Scotland, Ireland and all around the UK

 Today is the first totally free day we have had in the past three weeks.  This occurred because O.A.T. changed the date of our Maritime Jewels boat trip by moving it forward one day.  This created a gap between our Shetland Islands extension and the Maritime trip.  We just come to expect the unexpected.  There was confusion at the Marriott front desk about our extra day, but Moira, our trip leader straightened it out.  We were assured we had the extra day in the same room and it included breakfast, great. Carl and I spoke to the front desk and requested a cab for four and luggage for Monday morning. (it seems 90% of the cabs here are pre-hire, very few to catch on the street).  We were assured this was no problem, well it came Sunday morning instead of Monday.  The problem is, almost all the front desk staff at this Marriott do not speak English as a first language (even though we are in an English speaking country), most are French. When we retu...

 After breakfast this morning, we bid Brae and the Brae Hotel goodbye. It was about a 40 minute ride to Lerwick where we stopped to visit The Broch of Clickimin. The following information about Clickimin is from the Undiscovered Scotland website: About 1000BC a bronze-age family built a small farmhouse on a grassy islet surrounded by loch or marsh, and they walled the islet to enclose their cattle and sheep. Evidence has been found on the site of barley cultivation, which was ground in stone troughs, one of which can still be seen at Clickimin. The visible remains of the farmhouse lie to the north-west of the main broch. Some time around 200BC a ditch was dug across the neck of land connecting the farm with the southern side of the loch, probably crossed via a draw-bridge, and a much stronger wall was built around the islet. The aim now was less to keep livestock in than keep people out. A hundred years later, about 100BC, a "blockhouse" was built immediately inside the only ...

I will offer just a few observations about the Shetland Islands.  The people are friendly.  The food is great! The weather -- well, it's hard to say because we have been blessed with great weather (for the Shetlands), but I can say it is windy.  The Islands average over 50 days a year with gale force winds (that's greater than 60 mph).  It is also a wet climate, but they don't get an excessively great amount of downfall, only about 49 inches annually.  It just rains frequently in small amounts.  The temperatures range for the 12 months, from an average low of 36 degrees Fahrenheit to an average high of 56 degrees Fahrenheit.  Of course they do have higher and lower temperatures, but these are the average. In the Shetlands, you probably will not freeze in the winter or roast in the summer, but you might blow away!  After another excellent Scottish breakfast, we boarded our mini-bus and headed to the north-west of Shetland mainland.  Our first ...