Northern Isles Day 6

The wind and rain battered the van incessantly during the night so we were not surprised to look out this morning and be unable to see Ronas Hill. We should have gone for it last night and had the full Arctic tundra experience. The temperature said 9 degrees but with the big wind it felt a lot colder.

Plan B came into action and we headed for Oliberry. We parked near the church and had the short walk (under an hour) to explore enormous earth movements that happened 100 to 160 million years ago. We walked over a massive fault line, part of the Great Glen fault. Rocks on one side of the fault have slid more than 100km past those on the other side. Fault movements have crumpled and crushed schist on the western side against much tougher granite to the east. The bay, with its sandy beach, was formed by erosion of the weaker schist, leaving20 metre high vertical wall of resistant granite exposed. It must be a geologist’s dream. We certainly found it interesting. The walk itself was tussocky and wet therefore slippery too.

It wasn’t a long drive to Eshaness lighthouse where we parked up and had a sandwich for lunch before walking the cliff tops. Around 350-400 million years ago Eshaness was a barren desert with erupting volcanos. The coastline is dramatic. Apparently it is the best section through the flank of a volcano in Britain. The going was easy on short springy grass with a few stiles to climb. While I stopped to take a photo of the cliffs a puffin flew in to land, shortly followed by a few more. We couldn’t see the burrows which must have been somewhere steeply below. On the way back we saw a subterranean cavern where the outlet from a lochan dropped down and worked its way though a cliff. At the edge of the lochan was the remains of a broch. We had a few squally showers then sunny intervals. I suppose Shetlanders might call it a stiff breeze, the the strong wind dried out our clothes before we got back to the van. We walked 5 miles today.

We are now parked for the night by the Stevenson lighthouse with amazing views. Directly west is southern Greenland.

Thank you all for the stars and hearts for the feisty ponies blip yesterday.