Muckle Flugga

We made it! To the top of the United Kingdom, the most northerly point of Unst, the most northerly island of Scotland at 60.8447 degrees north.

We sat eating our salad looking out over Muckle Flugga lighthouse towards the arctic, the most northerly people in the UK. Everybody else in the country was south of us.

It was a bit of a hike to get to this spot, a round trip of 6.5 miles from the car park. Most of the route was on a made path or a boardwalk across the peat which opened in 2022.

We went out to see Muckle Flugga along the west coast of Hermaness giving us spectacular coastal scenery and birds, oh!, the birds! There were so many wheeling around the skies that it looked like a blizzard of white. Puffins galore and great skuas too. Just brilliant. This will stay in our collective memories for as long as we live.

The weather helped of course,sunshine, with a very strong wind, this time from the south which made it a little warmer.

We almost didn’t make it to Unst. We were unable to interpret the online ferry booking timetable so had to wait at Gulcher on the way out and Belmont on the way back. The ferries ran every half hour so the wait was not too long. We want to go back to Unst and on to Fetlar so I will have to ring to find out how to book places.

Before all of that I went for a run at 60N which exceeds the run in May last year on Sanday at 59N. I did managed. 100m jog at the end of the world.