Shetland Islands, Scotland
We began the day with a bit of procedural red tape. As we pulled into harbour in Lerwick (LAIR-ick or LAIR-wick, depending on who’s speaking), UK customs had to meet with everyone face-to-face and check our passports. Then we had to surrender the passports so that they can all be processed en masse for Ireland. We’ll get them back when we leave Dublin in a few days.
After that, it was just a short wait before our morning tour of Shetland.
If you’re like me, you probably know most everything you know about Shetland and Lerwick from the BBC TV series. I can tell you that the stunning, rural countryside, sheep grazing in the fields, remnants of stone walls, and tiny narrow roads that you see in the show are 100% legit. It’s all here, just like you’d expect. We even saw the house where “Detective Jimmy Perez” lives.
We even saw a member of the cast - kinda. We stopped into a local shop that sells handmade knit items and other things and as we entered, the shopkeeper was speaking to a lady who was checking out with her purchase. We politely ignored them and browsed around the shop, allowing the locals to have their visit.
After the woman left, the shopkeeper asked if we watched the Shetland series. We said we did, and she said, “that was the coroner!”
So we didn’t actually meet her, but we still had a ‘brush with greatness’ as David Letterman would’ve said.
I get ahead of myself, however. Our bus tour took us on a quick tour of the tiny town (pop 7500) and then out into the countryside for a few photo stops.
In spite of the cloudy, overcast day, the scenery was still gorgeous and evocative of a simple life raising sheep or maybe Shetland ponies. Yes, the other thing that you might know Shetland for. They’re cuter than they have any right to be.
They’re about waist high and they have PPUGH: Perpetual Pin-Up Girl Hair
The blond ones seemed to work the PPUGH better than most. Because blond.
The ponies have a lot of land to run around on, some of which they share with sheep.
Back off to the countryside, with half the bus wondering how they can get a Shetland pony into their carry-on bag. The remainder of the tour was in and around lochs and farms (which is apparently a two-syllable word here: fa-rums, with a flipped ‘r’). The sun even peeked through a few times.
Then back to the ship for a quick turnaround before we caught a shuttle back into Lerwick for a look around. That’s where we saw the house from the series and almost met the lady who plays the coroner. It’s to be expected that a town of 7500 people wouldn’t have a ton of things to do, but we were still surprised at how little there is to see here. Still, the town is absolutely lovely.
In our quest to find a fun shop to explore, we accidentally ended up in a grocery store. Here’s an interesting thing… in Calgary, we have a grocery chain called Co-op. The logo is stylized like this, with a little dot between the ‘o’s to let you know that it’s pronounced “co-op” and not “coop”.
In Shetland, they also have a grocery chain called Co-op. They go even farther to make sure you know that it’s Co-op and not ‘coop’ by splitting and stacking the logo.
That logo carries on to the store shelves and brand labels as well.
…and you already know the punchline. The locals call it “coop”. They might as well just own it, if that’s what people are going to call it, anyway. Just like McDonald’s started self-referencing as “Mickey-D’s” and White Castle actually started calling their little square burgers “sliders”.
We found another ‘regular’ store - Harry’s Department Store, which is three floors of all the stuff you’d expect. The top floor was toys, so I had to check out the Lego section. Stores like this in places far removed from big cities are often great places to find long-retired sets still at retail price. I was shocked to see that this store in this little town had a bigger selection of Lego than your average Walmart!
Alas, no retired sets. Their stock was current, even having some of the newer sets on hand.
But I digress. By lunchtime, we’d already done our tour, hopped the shuttle back into town, seen the town, and hopped the shuttle back to the ship. So I guess I’ll mention lunch, just to pad the post a bit. Rob had split-pea soup (which he raved about) and a Danish open-faced shrimp sandwich and I had a cheesesteak sandwich and fries. Both were good.
…and that’s it for today. We shove off this afternoon for more of Scotland tomorrow. Until then…