The great Shetland bucket list: Part II

By Toby SkinnerMay 7th 2021

Whether you’re a local or a visitor, Shetland is an adventure waiting to happen, whether discovering deep nature, ancient history or the best Shetland seafood. In the second part of our Shetland bucket list, we reveal ten more great things to do on the islands

11. Watch the sand disappear at St Ninian’s

The stretch of sand leading to St Ninian’s Isle from the pretty village of Bigton is the longest tombolo (a sand bar leading to an island) in the UK. It’s worth a stroll any time along the egg-timer shaped beach, to head beyond the marram dunes onto St Ninian’s Isle, where a haul of Pictish treasure was discovered by a local schoolboy in the late 1950s. But it’s particularly special as the tide comes in one either side of the beach – submerging it fully during high winter tides, but leaving a narrow sliver of sand to walk across through most of the summer.

12. Meet the Sumburgh Head puffins

After arriving at Sumburgh Airport near Shetland’s southernmost tip, you don’t have to go far to find proper nature. The beautiful Sumburgh Head nearby is an RSPB Reserve, and if you go between mid-April and early August you’ll often see puffins (or ‘tammie norries’ in the local dialect) resting on the steep cliffs on the way up to the lighthouse at the end of the head. If you’re really lucky, it’s sometimes possible to see dolphins and whales in the waters around the head. If not, the views across the sea and west across Shetland’s southern beaches are gorgeous.

13. Find a different world on Da Lang Ayre

In the endless debate around Shetland’s most spectacular beach, many who’ve been will plump for Da Lang Ayre (The Long Beach) in Northmavine. It’s reached via a nine-mile circular hike over Ronas Hill, the highest point in Shetland at 450 metres, passing geocaches and cairns. The long reddish pebble beach is backed by striated cliffs and rock formations that create a surreal pop against the blue sea. Especially for those who’ve spent months under lockdown, it might feel like you’ve left Shetland and arrived on Mars.

14. Play Britain’s northernmost golf course

The 18-hole golf course on Whalsay, built by local volunteers, isn’t just the northernmost and easternmost golf course in the UK. It’s also a beautiful course, with sea on both sides and some treacherous shots, including across a dramatic inlet on the 16th. Distractions include spotting seals and the occasional orca, or stopping play for planes landing on the Whalsay airstrip. But the course is open 24 hours, so if you play late into the simmer dim, there’s little chance of taking out a charter plane with your nine iron.

15. Take a journey to the edge of the world

Foula lies 14 miles west of the Shetland Mainland, but feels further away – so much that English filmmaker Micheal Powell filmed 1937 classic The Edge of The World on the island. It is a place of craggy coastlines and dramatic geology at spots like Da Kame, one of Britain’s highest sea cliffs, and the strangely eerie Gaada Stack, with an arch through which it’s possible to see the sunset. It takes just over two hours to get to Foula by ferry. With no land between you and the southern tip of Greenland, it feels like you really are on the edge of the world.

16. Bathe in the forest at Kergord

It’s tempting but not correct to say that Shetland has no trees. It just doesn’t have many. But the forest at Kergord, near Weisdale in the centre of the Mainland, makes a legitimately soothing spot for forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku as the practice is called in its homeland of Japan. The forest is mostly made up of Sitka spruce and Japanese larch trees, which were planted by estate owner Goerge Munro between 1913 and 1920. It’s only nine acres of woodland, but inside it feels like being deep in the forest, with the muffled sound of birds and the tinkling stream as you walk up towards the rope swing at the top of the hill.

17. Take on the Uyea epic

Literally at the end of the road in the North Mainland, the little Sandvoe beach is the starting point for one of Shetland’s most epic walks: a seven-hour circular route to the curious, craggy island of Uyea. The walk follows the dramatic, often hilly coastline, passing the strange reddish rocks at Wilgi Geos, which are the oldest in Shetland at more than 2,500 million years old. The endpoint is a tombolo leading to the dramatic stacks and arches of Uyea, a sleety Shangri-La which you can see from the cliff, as well as a magical rocky bay that’s often home to scores of bathing seals (go quietly, if you don’t want them to shimmy into the sea en masse). You can walk back along the coast or walk inland and make your way back to Sandvoe via a path across the beautifully bleak rolling moorland.

18. Feel the Iron Age at the Ness of Burgi

For a sense of the Iron Age in the South Mainland, people often head straight for the ancient settlement at Jarlshof, one of the UK’s most remarkable archeological sites, where some of the remains date back to 2,500BC. But many miss the Ness of Burgi, a ruined Iron Age stone blockhouse reached via a beautiful rocky path across a narrow peninsula, with views across the water to Sumburgh Head and back along the peninsula to Quendale.

19. Spend a wild night in a böd

Böds were traditionally the places that Shetland fishermen would house their gear during the fishing season, but now the term has come to mean basic but often beautiful places to stay across the islands. Of the nine böds managed by the Shetland Amenity Trust, one of the most spectacular is the Böd of Nesbister, alone on the shoreline at Whiteness, which was once a genuine fishing böd. With no electricity and the sea occasionally surrounding the stone hut, it is definitely for the adventurous. But for £12 for one of the four beds, it could be one of the most memorable nights you have in Shetland.

20. Dream-walk across Breckon Sands

Breckon Sands, just north of Cullivoe in the northeastern corner of Yell, is like a beach from a Hollywood dream sequence. A crescent of near-white sand, it can feel bleakly foreboding on a winter’s day, but almost tropical in the summer, when the water turns to limpid turquoise and the beach grass sways gently behind the bay. It’ll often be just you in this magical corner of Shetland, searching for its hidden treasures. At the western end of the beach, there’s a little cave to walk through at low tide. And if you walk across to the eastern edge and keep going, there are beautiful cliffs on the other side, and gorgeous walks either east or out to sea along a narrow headland, where you might be sharing the views up the west coast of Unst with only curious seals.