Vikings

Dogger, Forties, Viking, Fair Isle. Poetic names that roll from the radio shipping forecast, places where the visibility is moderate or good, or there’s a severe gale warning. It always seems to me that the outer islands have more to do with the sea than the land, that they are somewhere apart, a place of wind and rough weather, a defining perimeter of the British Isles. I like to go to the edge to try to understand the middle and these islands are a way to get a viewpoint on Britian from another angle. A Viking viewpoint, perhaps, writes Sue Webber.

Wheeling my bike on to the ferry at Thurso, I can see the Orkney islands over the water. It feels right to travel by sea like those Viking invaders, to see the islands rise above the waves as we approach.

The Orkneys were once part of a Viking empire. For three hundred years, from 800 to 1100, people from what are now Denmark, Norway and Sweden spread east and west, raiding, trading and colonising. Shetland and the Orkneys were stepping stones to their expanding territory of the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland and even North America around a thousand years ago.

As the ferry arrives in the pretty harbour of Stromness the difference between the mainland of Scotland and the Mainland island of Orkney isn't immediately clear but as we ride out of town I realise that the Orkneys are not some edge of the world wilderness, the island's rich green pasture glows like an emerald. Munching this gem-like grass the well-fed animals gleam like prize winners from an agricultural show.

We do not have to look far for evidence of the Viking past. Cycling south along the coast we come to the ruins of a church at Orphir. This small circular church was built by Earl Haakon Paulson who modelled it on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem after his visit there to do penance for the murder of his cousin Magnus. Unfortunately part of his church was pulled down for stone to build a later church which has also been demolished. Now a curved gravel path shows where the missing wall would have stood. I'm surprised how small the building would have been with just standing room for twenty, like a little Greek church.

Near the church, green hummocks and stones mark the position of the Earl’s hall or Bu that is mentioned in the Orkneyinga Saga - the Norse tale of these islands. The Bu would have been the place of feasting, story telling and mammoth drinking competitions echoed today in pubs after football matches, perhaps the most telling indication of the Viking blood still flowing in British veins.

Our destination is Kirkwall where we will catch the ferry to Shetland tomorrow. The town’s campground is near the harbour and managed by the newly-built recreation centre funded by oil money from the North Sea.

It's mid-July and days are long and nights are short, a time of year known locally as the simmer dim when twilight and dawn merge. It's wonderful to have the evening light to eat and read by, but tonight I find it hard to sleep and begin to wonder if it will ever get dark. I wake from a short sleep to see light coming through the tent but when I check my watch it is only 3.00am. I snooze until 6.30am when I get up and take an early stroll with the sleepless dog walkers. The ferry for Lerwick is waiting in the harbour but we have the morning to explore the city.

The 100km sea journey between Kirkwall and Lerwick on Shetland varies between eight and ten hours depending on tides and weather, although rough conditions can mean even longer voyages. Looking across the water I can understand how early sailors could have navigated between the islands by sight alone when the weather was good. Fair Isle, known for its hand knitted sweaters, is mid-way between Orkney and Shetland and so makes an important landmark. On a clear day you can see from the north coast of Scotland to Orkney, from Orkney to Fair Isle, and from Fair Isle to Shetland, but on other days you'd better be a good navigator to find your way north.

We have calm seas and a following wind, our bicycles are lashed below on the car deck and we relax in our reclining chairs and read the Sunday paper more in the style of a cruise liner than a Viking longship.

Lerwick is our destination, every January this town is the scene of the Up Helly Aa celebrations, a Viking fire festival. This involves lots of dressing up and singing and a grand finale of burning a specially-built Viking longship. After all, Lerwick is closer to Oslo than London.

The town seems rather quieter on a Sunday evening in July and we're soon settled in the campground next to the leisure centre where swimming in a large indoor heated pool seems to be the most popular activity.

