But the night before we were due to arrive at Lerwick we received an email from the local company. Their boat had developed engine trouble so they couldn’t go ahead and were refunding our money. I won’t lie: our first thought was “Huh, I wonder if Princess offered them more to put on another boat for their passengers last-minute and they took the money?” but that’s just because I’m a cynical old swine. Anyway, booked plans scuppered we fell back to deciding we’d just have to take a walk around, knowing that there was an iron age ruin, a castle, some museums, and pubs that would likely more than satisfy us.

We awoke to thick fog around Lerwick. This was such a joy for us. Had the boat not developed a fault then we’d likely have been out on the cold water for several hours with visibility in the tens of metres. Instead, we were greeted by some atmospheric views of the town before we needed to tender ashore.

If the weather is nice then the first people to board a tender boat from a ship like to sit up top (if that’s an option). When it’s cold and damp then this isn’t the case, but there are still two good arguments for getting to the exposed part of the boat: firstly, you get fresh air and views without being shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers on decidedly uncomfortable benches with, if you’re lucky, a misted-up, water-splattered porthole to look out; secondly, you get off the tender boat first when it arrives at its destination. While my wife opted to sit inside for both trips between Lerwick and Regal Princess, I went for the chilly option.

Being first off the tender boat I had time to hang around and snap some shots by the pier at Lerwick until my wife emerged from her shelter. An interesting sculpture caught my eye – they often do – and this turned out to be the Diana Fountain. No, thankfully, not a memorial to the late princess, but rather one erected in 1890 for the whaling ship Diana which became trapped in Arctic ice for six months in 1866 leading to many deaths. The original water fountain was replaced by the overflowing metal chalice sculpture in 2000 by local artist Alan Hart.

Another sculpture stood out as we started to head off to where we first wanted to explore. This was Da Lightsome Buoy by Jo Chapman, a fairly new and fairly humorous piece of art near the water. If you visit then take a minute or two to read the various inscriptions on it out loud.

You can get a better feel for the fog levels in Lerwick during our visit there with this look back across the water to Regal Princess. Once again, some serendipity that our boat trip had been cancelled.

The first place we wanted to visit in Lerwick was the iron age ruins on the shore of Clickimin Loch, only about one and a half kilometres from the port area. This started out with a little more uphill-traipsing than we’d expected and neither of us are exactly fit.

We reached a convenient pausing point. Taking photos is a great way to force a rest on the pair of us when we’re out and about, especially for my wife whose old leg-related injuries can cause her some grief that she tries too hard to power through sometimes. This was St Columba’s Church of Scotland, a typically neoclassical piece of architecture dating from the early to mid nineteenth century. It is the largest church building in Shetland and its 1871 organ was only the second one to be installed in a Church of Scotland building following the end of a rule prohibiting them.

As the door appeared to be open we popped our heads inside and were greeted by the minister or a helper who ushered us in, had a bit of a chat with us, offered to get us some drinks (probably due to how flushed we looked from the steep walk in the chilly air), and was just generally really lovely. We’re not religious but it seemed to be a very welcoming place.

Suitably recovered we headed on our way, now hugging the coastline in a westerly direction. The views were moody and the going was far more level now making for a far more pleasant stroll. This coastline is known as Da Sletts.

One final piece of functional artwork to spot before we made our way inland towards the loch were the shelters installed by NHS Scotland using brightly-coloured upright boat hulls. These were erected in 2023 to be used by the nearby staff and patients of the Lerwick health centre as well as tourists walking the path. And we did, even though it wasn’t raining, just because we could.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll take a look around the impressive Broch of Clickimin.

This post will mostly just be photographs of the Broch of Clickimin since our experience – and that of most people visiting it – can be broadly summarised as we walked to it, we walked around it, and we walked inside it.

To start with, though, “What is a broch?” might be what you’re wondering because I know I was. There’s actually no consensus on this. Early archaeological thoughts had them as defensive locations but later ones questioned the lack-of-strategic positioning; other thoughts were that they were status symbols for wealthy or important people but the high number of them in this part of the world for the time period brought that into question; there are those who think they were centralised farmsteads; nobody really knows, in other words.

The site of the Broch of Clickimin is also contentious with early declarations of a late Bronze Age settlement superseded by an Iron Age farmhouse then later defensive additions now being questioned following more modern archaeological interpretations. Sometimes science disappoints you.

Anyway, enough of the background to the place; on with the photos. You can see from them that the fog was still with us, still smothering a lot of the surroundings and dropping that temperature right down. In this first picture you can see the walk from the main road entrance to the ruins.

A narrow, low entry tunnel granted access to the interior of the Broch of Clickimin although this did involve squatting, checking to make sure nobody else was coming your way, then shuffling through. If you’ve got poor mobility then this is likely to be something you won’t be able to do although a sled, some rope, and friends to drag you along is obviously an option to consider. Accessibility wasn’t a big concern during the Iron Age for some reason.

We weren’t at the Broch of Clickimin long because it’s not a large site but it was very interesting and well worth looking around if you can. In the next post in this British Isles cruise travelogue series we’ll conclude our time ashore with more of a walk around Lerwick including visits to the museum, fort, and a couple of pubs.

We made our way to Fort Charlotte. This would have been more prominent on the shoreline when it was built in 1781 (and named for Queen Charlotte) but land reclamation has since pushed it back to a less imposing position. In its current incarnation the fort never saw any action but previous fortifications on the same spot were involved in battles during the Anglo-Dutch wars of the seventeenth century.

The final bit of culture we took a look at in Lerwick was the Shetland Museum. As you’d probably expect this wasn’t a huge museum by any means but it was a nice building with some interesting things on display and it was lovely to get out of the cold for a short while.

That mostly covered the places of interest within walking distance around Lerwick so we filled the rest of our time ashore by doing some shopping – loads of locally-made soaps were purchased because we have a fondness for soaps – and we checked out a couple of pubs – the Douglas Arms and the Lounge Bar – so that we could try some of the ales produced by the local brewery on the island.

In the next post in this British Isles cruise travelogue series we’ll head back to the ship and start some southward cruising down the east coast of Britain where we’ll be treated to some aurora action.