate about coasteering and the beauty of Shetland’s coast. We were in and out of the water for about 3 hours – it gave us such a unique and wonderful perspective of Shetland. Such fun!

Adam also introduced me to bayanne.info – a family history website specifically for people from Shetland. I had some information from my Aunty and from other ancestry websites before I left NZ, which then allowed me to search really specifically on bayanne. With all this information, we took the ferry to the island of Bressay for the weekend, unsure of how close we’d get to my family but just glad to be walking in their footsteps.

Bressay has a population of 360 but amazingly they host a Parkrun on a Saturday morning. Logan enjoyed running with the locals with the undulating course taking him past a seal playing in the mud, bleating lambs, and pretty views out to sea – quite different to the Parkrun in London the week before! Afterwards we stayed to chat with some of the runners at the local cafe, and had our first introduction to ‘tiffin’ – a traditional Scottish unbaked chocolatey slice. Mmmmm!

In the afternoon we visited the island of Noss. To get to Noss, you have to get the attention of the boat captain of a wee run-about to take you over. It felt a bit like a ‘Famous Five’ story, especially as if you see a red flag flying on Noss it means it’s too rough for the boat to run. Thankfully it was a lovely day so we were soon motoring our way across Noss Sound in the company of the very knowledgeable captain.

We had our first encounters with puffins on Noss – what absolutely adorable little birds! Amazingly they can fly 88 km per hour, flap 400 times a minute and can swim down to 60 metres deep. Despite that, they look a little like The Greatest American Hero at takeoff and landing, as if they’re really not sure what they’re doing and it could all go pear-shaped at any second! We had one puffin fly directly at us at our viewpoint and we had to laugh as it seemed to be thinking “Oh crap, what do I do now?”

We also enjoyed watching the graceful yet oh-so-rowdy gannets and a variety of other seabirds who make the cliffs of Shetland their home.

That evening we made our way to the Cullingsburgh cemetery, a very old burial ground and the ruins of an old church. Amazingly, in 2022 a woman unknown to me took a trip to Shetland and took hundreds of cemetery and headstone photos and uploaded them to findagrave.com. When I searched for William Tait, the last of my direct family to be buried in Shetland, I found her photo of his gravestone and the exact location of his grave. As you can see in these photos, there were only a few gravestones and many of them had crumbled or deteriorated beyond reading – so it was beyond amazing to stand before my Great, Great, Great Grandfather’s gravestone from 1887! Zara immediately began to gather flowers to lay at his headstone, including some daisies from his Great, Great, Great, Great Granddaughter Zara Daisy.

On Sunday morning, we headed to the south of the island to visit Bressay lighthouse. On the way, we went through the tiny village (only a few houses) of Grindiscol where my family had lived.

We stopped at one of the houses and a man soon came along and pointed to some stone buildings next door and told us that it had been the Tait croft. He thought that the man who now lived on the property, Andrew, would likely be happy to show us around. We decided to carry on to the lighthouse first and thoroughly enjoyed playing down on the point.

By the time we came back through Grindiscol, Andrew was outside waving at us to come in. Andrew was so generous with his time and took us all around the croft. It was incredible to be standing inside the living room where my Great Grandmother Minnie and all of her family had sat. It really was quite remarkable.

When we were on Mainland, we took these photos over a couple of days looking over to the Tait croft (on the very left of the first 2 photos) on Bressay. Ko Ward Hill tōku maunga, ko Bressay Sound tōku moana.

In the evening, we ferried back to Mainland, drove to the north of the island, took a ferry to the island Yell and then a second ferry to the island of Unst and found a wonderful camping spot near the top of the island at Norwick Bay. Unst is the northernmost inhabited island of the UK and is also home to the UK’s first spaceport for vertical rocket launches that is hoping to begin orbital launches this year! Norwick Bay was absolutely beautiful and the weather continued to be absolutely glorious.

We spent the whole next day at the beach – reading in the sun, chilling, photographing birds and the seals playing in the bay, chasing Pooh sticks, and the kids spent hours making giant marble runs with two tennis balls they found on the beach. The sky was so blue – gorgeous!

On Tuesday, we drove all the way south from the top of Unst to the bottom of Mainland to Sumburgh Head. We stopped at some neat sights along the way – including a replica Viking ship and longhouse, some beaches, some art galleries displaying beautiful Shetland arts and crafts, and a 24/7 Cake Fridge!!!

Sumburgh Head is the home for many seabirds, including a colony of puffins. We spent hours in the evening and the next morning patiently waiting for the puffins to pop out of their rocky burrows or fly in from the sea, and thoroughly enjoyed watching their funny antics.

Wednesday we made our way back to Lerwick for our evening ferry back to Aberdeen. We were so lucky to have another calm 14-hour overnight crossing (via the Orkney Islands) and an easy drive back to Hoyland.

Our journey to Shetland was more special than any of us had expected. One of the reasons had been to give the kids a connection to Shetland, so to hear Lucas say, “Mum, I’m a Shetlander” on one of the last days was the cherry on the top of a wonderful adventure!