‘Between Weathers’ in Scotland’s Shetland Isles

Residents of the Shetland Islands, remote North Sea enclaves 120 to 150 miles north of the Scottish mainland, have been known to pull a visitor’s leg now and then. They say the Shetlands have two seasons: nine months of winter and three months of bad weather.

Actually, the North Atlantic Drift keeps the climate surprisingly mild. And the locals have another saying that may more accurately describe their islands and entice visitors who have a taste for adventure: “Shetland is beautiful between weathers.”

To which this walker would add: Shetland is beautiful not just between weathers (storms), but during weathers as well.

I reached this conclusion during a rainy-day walk in Northmavine, south along St. Magnus Bay from Esha Ness to Sandness.

It was vintage Shetland. Over the treeless, peat-patterned headlands I tramped, my boots making squishing noises on the wide, grassy platforms shorn by a multitude of sheep. Offshore was the most Gothic of spectacles--arches, pinnacles and grotesquely sculptured spikes of ancient red sandstone called The Drongs.

During my week on the islands, I walked Shetland’s tattered coastline, past brave little Shetland ponies and neatly patterned fields, in good weather and bad. Always dressed in my warm anorak, I wandered the soaked hillsides down to the beaches and watched the Atlantic swells pound the skerries, or offshore rocks.

Geography is responsible for the frequent rains; the Shetland Islands are caught between the stormy tantrums of the North Atlantic and the North Sea. Westward lies the Faroe Islands and Iceland. Eastward stretches the Norwegian coast, from where the Vikings ruled the Shetland archipelago until the 15th Century. The islands float above the 60th parallel, the same latitude as southern Greenland and only 6 degrees south of the Arctic Circle.

“As a walking destination, Shetland has to rank as one of the most undiscovered spots in Europe,” says Peter Guy, a native Shetlander and guidebook author.

Guy has written four books in a series called “Walking the Coastline of Shetland.” He gives a mile-by-mile account of coastal walks around the isles of Yell (100 miles), Unst (60 miles) and Fetlar (31 miles), and through Northmavine (120 miles), the northern peninsula of mainland Shetland. He breaks the coastline into day trips of 6 to 16 miles and describes a number of loop trails, called “circular walks” by Shetlanders and British.

Guy’s books are available at the Shetland Tourist Office and Shetland Times Bookstore in Lerwick, the capital city of about 7,000 people. Paired with a good map (I like Estate Publications’ “Leisure Map of Shetland and Orkney Islands”), the books put hundreds of miles of Shetland at your feet.

If you’d like a guided hike, the Shetland Field Studies Group offers interpretive rambles (priced at about $10) on weekends. Book at the tourist office in Lerwick.

Guy recommends these favorite day hikes for first-time Shetland visitors:

* Northmavine, connected to the rest of mainland Shetland by a narrow isthmus, boasts Ronas Hill, the most extensive wilderness area in Shetland and, at 1,486 feet, the highest. It’s very rough country, with great sea cliffs extending around Esha Ness to the west.

* On the island of Unst, at Britain’s northernmost tip, is the Herma Ness Bird Reserve. This is one of the great bird-watching sites in Europe. From the cliff tops, you can spot scores of gannets and thousands of cute puffins.

* Near the hamlet of Walls, situated on a natural harbor on mainland Shetland, is the early Bronze Age “Stoneydale Temple,” so-called because of its resemblance to temples in the Mediterranean.

The sea is at its most dramatic at the south end of mainland Shetland, where a raging tideway of white water known as The Roost crashes against the brooding promontory of Fitful Head. Nearby Jarlshof is considered by experts to be one of Britain’s most important archeological sites.

Remote though the islands are, they are not difficult to reach. British Airways offers flights to Sumburgh Airport from Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Because many ships call at Shetland ports, as many as a dozen languages can be heard in Lerwick’s pubs.

Best bet for lodging is in one of the many bed and breakfast inns scattered around the islands.

Take a hike with John McKinney’s “Day Hiker’s Guide to Southern California” ($16.95). Send check or money order to Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Dept. 1, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053.