Lerwick to where?

The previous transit sized van was fine for my purposes on these roads, but the hire company had hired that one out, if I wanted a van it would have to be the next size up high sided and longer? I couldn’t think of any other options except to return to cycling and camping its still snowy and icy and the roads are treacherous – I took the bigger van! Duncan helped me throw all my stuff in the back of it as I prepared to leave, I had by then spent two nights at Dunc`s house sort of by accident, I am sure him and susan will have been glad to see me go by then. I had bought lots of extra food and beers thinking I would leave most of them at Duncan’s as a small thank you for the previous nights breakfast dinner and snacks, we had ended up having a chippy and neither of us in the mood for a repeat of the previous night’s excesses Dunc insisted I take the food away this meant loads more stuff in the van to carry hopefully I will get through most of it before I need to pack it on the cycle for moving?

Setting of in the morning I had no proper set plan? I wanted to get to some far flung areas of trigs, by then I had wiped out the south island OS map well wiped out except four island trigs noss Vaila foula and fair isle, This is trig points on islands that have only summer ferries, moving up into the mainland map I had patches of areas where there was one or two left to do six in total on the mainland map before I moved onto the third map of Yell and Unst also Fetlar!

I decided first off all to do Sandness hill as this is a big hill for Shetland, well it looked like it by the map, I expected it would be a fair trek up and down, it wasn’t I trekked up and down in around an hour the views were spectacular, especially down on to papa stour it was so clear I could see the whole island, having been there now I know what all these areas where, I had a drive down into sandness town for a look at the town and beach and use the harbour loo, then I drove out to where they are building a wind farm there is a trig up there where the farm is going but the road is getting used for construction traffic, the side road was snow was ice covered! Speaking to the security gate man he was unhelpful to the point of a jobs worth that wanted me to feck aff, I didn’t argue as I had others to hit, I could do the others first, then come back to this one when the road was less iced hopefully, The next near`ish by trig- was one is out past the town of vidlin, from where this was circled in pencil on my map it looked easy enough, it also strangely had a black biro`d box in the map where I was certain the trig must be, I walked out all around that area as there was a couple of other wee peaks”! that vcould possible be the biro mark? the trig was defo not there ! not where it was marked on the map definitely not, this was not my usual navigation left or right issue, the large area thatI had hiked around definitely had no trig point? a big well-made square`ish cairn I felt hopeful about on approach but nope no trig! Later when I was parked up for the night miles away, reading the map coordinates from my checklist! bugga it looked very like the drawn pencil circle is a circle and pen mark done in the wrong place! This made sense now, I had went to do a different one absolutely months ago and had went to the wrong side of a voe! where I was searching was where I had marked my map as a mistaken trig DOH! the actual trig unfortunately for me once I checked the co`ordinates was right at the map crease between top and bottom halves among a load of blue sea and lochans not on the high ground where I thought it was! but down by the sea according to the coordinates! ARGHHH

I drove away annoyed about these two trig points I was now not getting this day; I would need to be happy with one, deciding I would park up at Eshaness lighthouse for sundown, I timed this good for what I hoped would be a nice sunset lighthouse vista? but no unfortunately it was a heavy cloud night there was not much to see or do so close to big cliffs in the dark with snow and ice on the ground it was more earie than scenic

I was sort of getting used to the van life by then, I would sit up the front cab filling out my logs and blogs having a beer after food with snacks occasionally putting the engine on to warm the cab, it was -3 outside! That was according to the weathers web page that I checked in town when I had a signal the weather app didn’t work out here(no signal no wifi) I am sure it was more cold than that and it was windy, not windy by Shetland standard only a draught for here but I’m a soft soother! I was parked up on an icy cliff top( I also have far too good an imagination!) going to bed in the back of this bigger van had some benefits, I could stand up straight no need to crouch with bags of room, the high ceiling worked for the frozen condensation, my thermarest seemed to be losing air faster now, it seemed like only three maybe four hours before I had to blow it back up the sleeping map I had bought in lerwick isn’t enough for me(must be age)! I shoulda took the old mattress Dunc had offered yet another silly mistake why not? Then again how to keep it dry? he said it was going to the bin (I hope not) it looked fine someone could use it, we will now never know Goodnight from the only human for many a mile on a sheet of ice at a cliff edge (lol drama king)