the corner office

Hermaness Nature Reserve is at the northermost part of Unst, the northermost inhabited island in Shetland. An extra treat is two early morning ferries from the mainland, just to get there.

Starting out, you take a long walk across the moors, mostly on a boardwalk. To the east is Burra Firth, and across the water a huge radar dome at the top of a hill called Saxa Vord (the names...!) Eventually the path gets you to a clifftop view of the sea, and a sign telling you that you're 150 metres above the Atlantic.

If you turn left, you follow a trail to an area called Saito, with cliff faces which are, in summer, famous for masses of gannets (and the stench of their guano). In winter the cliffs are just home to slightly more pedestrian gulls and sea birds, but still something to see - birds perched everywhere, sailing on the wind, swooping and soaring as the wind comes up the cliff face.

Some parts of the cliff path have wooden posts with warning signs up to keep people from getting too close to the edge, there's land slippage in evidence, and as I've said before, I'm a wuss and stayed well away, on the inland side of footpaths.

The reserve has plenty of sheep, many of them feeding on grassy outcrops and cliff edges. Somewhere, I'd read a warning saying "don't startle the sheep, they're prone to dart and fall off the cliffs". What to do? I'd occasionally announce myself by talking aloud, and to the best of my knowledge, no silly sheep's life was cut short by my visit.

If you walk back to the sign saying you could turn left to Saito, and now turn right (or straight, if you're coming back from Saito, you know what I mean), you head north around the cliffside, and soon have an amazing view of the island of Muckle Flugga, and its lighthouse, and just past it, Out Stack. These are the northermost bits of the UK, and beyond them, is just sea, sea and more sea until you reach the North Pole.

From there, back up over Hermaness Hill. In summer, infamous, apparently, for dive-bombing bonxies, in winter just stark and beautiful.

Then more boardwalks across the moors, back to the entrance. There are signs proudly saying that the boardwalks have been made of recycled plastics, and all I could think was "omg microplastics into the ecosystem!" But I assume they knew what they were doing. I couldn't help but wonder how on earth people walked around here before they'd put up the boardwalks, wooden or plastic. There's a fine line sometimes between moors and bogs, and in the middle of winter some of these areas would be nigh impassable.