Today, we made the journey from the Shetland mainland up to Unst. The journey involves driving to the top of the mainland, taking a ferry to the island of Yell (approx 20 minutes), driving across Yell, and then taking a short ferry crossing from Yell to Unst.
Paul and Teresa booked us into two family rooms at the Gardiesfauld Youth Hostel at Uyeasound for an overnight stop tonight, which means that we don’t have to rush back down to the mainland and gives us longer to enjoy Unst.
On our arrival in Unst, we headed straight up to the Northernmost part, near the former RAF early warning base at Saxa Vord, near Haroldswick, and to the most northerly house in Britain. Nearby is Skaw beach, again, the most northerly in Britain, which we visited last year in rather windier conditions. Today, the sun shone and we had a couple of hours more or less to ourselves on the beach.
Emma and I (along with Tristan in his baby carrier) walked up to the watchposts, used in WW2 and perhaps more recently to keep an eye out for enemy submarines. Then it started to rain, so we all headed back to the cars and down to the youth hostel at Uyeasound.
Once we’d checked in there an sorted out our rooms (we each had a family room, which Paul and Teresa had booked in advance), Murron, Philippa and I headed to the former Saxa Vord RAF base residential area, which is starting to be redeveloped for small businesses and tourists since it was decommissioned a couple of years ago. We went to the Foords Chocolates factory to have a look around. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to see, as they weren’t conducting tours today, but we took the opportunity to have a drink and snack, before returning to the youth hostel.
On our return, the kids went down to the bay front to play. We had our evening meal and then spent the rest of the evening playing the card game Uno, which became quite comptetitive between Paul and me.
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