Sunday 30 March 2014

Amazing Weather for a Glorious Walk!

Such a good day of weather here today in Shetland. The last three days of March are traditionally the 'borrowing days' when March borrows a day from May, June and July and this indicates the likely weather in these months. Well if today is anything to go by, June is going to be a cracker!

I went with my good friend Elizabeth for a circular walk, one of the Walk Shetland routes (although it was not signposted when we got there until the stile at the end ....) http://www.walkshetland.com/weisdale-and-tactigill-circular.php We walked up the Hill of Sound and across to the cairn on Weisdale Hill before heading down to the Tactigill Burn and following it back to the road. Even if you don't fancy the hill - the views are amazing! - the burn is a lovely walk in itself. From the cairn we could see the east and west coast of mainland Shetland as well as the islands of Foula and Whalsay and north to Ronas Hill and south to Fitful Head. As Elizabeth said, it's not a big island when you see it like that!

I also found Burn Water, a geocache (http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC34V2Z_burn-water?guid=96ba6325-08f7-480f-b0dd-f34aaca95a8c ) which our route took us past. The cache is near some clay deposits which were declared unsuitable for working. and have interesting layers in the rock formations.
 These layers can be seen further down the burn too and show how the rock shifted when the hills were being formed.
 
 

There are many twists and turns in the burn and we lost count of the number of times we crossed it to get the easiest walk along it. There are numerous pools and waterfalls, most splashing only a short distance but one was large enough to be marked on the map.

 

 




Thursday 27 March 2014

A Turtle's Tale of a Plastic Bag

This animation has been made by all the pupils at Ollaberry School where I work. Please look at it and share it so that their message gets spread far and wide!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keRWIwdrVHM