Just how much can a wool, nature and music lover cram into a 96 hour trip to the Shetland Islands? It turns out, rather a lot!

Why Choose Shetland?

The Shetland Islands are remote. Really remote. From mainland Scotland, you need to cross 110 miles of water, passing the Orkney Islands and Fair Isle before you even get to the southerly tip of mainland Shetland.

The islands are steeped in tradition and are utterly breath taking. You will find good food, friendly people, beautiful beaches, archaeology, wildlife, wool and lots of activities to suit your needs.

Why Did I Choose to Visit Shetland?

For the fist six years of my life, I lived near Thurso at the top of mainland Scotland. My Dad travelled to Orkney and Shetland for work and had tales of how remote and beautiful the islands were.

Matthew (husband) and I love visiting Scottish islands. There is something about having to make real effort to get somewhere that makes it extra special. So, a visit to the Shetland Islands was long overdue.

Every year, the Shetland Folk Festival is held over a weekend in May (usually the first weekend) and this provided a great reason for us to lock down the dates and finally get to Shetland.

Let’s also not forget that I am wool-obsessed and Shetland is synonymous with wool, sheep and knitting – absolute heaven!

In this Shetland blog

There are two parts to this post. There is day by day account of our trip which is then followed up with some practical information that may be helpful if you are thinking about visiting Shetland.

• Day One – Sunset at Eshaness Cliffs.
• Day Two – Ferries to Yell and Unst and a walk around Hermaness Nature reserve for Puffins and Great Skuas. Curry in one of the UKs most northerly Indian and Nepalese restaurants and a folk gig with Viking Metal!
• Day Three – Lerwick, wool shopping, Textile Museum, Shetland Museum and St. Ninian’s isle.
• Day Four – Walk to the abandoned fishing station at Fethaland.
• Bonus day – The mist descended…
• Purchases from Shetland – what does a crafter bring back from the Islands?
• Practical information – travelling to Shetland (ferry or plane), food, accommodation, useful links, weather warning.

Day One – Shetland Sunset

Having just arrived by plane, picked up the hire car, done a ‘big food shop’, dumped bags at our self-catering apartment and wolfed down some pizza, we razzed it up to the Eshaness Cliffs and Lighthouse to catch our first Shetland sunset.

It did not disappoint. This is my equivalent to an Ibiza sunset moment.

You can park a car up at the lighthouse and walk around the top of the cliffs where seabirds squawk and fly around their nests.

This was such a great way to immediately get a feel for mainland Shetland. The roads were great fun to drive on, we passed countless white sand beaches, voes (small bays) and interesting sea rock features.

If we had more time, we would have done the Eshaness Circular walk and spent more time orca watching – the cliff top makes for a great whale watching vantage point.

Day Two – Island Hopping, Puffins and Viking Metal

This was by far our longest day. We set off early to catch a ferry to Yell and then another to get onto Unst. Our destination was the Hermaness Nature Reserve to hopefully see puffins and definitely walk to the most northerly accessible point of Scotland.

Hermaness is a fabulous, globally important nature reserve with boardwalks to help you navigate around the near 5 mile Muckle Flugga Trail. It’s a ‘strenuous’ walk that is worth it to get so close to wildlife such as Great Skuas, Puffins, Gannets and to sit, eating lunch at the very top of Scotland!

After a quick dash back to the apartment for a shower, we scooted down to Lerwick for a decent lamb curry in Saffron, one of Scotland’s most northerly Indian and Nepalese restaurants. <<< This was the sustenance required for a folk gig at the Clickimin Community Centre.

As part of the Shetland Folk Festival, there are loads of gigs around the islands that you can book to see, but promises of

“lashings of Irish trad, pop, post-punk, folk-metal and viking metal too”

swayed us to book the Friday night gig with three acts each taking to the stage. We saw Ciarán Ryan Band (excellent banjo player), The Revellers (high energy local rock folk group) and Gangar (Norwegian band with a Viking Metal take on traditional Norwegian folk tunes and nursery rhymes).

