Up 7am for breakfast at 8am. We needed to be out of the door by 8:45am to catch our first ferry from Toft to Ulsta at 9:45am and it is a 45 minute drive to Toft. I had to book the ferry across last night and you then pay on the ferry once you board. We arrived at 9:25am and joined the short queue of cars awaiting to cross.
Waiting in the queue for the ferry and the view crossing on the ferry.
The front opening as we arrive on the Island of Yell.
The ferry was on time and you stay in your car for the 25 minute crossing. Sadly because the doors at the end are closed, there is nothing to see when you cross. Someone comes around to take the fare, £19:30 for the day and you can take any ferry on the top three Islands (Yell, Fetlar, and Unst) by just showing the ticket. The boat opens at both ends, so you drive on and are directed to one of the three lanes to park by an attendant.
Arriving at Ulsta on the Island of Fell, we drove all the way up the island to Gutcher. The drive takes about 20 minutes and the route really is remote with little housing along the road. The biggest hazard being sheep running across the road as you approach them.
Arriving at Gutcher, there are two lanes, one for the vehicles that have booked and ones for those that haven’t but just want to take the crossing (similar to the first ferry). Our crossing from Gutcher to Belmont, Unst was booked for 11:50am but we had arrived at 10:30am and there was a crossing at 11:20am. So I decided to play dumb and say that we had booked (but for 11:50am crossing) and joined the booked lane. Problem was that just before the ferry arrived, somebody then checks! We were asked to leave lane 1 and join lane 2 as they were very busy. However, as those that had booked didn’t turn up for their slot, our lane was allowed to board. Every car that was waiting was allowed to board, a maximum of 10 cars in two lanes of 5 on a smaller boat than that for the first crossing. We did have a cup of tea while we were waiting for the ferry to arrive and watched in amazement the Gannets diving into the sea to get their food right next to the terminal.
The jetty at Gutcher and the ferry arriving
View on the smaller ferry when crossing
Landing at Belmont, there is nothing apart from a small hut that is the ferry terminal. We headed straight for Skaw beach, the goal of why we were making the complete trip. The road to get to the north of the island is very good, but it does get narrow. As you turn from the A968 onto the B9087 towards Haroldwick, the road becomes narrow with passing places. It gets very narrow, with ditches either side and only just wide enough for a car. Taking a left turn just before Norwick, you head down a very steep hill that is like a farm track! The sign does say it is a temporary road surface, but you wouldn’t want to take an ordinary saloon car down there. Having got to the bottom, the road then climbs very steeply, still unmade and rough. Glad we were in the landrover for this section. About half way up the hill it becomes like a normal narrow road again.
Having looked at the map on Google maps, I had hoped we could travel down a little road on our right to see the remains of RAF Skaw Radar Station. However, this is the site of the new Saxa Vord Spaceport and from the turning it has now been purchased and is under significant development. Sadly it looks like the old WW2 site has been demolished in this redevelopment process. The benefit of the redevelopment of the site is that some of the road has been very well remade near the site.
We continued down to Skaw beach, very narrow and rough in places – no camper vans down here! We finally arrived at Skaw beach at 12:00, the most northerly point that it is possible to drive too legally on the UK road network – 67 miles from the B&B this morning.
We made it! Skaw Beach, Unst Island, Shetland.
Looking back up the road.
It had just started to rain just as we arrived. but we still went for the small walk to the beach and took a selfie. The sea was rough, stirred up by storm Betty that had hit the UK, so sadly a swim wasn’t going to happen, especially as the wind was bitterly cold too. As we made the small walk back, we got soaked as it rained really hard. Only a short walk, the waterproofs keeping our tops dry, but our legs suffered from the rain and run off from the waterproofs.
We were the only people there. We didn’t pass a single car since turning toward the beach. Whilst we were there one car arrived, stopped to look before going back. We had the place to ourselves.
Heading back I decided that we would visit the Saxa Vord remote radar site. There was a warning sign about MOD property, but given that the original site is now closed and there were no signs saying I couldn’t go up, up we went. A very steep narrow climb up to the old RAF Saxa Vord Radar site that is now derelict with the perimeter fence pulled down. You could walk around had it not been raining. There was a turning up to the new radar head, but that did have a sign saying MOD vehicles only and I wasn’t sure we could turn up the short road to the top so opted not to do that last little bit. But by transiting to the old site, we had driven slightly further north than Skaw Beach.
Saxa Vord old radar site
We then decided that we would go down the valley and up the other side we were looking at the Nature reserve of Hermaness. Arriving there at the end of the road, there is a small information building and toilet. One bit of interesting information is that we are on the same latitude as Anchorage in Alaska at this point. We had lunch and a cup of tea before taking a walk up to the Muckle Flugger viewing point. There was a little rain in the air and it was very windy as we started out. Well, it became a raging gale and rain storm. The wind was 52mph. By the time we got to the view point 150M above sea level, at the top of a vertical cliff face, the rain and wind were incessant and you couldn’t see the lighthouse! The wind was blowing you towards the cliff edge, so we stayed well clear behind the large sign board. Turning round to walk back, the driving rain was so hard that it stung as it hit your face. In total a 4.76Km walk, but our waterproofs kept us dry.
House at the car park and view towards Muckle Flugger at the end of our walk
Somewhere over Helen’s right shoulder in the mist is the lighthouse
We headed back to the ferry terminal, and although we were booked on the 5:15pm ferry, as we arrived at Belmont to sail to Yell, the ferry was there and they were about to close the gates, but they waved us on to the 3:30pm crossing. Again, you couldn’t see anything, but you could feel the swell this time as we crossed.
Arriving the other side, we took a different route back to the ferry terminal as we were not booked on until 6:30pm. We came back down the B road on the right side of the island – very hilly, very narrow, and with poor visibility due to the weather. Arriving at the ferry terminal, we queued in the unbooked lane, but again, we got on the crossing, departing at 4:30pm. It was probably the weather conditions that had meant people had decided not to travel and so there were plenty of spaces on the ferries.
We drove into Lerwick to pick up some sandwiches for the evening, filled up with diesel (35.33 Litres at £1.59 per litre) before getting back to the B&B at 6:08pm having covered 158 miles and achieving my goal of taking the land rover to the most northerly point on the UK road network.
Our route taken today (started where the green dot is as I forgot to turn it on when leaving the B&B) and the elevation profile of the route. You can see our drive up to RAF Saxa Vord as the dark peak at just before 100km.