The Shetland Islands

A 14 hour overnight ferry ride from Aberdeen (a city made from the same inhumane grey stone as St. Peters) to the Shetland Islands.

Arrived in Lerwick at sunrise. The low lying clouds glow. Embers in the centre of a fire.

Very friendly -- everyone waves as they drive by. A women stops to ask if I want a lift. "Thanks, I'm just wandering".

The tap water tastes windy and musty: "peaty" -- very good.

Rolling hills and valleys of peat, patterned, damasked with esoteric berms and ditches: 5000 years of harvesting/shovelling by hand. The water running from them is black and thick. Crude oil.

Sumburgh Airport's runway stretches across the road. Stop lights stop the cars so planes can take off and land. "Got" power in the 195o. Home of the Shetland Pony.

Ferry ride from Lerwick to Aberdeen is "rough to very rough" according to the weather forecast, or as I prefer "likely unpleasant [laugh]" by the ships captain at the start of the voyage. Three sets of swells, each swell consisting of: rise, rise, hover, fall-crash, shudder, shudder, pause, repeat) are followed by a rest of three sets of three swells. At points the crash-shudder are pianissimo, more of a "slip" then a "crash". At other times they are fortissimo, the waves snapping and twanging with cacophonous joy against the hull. The next day the wind/waves/swells were going to be larger (112km/h wind).
Now to Glasgow, Portsmouth, HMS Victory... then to Lunnon Town and south to Palermo and Sicilia.