Big southerly

A warm drying wind from the south has wiped away the snow. It's a day for being outside. It's a day for wandering and wondering.

Today we have the remnants of a southerly gale, blustering and buffeting up from Scotland and all that lies beneath. Three weeks of refrigeration and Daz whiteness has gone, and everything is sheepshit green and silage brown. The ground is wet but drying astonishingly fast. Snowdrops sprout. Oystercatchers wheel  in flocks like some mad miniature air display team.

Yesterday I found a dead sheep, probably caught in a lost snow drift, eyes unpecked by gulls, but stiff and cold. I called the crofter and dragged it to the road. Today is all new life, though, seabirds waiting for spring, buds beginning to sprout, flowers peeping through. We’re a long few weeks away from the tirricks (arctic terns) return from the Antarctic, those hirondelles of the ocean and, after King Wren, my favourite bird.

Blue skies and sun, so I need to get out and up, tackling the north side of Hillswick Ness, first time in three years; first time since the last angioplasty. This is a waymarked walk but in windy conditions the cliffs can feel very exposed. So it proves. The wind provokes wobbles.

My legs don’t feel as steady as they once were and I’m beginning to think a stick might be necessary for rambles like this. Suddenly, I need to be a tripod. Age.

But it’s beautiful, the ocean a rampant blue and swelling white under a mediterranean sky. Big, surfable seas coming from the west, if you were brave or young or stupid enough to try it. On the Eshaness side of Sand Wick the strange red outcrops of the Heads of Grocken contrast with the blunt grey face of the cliff called...wait for it...Grey Face. I see half of a long-dead sheep’s bleached jaw at my feet and as I reach what remains of an ancient hill dyke, or boundary wall, sit and let the buffeting wind and slow rolling of the waves soothe and calm. No chest pain. That’s good. Wish I’d worn better boots. Or indeed, any kind of boots. These trainers were a mistake.

Back and down, avoiding the West Ayre where suddenly a group, clearly together, of at least seven adults, a child and a dog have appeared. An extended bubble, presumably. Geese are competing with sheep for feed on the short cropped field leading to our house. Seventy, eighty years ago the annual Hillswick Show was held here.  Over by the beach are the buried remains of a Columban monastery. Some of the stones from it were used to build our barn. There’s a World War Two observation post just along from it and a brand new wind generator just up the hill; a Scandinavian hotel in pinewood and an artificial beach made up of ballast from throughout Europe, brought by cargo boats here to load up with ling. Stuff has been happening here for a long time.

Some call this wilderness. The remotest part of the UK. But Shetland, at the crossroads of the Atlantic and the North Sea, has been a resource, a military outpost, a religious and touristic destination, a source of seamen, energy, fish and music. This is the centre of the world.

Our world. Our house sits on a shingle spit, part Georgian, part much older. From this angle, it’s white roughcast is like a full rigged ship at sea. It shivers in the wind, and we’re expecting more gales tonight.

All photographs by Tom Morton