Lerwick Lodeberries

One of the characteristic features of Lerwick are its lodeberries - houses built at the very edge of the shore so that ships could come alongside and unload/load goods - including quite often, apparently, smuggled goods. They came about, it would seem, because the merchants couldn't agree on building a pier/harbour, so they made their own landing stages instead. Collective action problems, eh. I liked this photograph not only because it brought out the quality of the stone, but also because it showed lots of interesting bits and pieces about the current small boat harbour - the lifeboat, a visiting tall(ish) ship from Bremen, and in the far distance the ferry quay. I was standing at the bottom of Bain's Steps to take this one...

This morning, in better weather than yesterday, we went down to Jarlshof for a potter, walked out onto the very attractive Scatness peninsula, and then drove into Lerwick for some lunch and a look around some of the arty shops. I found a couple of nice photographs to buy.

If the weather holds up, tomorrow we want to drive up to Unst. Fingers crossed.