London and 14-Day Arctic Circle Crossing: Edinburgh Evening Stay Holland America Cruise: Day 17 Lerwick, Mainland, Shetland Islands, Scotland, United Kingdom- Scenery of Western Shetland May 28, 2025

I woke at 6:07 and gave up at 6:19, because the alarm was set for 6:20. My husband K got up with the alarm. It was 49°, but felt like 42°. It was mostly sunny with a fair wind.

I was able to step out onto our veranda around 6:35 to see us coming in to Lerwick the only burgh in Shetland and is on an island called Mainland. The view was wonderful!

 

 
Our daughter J arrived and we went to breakfast at 7. We were surprised to find it was not crowded. We had a view of our ship's lifeboats getting ready to be tenders, since it was too shallow for us to dock.

 

At 7:30, we went back to the cabin to wash up. J soon joined us to wait. For what? British Immigration. We'd had to get a special visa that is attached to our passport numbers before we left home. That was not good enough. They wanted to see each person on the ship. We were assigned to group G and J was assigned to I. Around 8, K and I were called as part of the G group.

We headed to the World Stage, having been told to use stairs rather than elevators. When we reached Deck 3, areas were cordoned off and crew directed us past the shops to just outside the upper part of the World Stage. A crew member scanned our key cards and we put away the paper with our group number and also the one with notice of our visa. We were directed to walk down the stairs inside the World Stage to the 2nd floor level. There were 2 lines and I chose the shorter one. An immigration officer just matched the passport to the face and we were sent out the other side, where a green sticker was put on each key card. It took no time at all. At 8:19, J went to saunter to the loading for I. Group I was called at 8:21 and J was back at our cabin at 8:31. 

At 8:45, we went to the BB King Lounge to wait to be able to go ashore. At 8:53, they sent us off to the gangway, no ticket needed. We were first on the tender at 8:55. We reached shore at 9:10, where I took this gorgeous photo.

The morning was for shopping and wandering. The first thing we found was this memorial for the safe return of a whaler back in 1866. The cup looks like it actually has liquid pouring out of it.

  

The day was gorgeous, if windy, and the dock area looked great. Even the crossing lights were interesting. Red looks miserable.

 
We took a selfie with this handy sign.

The islands are part of Scotland. So, K and I, who have been to Edinburgh, should not have been surprised to see various small passages that were called "close".

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

J had some specific shops in mind. The town was mostly uphill from the water. Climbing up a street to Commercial Street, we came to this square. I love the market cross (which isn't a cross) in the center, but I have no idea as to the purpose of the wires. 

We turned left. Our first stop was the Island Larder. It had lots of neat food products. You have to love a place that comes up with a treat called "Puffin Poo".
 

 

Shops with yarn were high on her list. We saw beautiful colors and various textures. And we learned things from signs.

  

Of course, we had to go to the bookstore. I thought it might have postcards and it did. It was nice to roam in this small shop. I saw a book on needle felting and it had neat designs, but I figured I didn't need it. I have plenty of kits at home. Of course, I went back to the shelf and got it.

Across the street was the Royal Mail delivery office with its coat of arms of Scotland.

Our roaming let us see some homes, the RNLI shop (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) which is a charity shop, and a view of the Small Boat Harbor with Jo Chapman's sculpture "Da Lightsome Buoy". Unfortunately, we didn't walk down to the sculpture. Otherwise, we would have seen the pictures and text on it.

  

As we turned to go back down Commercial Street, I noticed that the buildings did not differ in materials used to build them. But, they did distinguish themselves with colorful door jambs and window casements at times. 

   

For no reason that I can discern, 69A Commercial Street had this on the front door. Also, the I Care eye place had these dogs. No idea if they were real topiaries.

Did we need soap? No, we did not. But, once we saw the sign that this shop had products made exclusively with learning disabilities, we had to go in and buy some.

 

You did not have to go all the way to the end of the street to find a cross street to get down to the parallel street and level. There were plenty of stairs.

I saw this window and wondered about the flags. Turns out they are Shetland and Norway.

Evidently, there is an art walk complete with a map. We at least saw this mural by Gavin Renshaw. Sadly, we did not notice his other one on the opposing wall.

We found one more yarn shop on commercial street. Their yarn was beautiful. They also had some fabric. The owner told us that she collected the already dyed wool from the farms and then took care of spinning and packaging.

 

 

Next to the shop was Nicolson's Closs, which was maybe just wide enough to go down. The manhole cover here will not fit anywhere else in town. Oh, and I found out about the closses.

 

On the other side of the shop, we found this cute sign on Campbell's Closs. K went down to check it out and we decided to have an early lunch there at 11:20.

