I woke up early and headed up to the chart room to grab a cup of coffee and write about he day before. The chart room is below the bridge (where the captain steers the boat), it has faces the front therefore you can see the landscape or seascape directly in front of you, has a long table where people can gather and is also a good place to read.
We anchored in Fair Isle and I was determined to head to the community center to see what the town “center” was all about. Suddenly, I was asked if I was going birdwatching by none other than Mark Carmondy, the specialist in that area. I had not intended to go bird watching, but decided to do something I had never done before.
We walked up a mountain, ok more like a hill, where my hiking boots earned their keep stepping on sheep, rabbit and puffin poop. Yes puffins! They were in the water 500 yards away. I could see a glimmer of them through my camera lens and then spotted a gray seal. You could see its flippers under the water. I thought that would be the highlight of the morning walk when all of the sudden puffins started to circe around the cliff’s edge. They have a very distinctive flight because they are stalky birds and must flap their wings constantly until they catch a draft. They were flying near to where we were standing. Mark, told us that if we backed up we would give them the room they needed to feel safe and land near their burrows. So we backed up a wee bit (Yes, that is how they talk here!) and they started to land. Very cute birds, penguin-like form of standing, but are from the auk family. No relation to penguins. So we watched them carefully and photographed, or looked through binoculars at the occasional puffin that landed. You had to be quick because they would land, survey the area, and then quickly lean their head forward ducking into their burrows. Puffins are birds that live in colonies, can apparently stay with the same mate for many years, but also change mates. Being a migrating bird, they return to their burrows year after year, sometimes fighting to keep their original home. I was impressed that they could find the same hole in the ground a year later considering I can hardly find my way around the ship yet!
We then headed back down the hill and back up for three miles up to the community center (some people chose to be carted up). The local people had brought their crafts to sell including fair isle knit items and student-made post cards and art. The community center was located at the only school on the island which at the moment teaches six children from the ages of 3-11. At 12 the students are shipped off to a school somewhere in Shetland for three weeks at a time. This seems to be common practice in small island communities like this. I was talking to the father of a man who lived on the island as we walked to the top and he said the population is of about 63 people at the moment. There are roughly 30 cars on the island. There are a lot of sheep, bird tagging centers (net systems that catch the birds in a safe way to tag and release) and many kinds of birds as well.
We walked the two (more like three actually) miles down the meandering path again, sharing the road with the cars that were carting people back and forth to the top of the hill where I had walked! Yes, I walked uphill three miles, I am impressed with myself as well. My toes are feeling it at this time!
Next, back to the ship and then Mousa Broch. Another amazing neolithic structure that stood at the edge of the Island. As we approached on the zodiacs the broch showed its true size. Cylindrical and massive. The inside has two layers of wall in which there are chambers and stairs that go up to the top. From the insides you can see the corvelled sides. The engineering impressive. What is interesting is that these structures are repeated in different islands of the area, which leads archeologists to believe that the same group of people built them.
We disembarked and started our hike around the island. This time seeing gray seals, fulmars (the neatest looking gulls with a forked tail), skuas and arctic skuas (a large gull known for being the top predator in these surroundings), arctic terns, and finally what I had been looking for, seaweed eating sheep! They have developed an adaptation which allows them to eat seaweed as it is high in salt and iodine content.
Again, the ship moved, this time to Lerwick. We ate dinner as the ship moved and then after dinner the boat docked and we headed out to a community center in Lerwick where Jacob, the ethnomusicologist, had organized a dance “party” in town. Three different dancing groups from town had come together to host a special dance lesson party. Most were community members in their 50s and 60s. It was amazing! The people modeled the traditional local dances for us, then took us out to dance. There were waltz like dances, others involved kicking up our feet and “Whooping” all in unison. Some were very complex where the partners were shared and you had to wind in and out of the dance floor. We tripped, stepped on feet, laughed, heel-toed, and twirled our way through the night. What a neat exposure to the local culture.