This gig was a lot of fun and very well attended. I did not expect to experience Viking Metal on saxophone with lots of head thrashing! It was a great way to end our first full day on the islands.

Day Three – Lerwick, Museums, Shopping and St Ninian’s Isle

We kicked the day off with a fried breckie at Fjara in Lerwick. The views at this cafe bar are fantastic and worth heading on the outskirts of town for.

Post breakfast, today was museum and shopping day – finally some wool!

I headed to the Shetland Textile Museum, a small but nicely curated space focussing on historical and contemporary textiles, with a bent towards knitting. This was a lovely little place to visit with exquisite samples on show and finished goods (knitwear, crochet, yarn, buttons etc.) made on the island for sale in the shop.

In Lerwick town centre you will find two main places to buy wool. There’s the wonderful wall of wool in Jamiesons of Shetland shop and at Loose Ends craft shop you will find local wool from the flocks of Aister ‘oo’ and Urudale.

After a little wool buying spree, we headed to the Shetland Museum & Archives. This was honestly one of the best museum exhibitions we have been to. The interpretation was excellent and the breadth of subjects covered offered a good understanding of Shetland through the ages. I was obviously drawn to the beautiful colour-work knitted samples and delicate Shetland lace haps. Very importantly, the museum also has a nice cafe looking out onto the harbour and a great gift shop!

Back to the wool, because I hadn’t bought enough of the stuff. By prior arrangement I managed to meet up with Hazel who owns the flock of Shetland sheep that create the Aister ‘oo’ wool. I have just used the wool for my Kin crocheted jumper design which features in Issue 5 of the Journal of Scottish Yarns.

I was allowed to go into the back room of Hazel’s online wool shop to pick the colours for a cardigan version of Kin. It’s exciting to pick wool colours in person, but it’s even better to meet the shepherd behind the flock!

Our last stop of the day was to head down to walk across the tombolo to St. Ninian’s Isle. This is a bit of a “must do” tourist spot if you are visiting mainland Shetland. We deliberately went in the early evening to avoid the crowds and pretty much had the beach to ourselves apart from some intrepid sea swimmers that were dunking into the chilly water then making their way back to bookable Haar Sauna in a converted horse box. If we come back to Shetland, this is high up on my agenda!

Day Four – Walking into the past at Fethaland

One of the best things about sharing life on social media is that you connect with people and get recommendations of things to do. Louise suggested that a trip to Fethaland was worth the effort.

So, having done about 30 seconds of investigating it was clear that a remote cliff top walk to an abandoned fishing station at the very tip of mainland Shetland was right up our street!

With a packed lunch in our backpacks, we were off to park up at Isbister where the public road stops and it’s a 10km circular walk from there on.

When you get to Fethaland it is quite a haunting place. You can walk into the stone buildings (bods) and get a real sense of place for the people that lived and fished here. It’s both peaceful and eery.

At its commercial height, there were around 60 herring boats fishing from the site, and each bod housed the seven men that worked per boat. The boats went up to 40 miles out to sea, dropping long lines to catch herring before rowing the 40 miles back to gut and salt the fish before they were dried out on the beach, ready for market.

This was one of my favourite days here. I have never experienced anything quite like it.

Bonus Day – when your flight is cancelled…

Well, this bit wasn’t planned. During our fourth day, a mist enveloped the whole of the North East of Scotland, grounding flights between Aberdeen and Lerwick. Loganair arranged a taxi from the airport back to Lerwick, alternative travel on the ferry, a taxi from Aberdeen harbour to Aberdeen airport and a different flight the next morning from Aberdeen down to Manchester.

So, without a hire car we were pretty much glued to Lerwick with all of our baggage and a real want to get back home to see our fur baby cat, Pom Pom.

The only reasonable thing to do was walk into town to grab some lunch and sip coffee until we could get onto the boat for the near 15 hour overnight crossing.

