A walk through the wilds of Shetland

The view south from the Hill of Sandwick, over Whale Wick

I woke, astonished, to a frozen sea this morning: the fishing boats at the Bridge End Marina buoyed on a thin porridge of ice. A gull perched on my neighbour’s chimneypot. When it threw back its head, each cry came out as a tiny profiterole of steaming breath.

Chafed by the Gulf Stream, the Big Freeze hasn’t been particularly severe in Shetland, but like much of Britain, we’ve been captivated and stymied, vulnerable and underprepared. West Burra, where I live, is a long, wriggly island connected to the Shetland mainland by low arched bridges. Standing at the summit of its undulating single-track road, I scan the Clift Hills, the bulbous spine of Shetland, rising from the sea like a pod of belugas, all the way down to the great whale-backed cliffs of Fitful Head.

The prolonged calm that accompanies the snow is exceptional. At Asta, the wind turbines’ blades have hardly budged for days, except when the wind gathers itself to dump another load of snow. To the east, the voe (a narrow sea inlet) is glossy and still; creased by the wake of a spluttering boat. Beyond the western cliffs, the uninterrupted Atlantic.

I quit the road, and walk westerly on the fenced track that accesses the cliff-top pasture. The snow is patterned by paws of multitudinous rabbits and tracks of quad-bike tyres. This kind of walking is hard on your hips; every so often, my boot crashes through the brittle snowpack into a deep furrow.

Shetland ewes in the hills

Sheep grimly present their breeches to the blizzard; the arctic hares are finally getting some use from their white winter coats. My breath comes in visible spurts.

I’m feeling more mammal than normal, weak and hot, insufficiently insulated. I see how little it would take to make me carrion. What’s our low? Minus 15°C? My aunt writes from Alberta that she’s already seen -48°C this winter.

I reach Ruff Loch, a smooth saucer of milk at the brink of the cliff. Thirty miles offshore lies the island of Foula, population 30, a jumble of white, Cubist triangles. Were it not for the Gulf Stream, I might well be looking at an iceberg. The 60th parallel bisects Shetland, putting us at approximately the same latitude as the historic fur-trading post of Churchill on Hudson Bay. I indulge myself in an irresponsible fantasy about the failing of the Greenland Pump, the faltering of the Gulf Stream’s systolic sweep from Cuba, the slow march of polar bears towards us over new sea ice.

Cliffs and sea-stacks. Basalt rubble. The Fisheries Boat, known as the Grey Coo, a dour battleship-shaped vessel, is patrolling the haaf (fishing ground). If I turned north, I’d reach Whale Wick bay, a sort of appendix to the coastline, where gristly holdfasts of kelp accumulate, a rich, rotting salad garnished with international garbage: a can of Korean hairspray; pitted resin floats; industrial Marigolds; a vial of fake Spanish lemon juice.

Ruff Loch itself is fed by peat-ruddy burns, and drains over the cliff in an ice-clogged waterfall. Come summer, the smeary, fragile turf will dry off, starred with thrift and spring squill. The air will be angry with arctic terns. Today I share the banks with squadrons of lean geese and swans. Frozen groundwater clenches the land, and the loch is a scab of ice, floating above its own bed. The established natural laws have been suspended.

I used to have a neighbour, once a whaler in South Georgia, who was anxious about me walking alone. The cliffs are steep and their edges friable. The sea sweeps the rocks with unpredictable force and fetch. The wind can be so strong as to tear the roof off a bus shelter, or forcibly spin you through 180˚ and frogmarch you in whichever direction it fancies. I freeze with fear relatively often, but this is something I value about my Shetland life: the need to respect the weather, the cliffs and the sea, the fear keeping me safe.

As I round the southern shore of Ruff Loch, I cross a gently rising boulder field; a feeling of the land extending infinitely, a great steppe traversed by rabbits and birds. The sky is transparent and immense, a hide scraped thin, with pinpricks for stars.

My happy heartache, descending from the high ground to the community of Papil, must be atavistic. The emotional fetch of Shetland’s landscapes often exceed their scale. A rash of elegant roofless drystone structures; kids yelling in the snow; a handsome flock of Cheviot/Shetland crosses clustering the fence, marked with neon greens and pinks; the lovely smell of sheep-dung and smoke. Cloud is piled in peachy quiffs above the Clift Hills. I enter the Papil Kirkyard through a network of fanks (walled enclosures for sheep) and gates; I noose the latch with its securing fanbelt.

I regularly make two stops in the kirkyard: the first, a replica of the Papil Stone, an arched slab dating from the 7th or 8th century, decorated with sinister metamorphic creatures. The second is my neighbours’ grave. I visit to remember Geordie and Ruby’s kindnesses to a newcomer living alone, how Geordie negotiated the road with his stick, and a shallow bowl of lentil soup covered in clingfilm.

If I turned right here, I’d take in the bay of Bannaminn, where the light will be so brilliant that the sea seems a luminous gas. The wriggly isle of Burra is two or three miles of Aegean beaches, mild fjords, high steppes, wildflower meadows, cliff-top lochans and sea-stacks, soupy winter pastures, as if each loosely tied gate was a portal to a parallel universe. But this is not the walk to Bannaminn. This is the half-mile stride up the road, home.

Jen Hadfield won the 2009 T.S. Eliot poetry prize with ‘Nigh-No-Place’ (Bloodaxe)
Read her blog at http://rogueseeds.blogspot.com

For more on Shetland, go to www.visitshetland.com