I am really not sure whether to be scared or whether I think the world has gone just a little bit mad right now. With all the scaremongering on social media etc is it really as bad as we think? Or worse??? Or has it all just been blown a little out of proportion??? I really hope it’s the latter…

This morning I was in Asda for my weekly shop, which included toilet rolls and dried pasta, only to find both shelves bare…! (Plus of course the hand sanitiser shelf was also bare – still!)

Despite this the store was eerily quiet compared to normal.

These last couple of weeks have seemed like a slow version of the first 5 minutes of an apocalyptic horror movie, and I worry how it might escalate over the coming weeks. I must admit I was turned off more than usual when the glass of wine I had in our local pub came with someone else’s lipstick marks still on it! We went out for dinner on Saturday night, but we couldn’t help but wonder how well the cutlery had been washed (however, the meal was delicious so we soon forgot our worries!)

As luck would have it, we haven’t booked any holidays abroad this year having decided some time before the Coronavirus was even heard of, that we would spend this year exploring more of our home country, the UK. All being well, Norfolk in April and Scilly Isles, Bath, Cotswolds & Dorset in June.

Next weekend we hope to finally try out our new tent if we can get a weekend without (too much) rain, so watch this space…

Meantime, stay safe everyone, and feel free to comment below and add your own thoughts or experiences you have had during this rather strange time…

A wee walk along the Kelvin Walkway this afternoon, feeling quite warm and the sun was shining…

Well, we made it back to Aberdeen, and then finally Glasgow. Virtually no sleep on the ship, but it was an experience! On the ship, we waited until it docked and then after driving our car off, we re-boarded to enjoy our inclusive breakfast in the Magnus Lounge. We were amazed the car was in one piece and undamaged, as we had visions of the cars rolling around all night, but perhaps they had chained them down along with the lorries and vans.

We made a brief stop on our way home to take a look at Dunnottar Castle. It was before opening time, so we couldn’t get inside, but that was fine as we really went for the stunning view.

We were like zombies by the time we got home and went straight to bed for a while before we even unloaded the car.

Today is the first day of Spring, but the weather is still pretty awful. Here’s hoping we get a nice dry, sunny summer to make up for it…

After a smooth crossing over to Shetland, it looks like we might have a bit of a rough sail home. We are currently being hit by Storm Jorge, heavy rain and gale force winds.

The host of our lodge has been so kind to us. We already had an early check in, and although the lodge we were in is now booked, she has let us use the lodge next door until we have to leave for the ferry, so we are warm and cosy, and able to watch the storm from the lounge window. We can’t express how much we appreciate this!

We popped out to the farm shop up the road for a lunch and are now just relaxing.

If anyone reading this is interested in coming to Shetland, here is a link to the lodges, which we highly recommend – https://www.gloverlodges.co.uk/oxna and watch out shortly for our Shetland web page, which will be written / added to our UK menu after we get home.

We shall update more later, either during or after the ferry journey (the latter if we get sea sick!)

Well we have arrived on board, left our overnight stuff in our cabin and headed to the Magnus Lounge. I think we will need to have an early dinner, as soon as they start serving, as we have been told the winds tonight will be force 10!!!

As it has calmed down a fair bit now in Lerwick we thought we might have been in for a fairly smooth sailing after all. I guess out at sea it’s quite different. It’s gonna be an interesting sailing! Sea sickness bags at the ready!

It’s rough, and we haven’t even left the shelter of the island yet. I have a feeling I’m gonna regret the fish and chips I just had!

It’s now 11.20pm. Neither of us have puked yet, but that fish and chips is lying heavy in my stomach. We are rocking and rolling, banging and bumping, and every so often the spray from the waves hits our cabin window. For the locals who use the ferry often it’s probably par for the course, but I’m feeling pretty rough…

So having done / seen everything on our “list” these last 3 days, we had planned for today to be all about canoeing – going back to one or two of the stunning places we saw during these last few days to take our canoe out for a paddle or two!

As (this time bad) luck would have it, the weather was not on our side. Earlier in the week today looked to be a decent day, but it ended up wet and pretty miserable for the most part.

We woke up to rain, but headed out anyway, as given our experience of the last few days we expected to find somewhere where the weather would be favourable. We had some places in mind between the stunning bays and voes we had seen over these last few days. However, today the weather wasn’t kind. The rain didn’t really let up and the winds picked up as the day wore on.

