Last week I showed you some analogue pictures of my travel through the Scottish Highlands - this week I take you even further North. These pictures are from the Shetland Islands, a place that I fell in love with so much. Its almost alien looking landscape is fantastic for the strange and alluring beauty of analogue photography.

Enjoy and have a wonderful weekend! ♥

PS: These white dots in the picture below are sheep and seagulls - such mega cliffs!

Desktop Wallpaper // May

(1920 x 1280)

The wallpaper for May shows my very first view of the Shetland Islands and that's why it means quite a lot to me. With the old Bressay Lighthouse that welcomes you after the long sea journey and says goodbye when you head out to sea again. It means arrival, relief, exhaustion, adventures, shakiness, curiosity, goodbye and all these things that you may relate to travelling. It was a gloomy early morning when our ship manouvered into Lerwick harbour and these greens and blues and greys will always be my Shetland colours.

You can download it for free by right-clicking and saving or you can download it on my Flickr.

I hope you all have a happy, sunny May!

Desktop Wallpaper // April

(1920 x 1280)

For the April wallpaper I chose one of my alltime favourites from Shetland. 

You can download it for free by right-clicking and saving or you can download it on my Flickr.

Have a great April!

See you soon, Shetland!

We said Goodbye to Shetland on a grey-green Monday afternoon whose melancholic colour setting exactly mirrored our mood. 

It was not easy to leave this place which had already conquered us so completely. 

While the ferry slowly navigated out of the harbour I stood at its platform and watched the houses of Lerwick passing by. I seldom found it so hard to leave a place.

As I told you some time ago I'm not a proven sailor and some days before our departure I started to watch the forecast. And for me as a newbie-on-the-sea, the weather was not promising. Wind force 8 forecast really freaked me out. And the captain promising to make our travels as comfortable as possible (as possible?! Eeek!) didn't help. When the vessel reached the open sea and started to go up and down, and up and down, I really got terrified. Really. But I can assure you: they serve hefty soup on such vessels for a reason. Real sailor food. After some hours the vessel became steadier and the wind decreased a bit, so that I could reward myself with a drink and a knit. The clouds drifted apart, just in time when we passed Fair Isle.

My memories of this passage will always be related to anxiety, the taste of beer and the sound of clacking needles.

While writing this post, I've really got in the mood for novels about sailors and the sea, so any recommendations are welcome! :)

Next stop: Orkney Islands!

of smiling sheep and poking ponies

Here's a kind of my personal Best-of of those animals, which you will find all over Shetland: sheep and ponies. There are meadows, but you also meet them taking a walk on the street or climbing through old stone houses. They are almost everywhere and they are allowed to. And since they are so free in their movements they aren't really bothered by curious tourists. But if you come too near they turn around. It's like with little children: you are not there when they can't see you!

If I was a sheep, I wanted to be a Shetland sheep!

If you visit the Shetland Islands you will also come across some Shetland Ponies for sure. 

They are only waist-high, but they made it up with loads of self-confidence and a bit of naughtiness ;)

We met a whole gang lingering next to the street when we visited Hermaness.

Unlike the sheep, they are very curious and when they saw us coming, they became instantly interested in us and mainly our bags.
One of them, I think he was the leader of the gang, didn't let us through until he had poked his nose into every bag we had.

Finally he felt our bags where not worth his while and decided to let us pass. Not without following us with a reproachful look for quite some time ...

Lerwick at night

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
(Vincent Van Gogh)

The northernmost point of Britain's northernmost islands

The longest journey we took while we stayed in Shetland was the trip to Hermaness. It is located in the north of Unst, which again is the northernmost island of the Shetland Island, making it the northernmost point of Britains northernmost islands. By the way, Unst also has Britain's northernmost bus shelter (which is always decorated with much love and even has its own website). In short, Britain's northernmost everything is in Unst :)

Our journey began early in the morning, when we took the bus from Lerwick and started to hop from island to island. It is all really well and smoothly organised: there's the busdriver on the Mainland taking you to the ferry, where you are instantly picked up, on the other side another (smaller) bus waits for you, driving you cheerfully across Yell, next ferry, and then you are in Unst. The even smaller bus (8 people max, I think) that waited there drove us all across Unst up to the Unst Heritage Centre, where we were warmly greeted by the wonderful ladies who work there. The centre once was a school house, and now serves as a little museum with stories about the famous lighthouse Muckle Flugga, life on Unst and of course artefacts of the beautiful lace knitting. The ladies working there are mostly teachers, who once taught there when it still was a school. They impressed me very much, they were so enthusiastic and put so much love and effort in their exhibition and workshops - if you ever happen to be in Unst, don't miss this lovely centre.

The staff of Lerwick's tourist bureau reminded us to tell the bus driver in Unst that we want to go back the same day, so that he or she picks us up again in the afternoon and drive us back to the ferry. So we had a few hours for our stay in Unst. Hermaness was still some kilometres away from the centre but one of the ladies suggested to drive us up to Hermaness so that we only had to walk back. Did I already mention how friendly and lovely Shetland's people are...?

I lack the words that describe this wonderful place Hermaness. There was sunshine and colours and a landscape that reminded me of a science fiction story so unearthly it seemed to me. So instead of trying to put this into words, I let my pictures speak. Come with me...

The sheep's television: watching fishing boats float by...

These whitish blobs are sheep - just to put the vastness of these amazing cliffs into perspective...