Unst: Lunda Wick and St Olaf’s church

Our run of good weather ending this afternoon with rain. We’ve been so fortunate to have almost a fortnight of good, if windy, weather.

We managed to complete our outside visits before the rain came in. Our first stop off the ferry was Lund to see the beach and church. The church is pre reformation and in ruins. The graveyard on the other hand is still being used for internments.

An ethereal mist enveloped the bay, shrouded the church and headland, the sea gently murmuring up and down the beach. We watched juvenile great northern divers in the bay, seeing one catch and eat a couple of fish.

From there we travelled to Nor Wick and on to Skaw beach to view a particularly interesting geological feature where an intrusion of molten granite 450 million years ago had pushed its way into much older schists, deforming, melting and changing the schists where they came in contact with the granite.

We walked near the Saxa Vord complex where the UK plans to launch our own low orbit rocket carrying satellites mostly for military use: https://www.shetland.org/invest/sectors/space

The whole of Shetland is a geopark with many sites where the geology of the islands can be seen. Unst also has a night trail to take you around the universe as well as into the deep and distant past. We worth a return visit just to see all these sites.

In the wet afternoon we had lunch at Victoria’s Vintage Cafe in Haroldswick, getting there just before a party of 8 on a guided tour of the murk. It was a good job, they hoovered up every morsel of food leaving nothing for later arrivals.

Then on to the Unst heritage centre which was excellent and well worth a visit. We didn’t have time to see the Boat Haven exhibition but we didn’t call in to see the replica Viking longhouse and longship nearby.

We haven’t been to see any of the events at the regatta! Last night’s disco went on to just before 3.00 am which interrupted our sleep. There are events tomorrow which we shall probably call in and watch.

For those of you interested in the mussels we had last night, the link below takes you to a recent article about the place we obtained them from: https://www.shetland.org/invest/stories/mussel-farming-shetland-success-story

Also for this of you who are interested, below is a list of all the birds we’ve seen on Shetland:

Shetland Bird Spotting 2025
Curlew
Snipe
Great Northern Diver
Razorbill
Meadow pipits
Rock pipits
Puffins
Gannets
Fulmars
Kittiwakes
Shag
Cormorant
Ring necked Plover
Arctic terns
Common Gull
Great Black backed gulls
Lesser Black backed gulls
Redshank
Knot
Merganser
Shetland starlings
Shetland Wrens
Storm Petrel (heard)
Black Guillemots
Guillemots
Great Skua
Grey lag Geese
Long tailed duck
Lapwing
Black headed gulls
Rock Doves
Sand martins
Wheatear
Hooded Crows
Eider duck
Swans
Red throated diver
Oyster catcher….

… but no red necked phalarope