Saturday 4 October 2008 - Day 9 - Blizzards, No Birds & Lerwick Loons! - 04/10/08

A Tale of Zero Birds......... it's Snow Joke!

The penultimate (I've always liked that word) day of the trip.  It's just above freezing outside with gale force north-westerly winds making it feel more like minus fifteen!  We had more chance of finding a Polar Bar or a Walrus today than we did of spying the odd decent aviform or two.  After breakfast we decided we would 'chill' (quite literally) in the B&B for a while before heading up to Lerwick to find a pub that would be showing the football.  Whilst in Lerwick we did a quick search of the harbour (without leaving the car) and picked up a juvenile Arctic Tern feeding amongst the Herring Gulls and Great Black-backed Gulls.  There was no sign of any 'white-winged' Gulls however.

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Right Said Fred enjoying a skinny latte (& I don't mean Ian Moore) at the Shetland Hotel, Lerwick.

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The first stop was the empty bar of the Shetland Hotel where we warmed ourselves up with tea, coffee and fancy little Italian biscuits.  At this point it had started to snow!  We were all nicely settled in front of the 'big screen' when we realised that they did not even have Sky never mind Sky Sports, we consoled ourselves by watching 'Football Focus' before heading off into town to find a more suitable venue.  After much deliberation we ended up at Da Wheel Bar.  I felt like Luke Skywalker entering the Mos Eisley Cantina, all that was missing was a Wookie and a space pirate sitting in the corner.  As none of us had lightsabers to defend ourselves with, we decided to predict some random footie results, drink up and get the hell out of there.  They didn't have Sky either, just Setanta!  The locals were getting restless so there was a risk that we probably wouldn't survive with all our limbs intact until 5.15pm when the Man Utd vs Blackburn match kicked off.  We made our way back through the blizzards and headed south to Levenwick to the B&B.  At least there we could get warm and watch 'Soccer Saturday' without picking shards of glass from the back of our heads.  The highlight of the day for me was winning the 'ASBO footie prediction competition', it was a fine feeling taking crisp £5.00 notes from the other lads.  After all the results were in, Andy and I made our way down to Channerwick to see if the Red-breasted Flycatcher was still there.  Needless to say we saw absolutely nothing.

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The view from Shalders B&B, Levenwick, Mainland Shetland - our base for most of today!