At lunch we stopped in Lerwick at the “Knab” headland. We had our soup in the car, and got a very brief break from the rain to take this photo…

After lunch we decided just to head back to our lodge to chill out and see what happened later with the weather. By luck, we decided to head back out around 4.30pm. We headed south as we had checked the tides and knew low tide at St Ninian’s Island was around 5ish. The last time we visited the tombola was not passable, but we got lucky today! The rain had stopped, the sky was very moody, presumably due to the impending gales and heavy rain, but the tombola was no longer covered by the sea. Paul sent his drone up, while I took some photos that just don’t do it justice due to the decreasing light, but we were just so glad to get over to the island! Look out later for Paul’s video footage, it is much better than the photos.

We considered going out in our canoe, but decided instead to walk over to the island as there was not enough daylight to do both. I think we made the right decision.

Now back at our lodge, with no rush to get up early tomorrow as the owner has kindly arranged a later check out for us at 11.30am, much appreciated given the weather forecast of heavy rain and gale force winds!

It might be a rough crossing tomorrow … watch this space!

The day started with snow showers, which came on again the odd time throughout the day in between gorgeous sunshine and blue skies, cloud (occasionally very grey!) and some rain showers… So far our impression of Shetland’s weather is that when it’s bad it doesn’t seem to last for long before it passes over … or maybe we’ve just been lucky?

We travelled the B9074 road through the Tingwall Valley and on via Whiteness Voe and Weisdale Voe. A voe is like an inlet – a sea loch or fjord. With the dusting of snow it was stunning, and the water in the voes and lochs was flat calm and clear, like a mirror.

We had it in mind to canoe in one of the voes on our way back after sightseeing. Unfortunately it was not to be as the weather closed in on our way home and it was no longer enticing us to go out on the water…

Continuing on to the West Mainland, we passed more stunning scenery of voes, lochs, sea cliffs, small rolling hills, crofts and Shetland ponies! As we travelled the weather kept changing, there was almost always some blue sky somewhere, but as the afternoon wore on there was less of it to be seen.

It was another fantastic day, the scenery on Shetland’s mainland is so varied and really stunning, it seems to have something for everyone. Our 4 night / 5 day stay is really not enough…!

Wow! What another stunning day! Yesterday we saw some beautiful calm, sandy and stunning beaches in the South Mainland. Today we visited North Mainland and saw some jaw-dropping dramatic sea cliffs, in particular those at Eshaness.

The weather was very changeable, but somehow we seemed to be in the right place at the right time for most of the day!

Today was Paul’s birthday and it was a fantastic day, which started off with a gorgeous view out our lounge window looking out to sea towards Bressay. We had gone to bed quite early, so we ended up waking to catch a glimpse of the end of the sunrise.

As we travelled north, we stopped off to look at the Clickimin Broch in Lerwick. This broch is both well preserved and free to visit.

Driving on towards Eshaness, we first stopped at Stenness and a view point en-route where we had good views of the tiny island of Dore Holm and lurking behind it what we assume is an oil platform.

Once at Eshaness we spent quite a lot of time. It was truly stunning just walking around the sea cliffs and geos. I must admit my stomach churned a few times when we walked close to the edges!

Before returning we headed to North Roe and Ibister / Sandvoe.

You can hike on to Fethaland, but we had run out of time as it was approaching 4pm by then and some dodgy weather was also coming in.

So we headed “home” with a stop at Frankie’s to pick up some fish & chips for dinner (a “whale” of a fish i might add!)

Before we reheated our fish and chips, we took a short walk from our lodge to the beach to see if we could see any otters. We were unsuccessful, but we did see a couple of seals. It’s a lovely outlook and we hope before we leave we will be rewarded with seeing either otters or Orcas, or even both! But so far both have remained elusive…

So we made it to Shetland! All went as planned. The sailing was pretty good. We felt a little bit seasick early on, but had an early night (which worked well after our early start) and eventually our stomachs settled. We slept pretty well, the cabin was comfortable and we’d had a couple of drinks in the lounge to help us on our way. We declined dinner as we were still quite full from lunch, not to mention a little queasy early on.