It was busy, but there were some tables open upstairs. I put in the order for K and me and J took care of herself. We got a chicken wrap for Ł6.20, chicken chorizo and bean pie, cherry turnover, rhubarb horn for Ł3,25, Coke Zero Ł1.80, and Tetley tea for Ł 2.10. J got an Orkney cheddar bread soup and a tippin (that chocolate thing with broken "eggs" on top). Because time was pressing, I went next door to Eldamato (from the owner's kids names), while J waited on food. Oh, dear! They had wool for needle felting. Such gorgeous colors! She'd just recently started carrying it. I made quick choices based on beauty and hurried back next door, where the food had already been carried upstairs to an open table.

 

J used the restroom first after lunch so that she could run next door. We were out about 12.

As we headed back to the pier, we saw Greig's Closs, the only gated one we'd seen.

We arrived at the dock at 12:14, one minute before we needed to be there for our tour of Scenery of Western Shetland. We had a nice view of our ship out in the harbor.

By 12:30, we were on the road and I failed to note the guide's name. We started out in town and had some nice views of the town hall and one of their war memorial to the side of it.

  

J watches Shetland, a murder mystery show, and was happy to see the sheriff's office, whose exterior is used in the show.

As we drove out of town on the A970, we got to see some houses.
 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we passed the Loch of Clickimin, we could see the Clickimin Broch, a Bronze Age tower.

We saw two kinds of farms, sheep and wind, although most of the wind power goes to Norway.

   

We made a stop at 12:51 above Scalloway, whose population was about 1000. From circa the 1590's to 1780, it was the capital of Shetland Islands. (Lerwick now is.) Only 2 castles were ever built in the islands and one is here. It was built by Patrick Stewart (not the captain), 2nd Earl of Orkney in 1600. The Orkney Islands are almost 116 miles SW, by the way. We were to drive near the castle later. It was windy up here. 

 

We continued on the B9074 to cross the bridge to the island of Trondra, where we saw sheep and Scalloway in the background.

The road continued across another bridge to the island of West Burra, which is part of the Scalloway Islands, which are, in turn, a subset of the Shetland Islands. Here we had a lovely view of sheep and water before reaching the town of Hamnavoe and its lovely shell-covered fisherman houses.

Back on Trondra, we had a lovely view of sheep with a mussel farm in the water beyond. Here, we also finally got a good view of Shetland ponies.

We finally got a view of Scalloway Castle at 1:20. They seem to be trying to restore it.

Just over 20 minutes later, we saw Girlsta Loch or Geirhildr's Loch, the deepest loch here.

Just a few minutes more and we had quite a view of the wind turbines across the landscape. A lot of the wind power goes to. mainland Scotland.

 

It may just be me, but the hill behind those houses looks rather threatening. Maybe, it is because it looks like a cresting wave.

Around 2, we stopped at Shetland Jewelry, where one of the artisans told us about their work creating silver jewelry. Then, we could roam through the workshop and into the sales room. I couldn't resist a beautiful handmade pendant.

The house across the street was backed by another of those waves.

On the way back to Lerwick, we had a photo stop atop Wormadale Hill. K didn't want to get out of the bus, but J and I braved the  vicious wind. There was a set of colorful A-frames below us and a bay that eventually led out to the North Sea.

Shetland has 22 primary schools across the islands. There are 5 junior high schools and just 2 high schools. If students from the outlying islands go to Anderson High in Lerwick, they board in the hostels there. We drove past the school as we re-entered Lerwick and saw the hostels.

 

At 3:20, we disembarked at the pier and immediately headed for the tender. We were back in the cabin at 3:50, about 10 minutes before we were due to sail.

At 4:30, J and I went to Dam Dots, which was a large connect-the-dots to draw a HAL ship. K went to the port talk.

Just before going to dinner at 5, I took some photos, sure to be the last I'll ever take in the Shetland Islands. Like Norway, there were cliffs, although these were green.

I had a Strongbow cider. J had ginger mango splash, and K had Chateau Smith cabernet. For appetizers, we go watermelon and feta cheese, prosciutto, Genoa salami, melon and figs, and lentil soup.

Our main courses were quince-glazed pork chops (quince was my q- word for a food alphabet in grade school), lemon shrimp fettuccine, and beef short ribs.

 

Desserts were chocolate blackout cake, peach crisp, and Paris-Brest.

  

Around 6:30, we were finished and went to the shops to blow our credit on overpriced cookies and such. We also picked up K's eye photo. We actually had to pick a version. It was odd that the color difference did not show up.

At 7:40, K went to the concert, while J and I prepared to go to do the crossword by picking up mocktails at the bar and taking them to the cabin. K brought the Mariner's Cocktail for me, when he came back from the concert.

At 9:45, we all went down to deck 2 for the Chocolate Surprise. We searched for tables, but there were none. Another passenger told us that the servers would bring things out as if they were appetizers at a cocktail party. They turned out to basically be candies and a small cupcake. There were candy-box chocolates, but also white-chocolate covered raisins and chocolate-covered Cheerios. That last one was particularly good. We got to see a lovely sunset.

At  10:25, we were back in our cabins.

I went to bed around midnight. The phone logged 7,261 steps for 2.9 miles and said I climbed 6 floors.