I survey the campground early next morning. Black clouds are coming but I think I will have time to cook the porridge before the rain arrives. Like so many other campgrounds in these isles, this one offers the simple facilities of a field of grass and a toilet block. I’m missing the luxuries of Australian campgrounds - picnic tables and chairs, a sheltered camp kitchen, a tree for shade or to hang washing from or lean a bicycle against. There’s a sense that respectable campers bring their caravans and motor homes with all they need and simply require an electrical power point to plug in and switch on their home-from-home. Those who arrive by bicycle or on foot deserve only the most basic of facilities so that they will see the error of their ways and either stay at home or buy a motorised shelter.

We’ve been on the road for a week and most of my clothes are ready for a wash. I dress in what’s left - a pair of shorts topped with a thermal top covered with a pair of black waterproof trousers and a bright yellow rain jacket. I look ready for a place on the Lerwick lifeboat as I walk in to town clutching a plastic bin liner full of dirty clothes. We find the advertised laundry but it's closed and there's a for sale sign in the window that suggests it may be some while before the machines spin again. Fortunately the helpful woman at the tourist information office directs us to another laundry on the other side of town.

The nearby supermarket offers everything from French wine to fresh pasta so we stock up for a feast. Over the road is Clickhimin Broch, a sort of tower house originally built about 100BC. Broch is a Viking word from the Norse word borg, meaning castle or fortification. Enough remains of this building to explore inside the thick curved walls and wonder who the people who built it wanted to protect themselves from.

Next morning we prepare to head further north to the most northerly inhabited island of the British Isles. There's a steep climb out of Lerwick along the north road. The land is bare of trees and populated by shaggy sheep with smart white lambs that dart about over peat and rocks. Above the main road three giant wind generators whirl like propellers, fortunately for us the wind is not strong today and I have energy to look around at the bare landscape and try to imagine it 5000 years ago when man and grazing animals arrived to find woods of birch and rowan trees. Between the forces of firewood collection and nibbling sheep the landscape has been shorn of its woodland, leaving a tougher environment for both man and beast.

We head north to Voe where the road divides, the western arm goes to Brae and the Sullom Voe oil terminal where oil arrives in pipelines pumped from rigs in the North Sea, we ride further north following a smaller road alongside an inlet that looks like a fjord. Our long gradual climb is aided by a tail wind that pushes us up the hill with ease. We roll down the other side of the hill to the ferry at Toft. Small vehicle ferries link the islands and we ride to the front of the queue of cars as there are plenty of spots for bicycles on the ferry even if car space is limited.

Over the short crossing, the island of Yell seems like another country, a further step from the mainland, another skip of the stones tossed from Scotland out into the water of the North Sea. Yell welcomes us with sunshine, a quiet road along the sea shore and even wilder-looking sheep with great tatters of fleece blowing in the breeze. Blanket peat covers much of the island, it takes a year to form a millimetre of peat and in some places it is over three metres deep, making it 3000 years old. All over the Scottish islands the peat is dug for fuel and burns in smoky fires with a pungent smell that is suggested in the taste of some malt whiskies made with peaty water.

Our destination is Mid Yell where I’ve booked a couple of nights at the camping bod at Windhouse lodge. Camping bods provide wind and weather-proof accommodation at a reasonable price. Our bod is a small house set in a cottage garden with its own distinctive Sustrans route marker, a great metal fishtail marking Route One, the North Sea Cycle route. Inside are three rooms with bunk beds - just bring your own camping mattress and sleeping bag, a kitchen (bring your own cooking gear) and a shower and toilet. Above the house stands the grey stone ruin of Windhouse Lodge, supposed to be the most haunted house on Shetland and built on a site that has been occupied for more than 5000 years.

We leave the gear at the camping bod and ride the bikes virtually unladen up to Unst, the most northerly inhabited island of the British Isles. Another ferry takes us across the narrow stretch of water between Yell and Unst. We pay $3.50 each but the bicycles go free. Unst feels like the end of the line, a remote outpost, the full stop at the end of the British Isles.