The highlights of this unexpected route home were that we are pretty adept at making good things happen in cruddy situations and a bottle of wine on the ferry definitely created a rosy glow. Also, because so many of the Folk Festival musicians had also been re-routed to the ferry crossing, there were impromptu gigs occurring throughout the ferry. It was a pretty cool way to top off our ever so slightly extended holiday!

Purchases from Shetland

Obviously I brought wool back from Shetland (already linked above), but what else did I buy?

• Mitten blockers that are made in Shetland at Paparwark. <<< They also make hap stretchers and jumper blockers.
• A jigsaw of Shetland from the Shetland Museum.
• Fair Isle knitting buttons from the Shetland Museum.
• Ceramic buttons from the Pottery North Row, bought at the Shetland Textiles Museum.
• Volume 5 of the Shetland Wool Adventure Journal. I bought my copy from Jamiesons of Shetland, but you can buy it direct from Shetland Wool Adventures.

My Tips for Visiting Shetland

Travelling to Shetland

There are two ways to get to the Shetland Islands, by boat with North Link Ferries, or by plane with Loganair.

Shetland by Ferry

The main ferry goes from Aberdeen (mainland Scotland) to Lerwick (mainland Shetland) and is a 14.5 hour overnight journey. The return journey is also 14.5 hours and overnight. As of May 2024, a single foot passenger ticket from Aberdeen to Lerwick was £32.50.

For a slightly different route, you can island hop via Orkney which opens up the mainland port at Scrabster in the very north of mainland Scotland as a jump off point. This won’t be a quicker route but gives option if you wanted to visit both.

Top Tips for the Shetland Ferry Journey

• If you can afford it, book a cabin.
• There are pet friendly cabins if you are travelling with a dog.
• There are also bookable lounge rooms with sleeping pods. These look a bit like the reclining seats that you get in first class on planes. They come with a pillow, blanket, USB charger. Unlike the cabins, you are in a room with other people that have booked pods. The pod lounges can only be accessed by people that booked sleeping pods.
• There are also recliner seats that can be booked. These are in the open access areas of the ferry between the bars and restaurants, so not exactly a quiet space.
• All of the sleeping options can be seen here with information about showering onboard too.
• If you get caught out like we did and you end up with no official sleeping option on the ferry, when you board, head straight to the restaurant and bagsy a corner table with the fabric booth seating at the back. Do not move from that table because it is your dinner and breakfast table and sleeping area for the next 14 hours! The corner booths sit three, which means you can actually lie down and get some sleep and safely store your luggage under the table. I managed a whole 2 hours of sleep!

Shetland by Air

For many, this is going to be the preferred option, but it comes with two caveats. One, it’s really bloody expensive and two, if mist descends you could be grounded.

There are direct flights to Sumburgh (southern tip of Mainland Shetland) from Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Kirkwall and Inverness.

We were flying from Cheshire in England, so went from Manchester to Aberdeen, then Aberdeen to Sumburgh. Our return flights for both legs cost us £650 (gulp).

Top Tips for Flying to Shetland

• Book early, especially at busy times.
• Track Loganair to see when flights become available.
• If you have a long layover book the airport lounge at Aberdeen – it was well worth the money.
• If your flight is cancelled and Loganair book you on the ferry, double and triple check that they have actually added your name to the list of passengers for ferry tickets. They hadn’t added our names and the ferry was rammed. Luckily we got two of the last 16 ferry tickets available to leave the island. Unluckily, because our names weren’t on the list, that meant that no cabin/ pod/ recliner seat had been reserved for our overnight ferry ride to Aberdeen…

Food

Prior to going to Shetland, I had read that food was quite expensive to buy and to eat out. I didn’t find this to be the case at all.

We always stay in self catering accommodation, so we can eat what we want when we want. This makes food a top priority for any trip holiday trip that we take (tbh, I love cooking, so food is a priority everyday!)

