A grand tour of the Westside of Mainland Shetland

This is one of the many beaches around these islands which are featured in a leaflet we collected at the Shetland Museum in Lerwick. We’re ticking them off.

This is Sandness beach, different to the more common white sand beaches in that its sands are derived from Old Red Sandstone. The carport here had public toilets, clean and provisioned.

We also picked up a leaflet detailing the highlights of Westside. My, you’d need a week of Sundays to see all that was listed. We only covered a small part of what we’d planned. Time ran away with us but we were in no rush, wanting to soak up the qualities of these places.

Beyond the beach are the Neap of Norby’s cliffs. Well worth the effort to get to the top of as the view in the clear atmosphere was almost limitless. Another day to savour.

Apart from a brief shower when we went to see the Stanydale Temple the rest of the day was just perfect. No need for coats for the rest of the day.

The extra is of a series of three watermills outside Huxter which used horizontal wheels to grind the corn, complete with mill races diverting water from one to the other. We could find very little information about who used these mills and when they were working.

One the horizon of the extra is Papa Stour, population 15. We could also see Foula, population 59 right out in the Atlantic Ocean.