Despite leaving Kirkwall quite late last night, the relatively short distance (105 nautical miles) to Lerwick meant that there was plenty of time for us to arrive by 8.00am, as scheduled.

It had been a very calm night, well, we think it was calm because we both slept very well after the Captain's welcome dinner!

 

We were intrigued to see what looked like two temporary structures, side by side, floating in the harbour. Later we were told that they were floating hotels for workers building the new Shetland gas plant.

We docked at "Holmsgarth 5" instead of the more centrally located Victoria Pier, which was apparently unavailable due to "gas plant" operations. Not sure about the accuracy of that, but it didn't matter too much. We weren't going to have time to explore the town, because we were only here for a short time and we had chosen to do the excursion to Jarlshof, in preference to the guided tour of the town.

We were in the "other group". It was a pity we couldn't have done both tours, but time didn't permit.

 

 

 

This is the route we took. Travelling south from Lerwick towards Sumburgh and Jarlshof, we took a detour off the main road onto the B9122, from where we got some stunning views of the western coast. On the way back we kept to the main road, from where the views of the eastern coast were equally good.