Doing a Big Food & Alcohol Shop in Lerwick

The main town of Lerwick has a population of 7,500 people, so it has a reasonable selection of supermarkets. Our preference is to try to buy from local suppliers to inject money into the community but we arrived in the early evening, so gave our support to the big Coop store. It was really well stocked with everything you would expect. Lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and all the same price I would have been paying back at home in Cheshire, England.

The Wine Shop on Commercial Street in Lerwick, has a decent selections of wines, ports, whisky etc. Good prices and a lovely, proper wine shop.

Breakfast in Lerwick

On the Saturday morning, we went to Fjara Espresso Bar for a mega-breakfast. It’s a little out of town and is situated right on the bay front with big panoramic windows for weather watching and outdoor seating.

We sat outside for coffee (really good coffee) and a fry up with local produce. It was actually more of a double meal because we didn’t need lunch that day.

They were very happy for Matthew to sit there with his laptop, writing and drinking coffee as I scooted away for an hour to visit the Textile Museum.

This place gets busy, so booking is wise.

Lunch in Lerwick

On our unexpected extra day in Lerwick, we found ourselves in The Dowry on Commercial Street. It’s a busy cafe bar and restaurant with lovely friendly staff and good local food. I had macaroni cheese with a chorizo crumb and it was lush, as was the freshly squeezed glass of orange juice.

They were happy for us to have lunch and then decamp upstairs for coffees at a smaller table while we waited to get onto the ferry.

Dinner in Lerwick

If Shetland is as far north as you can go in Scotland, it makes sense to eat in one of the UKs most northerly Indian restaurants, right?

Well, there are three Indian and Nepalese restaurants to choose from and we ate at Saffron Restaurant and Bar. The food was good (lamb and a chicken dish from the Chef’s specials) and the staff were very friendly. Don’t be put off by the weird alleyway entrance to the restaurant, it’s nice inside!

You could also try Ghurka Kitchen and Rabba Indian Restaurant. All three restaurants have similar review scores in search engines.

Accommodation

Our self catering accommodation was so good. Shoormal is a one bedroom ground-floor apartment at Weisdale (about 15 minutes from Lerwick).

It was easy to find, had everything we needed and huge panoramic views for me to otter spot from.

If there are just two of you travelling (it’s a pet friendly place) and you like a certain standard of accommodation, then Shoormal might be a good option for you, but you will need a vehicle.

Useful Links

If you are planning a trip to Shetland, here are some additional links that I found helpful:

• Shetland.org for general planning information.
• Car hire – we hired with local supplier Bolts Car Hire and it was just over £300 for four days of hire. They have collection points at the airport and in Lerwick near the ferry terminal. Bolts also do motor home hire.
• The bus service seems to be very good and timetables are here. I spoke with some island visitors that had been island hopping using buses and ferries and they were very impressed.
• Inter Island ferries are run by Shetland Islands Council. We didn’t book any of our ferries to Unst or Yell during our trip at the beginning of May. In peak time, you would likely need to book.

Weather warning

One of my main takeaways from our trip is that visiting islands is a risk. You run the risk of bad weather throughout your trip and not really seeing the full glory of the island/s. We were incredibly lucky that the mist descended towards the end of our trip and we had already seen lots of the beautiful scenery on offer.

Shetland has taught me that we need to build in contingency for our future island hopping holidays. That means back-up activities if the weather is truly shocking (we will go out in most weather and find stuff to do).

It also means adding a couple of buffer days at the end of our holiday. We were only delayed by 24 hours and thankfully didn’t have any big work events booked into that lost day. If we had, the end of our holiday would have been fraught and likely impacted on our memories of the lovely holiday we had just had.

Would We Revisit Shetland?

Absolutely! We barely scratched the surface during our 96 hour trip to the Shetland Islands. There is so much more to see and we may go back at some point in the future.

For now though, we want to keep on hopping our way through the many islands of Scotland. So, next year is likely to be a trip to Orkney. This is nothing against Shetland, more that there are so many Scottish Island to visit and so little time!