After a relatively good sleep we got up for the (included) breakfast at 6.30am. We could have slept longer, taken the car off the ferry, then got back on board for breakfast, but this worked out well for us.

Our accommodation host had said we could check in as soon as we arrived, which was just great. So a quick shop in Tesco en-route and we off-loaded our luggage at Oxna (Glover Lodges, about 10 miles from Lerwick) and headed straight back out as it was a fabulous day weather-wise!

We spent our time in South Mainland prior to popping back for some lunch, and we even fitted in a wee canoe paddle at Spiggie Beach. It was very calm, and VERY COLD getting into the water! However, definitely worth it.

En-route back we spotted a sandy beach full of seals! Loads of them!

After lunch we explored around Scalloway and Burra. We couldn’t believe how calm it was after these last few days! Really beautiful and the sea like a mirror.

Finally back at our lodge and chilling out. It’s Paul’s birthday tomorrow so we are hoping for another amazing day!

So we woke up to snow this morning, as forecast. To be honest it didn’t look that bad, so after Glynis & Tony set off at 8am, we decided to have one last dip in the hot tub as checkout wasn’t till 10am. Fortunately before we got in, Tony texted us to warn us that the snow got worse the further up the hill he got, so in the end we gave the hot tub a miss and packed up and headed off. Probably the best decision as it took an hour to get about a quarter of a mile up the zig zag road from the boathouse and on to the main road!

There is no doubt that if there hadn’t been salt bins and shovels at each bend, we wouldn’t have made it! We had to keep putting down salt on the bends and steep bits – a slow, energetic and painstaking process that finally got us up the hill and onto the main road.

The next good decision we made was to turn back and re-route a couple of miles after Aberfeldy. Drivers coming in the opposite direction strongly advised against continuing, saying it was much worse further on. One driver gave us the good advice to turn round and head towards Pitlochry, then take the A9 south, which we did, after unsuccessfully trying to follow a snow plough. Probably the only reason we didn’t get stuck in snow as we attempted to turn around, was due to the tyres skidding to complete the turn for us!

The rest of the journey by comparison was relatively uneventful, though we still passed through several snow showers, many heavy. We took the long route heading south and looping past Perth and Dundee on the way to Aberdeen. It was probably a very good decision, as even these main roads had some snow lying on them in places.

A bit of a shame was that due to the weather and road conditions we missed the opportunity to hike the Birks of Aberfeldy and to visit Dunnottar Castle. Hopefully weather permitting we can do the latter on our journey home on Sunday.

Finally we made it to Aberdeen, which by then was just very wet, the snow had ceased and was replaced by heavy rain. We had quite a bit of time to kill before the ferry boarding started, so we parked up and headed into Wetherspoons for lunch. Another opportunity missed, but we didn’t fancy looking around Aberdeen in the rain.

Now (it seems against all odds between the earlier gales and the current snow!) we are finally on the ferry and headed for Shetland! We have a cabin with twin beds, a toilet and shower, tea and coffee, tv etc. We also paid for the Magnus lounge, which we are utilising just now. You get free soft drinks, teas, coffees, snacks and 2 free bar drinks. It’s very quiet, not many people seem to have booked in. We plan to spend a couple of hours in here before retiring to our cabin for an early night.

Weather has been a bit crazy, especially on Saturday. Wild and windy with the odd light snow shower. Big waves out on the water, so no canoeing, and the road into Kenmore was flooded, though passable with care.

The boathouse we are in was shaking the odd time with the wind! Not to worry as we cosied up inside and put the log fire on, and had both an afternoon and evening dip in the hot tub.

We took a walk on Saturday to Taymouth Castle, the grounds are lovely and vast with a relatively long walk in to the castle, probably about a mile. It’s a great place to stretch the legs.

Visibility was mostly poor on Saturday so we waited until Sunday to do the nearby walk to the Falls of Acharn.

The Northlink ferry warnings have been extended now until Tuesday, so we still don’t know of our ferry to Shetland will be running tomorrow. We only have 4 nights on Shetland as it is, so we will be pretty gutted if we need to wait another day for the ferry, so for now we are keeping our fingers crossed….

UPDATE: it looks like the ferry will be running as scheduled so keeping our fingers crossed. Snow apparently is on the way so will have to keep a check on that, but here’s hoping all will go as planned