The weather is superb for this trip north with blue skies and sunshine that belie all those shipping forecast warnings that I associate with the Shetlands. If the Vikings arrived on a day like this I can understand why they wanted to stay. The traffic comes in short bursts every half hour or so when the ferry arrives, otherwise we have the road to ourselves and the wild sheep. Many of them seem to have dug trenches in the peat to shelter from the winds, I watch their heads pop out from the ground as they survey the scene like worried woolly warriors. Little Shetland pony foals and their mothers run along by our bicycles and the only sounds are their hooves and the curlews crying. Smooth green hills rise around us and the sea is a Mediterranean shade of blue. These are the days I go cycle touring for.

We ride on to Haroldswick past the Ministry of Defence housing, cloned buildings crammed into a plot the size of a single field. The radar station at Saxa Vord is being decommissioned and some of the houses look empty, I wonder if these invaders will be gone soon, leaving the islands for the few who still choose to live here.

From Haroldswick we have the choice of cycling north-east to Skaw and the most north-easterly point or heading north-west to the Hermaness National Nature Reserve and Muckle Flugga. Muckle Flugga is too good a name to miss so we head around Burra Firth with its wonderful sandy beach. The car park for the nature reserve seems like a good place to leave our bikes and continue on foot. There’s an eight kilometre walk around the reserve but as it’s already 2.30pm we decide to walk to the cliffs and watch the sea birds from there. The ground quivers like a trifle as we step out across the spongy peat and head for the west coast. Bonxies, as the great skuas are called locally, fly overhead. They breed up here and we’ve been warned that they will dive anyone coming too close to their nests.

The long drop down the cliff edge falls to a blue sea more than 150 metres below. Thousands upon thousands of sea birds nest here and looking down is like perching on top of a huge tower block and watching all the families come and go. On a cliff ledge close by is a line of little black and white birds with rainbow beaks, something like a cross between a penguin and a parrot. The Vikings thought the Christian hermits looked like these little birds they called papi and used the name for both. We call them puffins and they were once part of an annual tribute, sent south to give royal feasts an exotic extra course.

As we sit on the grassy cliff top a bold puffin lands close to our feet, its beak full of shining silver fish. It looks at us with interest and then flies off, coming round in a circle to land again. It looks at us once more and at last we understand, we are sitting by the entrance to its underground burrow. Apologetically we move back and the puffin waddles forward on its orange feet and takes the fish to hungry beaks underground. Its moments like this that make travel rewarding. However many wildlife documentaries I watch on TV I’m never going to come to an understanding with an animal through our eye contact and it’s never going to jump out of the screen and feed its young under my sofa.

From a little further along the cliffs I can see Muckle Flugga and its lighthouse designed by Thomas Stevenson, father of Robert Louis Stevenson who wrote the book Treasure Island. The writer visited Unst in 1869 and the map of Treasure Island in his book looks a lot like the outline of Unst. Beyond Muckle Flugga (meaning big steep sided island, since you ask) is the rock called Out Stack and then next stop the North Pole. This is it, we've gone as far north as we can go, now it’s time to start the long journey south from Shetland to the Isles of Scilly, from Unst to St Agnes.

Tour Guide

Maps

Orkney and Shetland are on Cycle Route One, part of the 5500km North Sea Cycle Route. They are included in the Sustrans map Aberdeen to John O'Groats, available from Sustrans Information Service, PO Box 21, Bristol, BS99 2HA, UK. Website: www.sustrans.org.uk

Scotland

For information on cycling in Scotland see: www.cycling.visitscotland.com

Camping Bods

In Shetland, a Bod was a building used to house fishermen and their gear during the fishing season. Today, the word is used to describe basic accommodation for those who want a simple holiday. See: www.camping-bods.com

Unst

Unst is the most northerly populated island in the British Isles. Just 19km by 8km, it is home to some of the most spectacular views, sandy beaches and thriving wildlife in Europe. With a population of only 900, the land remains unspoilt and visitors are always welcome. See: www.unst.org

Copyright Sue Webber 2007

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