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It was still a grey, foggy day on the eastern coast of Shetland. A grey haze shrouded the Lunna Ness peninsula, depriving us of good views from the long, narrow access road. Not really ideal conditions for a moorland walk across rough ground with no paths. But sometimes even the most unpromising settings for walks can come up with surprisingly good outcomes, so we thought we'd give it a try: a short walk to the Steens of Stofast - huge glacial erratics on the top of a hill. They weren't properly marked on OS maps, but their description on Walkshetland intrigued us.
The walk starts with an easy tramp along a track eastwards to Grut Wick - apparently where the Ninian undersea pipeline reaches land, but you wouldn't be able to guess it. On the way along the track, we had a look out for glacial features. One such feature is a "roche moutonnee", which we always used to wrongly translate as "rock sheep". Well maybe not as wrong as we thought...
The poor thing got a terrible fright when he finally looked up and saw us a few metres away. Plenty of other mothers and lambs lined the track.
At Grut Wick a solitary seal swam in the rough sea. We turned NNE and headed cross-country, slanting slightly away from the coast. This took us through slightly boggy territory with traces of sheep tracks in places, and past an even boggier lochan:
Soon the larger South Loch Stofast loomed out of the mist. The Steens of Stofast themselves could be seen up on the hillside to the left, not looking too impressive at this point.
Looking back over the loch:
Up close, the rocks really are huge - in fact, huge enough that "summiting" the biggest one would be a bit of a challenge, especially if the rock is wet. In somewhere like the West Highlands they probably wouldn't be named at all, but then when you struggle to think of other places on Shetland which have anything remotely similar, you realise they really are worth naming. And then think how much power a glacier or ice sheet must have had to be able to transport these rocks... and conveniently deposit them right on the top of this hill!
To return to the car we cut across south-west along the tops of the hills, which was drier underfoot than the previous section.
And so back to the hire car for the drive back to Lerwick, sad that we were heading home tomorrow.
This morning: Hamnavoe headland:
http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=42239Next day: Deepdale and Sandness Hill:
http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=42286