Birthday boy

It's the night before Gregory's birthday. Some presents are loaded to the living room. 

Next morning it's all about excitement

Quick visit to the best pastry in town...

(quick but satisfactory)

The rest is football

New scooter

Douglas Garden

Today there was a big nursery picnic in Douglas Garden

There was some music...

some snacks

a lot of snacks, to be fair

Spotting bugs

 And playing, of course

Drumsheugh Bath Club

Sunday morning in Drumsheugh Bath Club. Gregory as well as his Dad are its members. 

The cafe upstairs overlooking the swimming pool

Shetland jumper

Gorgeous jumper we brought home from Shetland

It's not just warm and cosy. It's also makes one look happy

Shetland pattern created out of plastic bottles' lids

Here we were

Noss

Another day and another adventure. This time we are heading to Noss island. It all starts on a ferry 

The ferry brings us to the island of Bressay which we cross on a bus. Then we are getting on this small boat

Unfortunately, we could find any puffins here this time. So we had to fake it a little bit

Same old faces again and again

When the rain started a fellow went home but felt asleep on a doorstep

Foula

Foula is the most remote island still inhabited by people. This is really uttermost place which is hard to reach even nowadays. We had been waiting for a boat trip there, but it has been cancelled twice because of poor weather conditions

 So we had to take this tiny airplane called "Islander". It can carry only 5 passengers and doesn't look that reliable. Some of us were reluctant to board

A pilot tried his best to make us feel safe and calm

This is what we saw when we have landed

All coasts of the island are craggy and forbidding

But these dangerous cliffs are where some rare birds nest

The irony is that even after making such a long and perilous trip you still don't see many of them because in the daytime they fly away to get some food from the sea. Bird-watching is about sitting on a bluff rock and hoping to spot a bird or two

They say 30 people live on the island. We haven't seen any of them (except of three people on the airfield). Houses look depressingly abandoned

Coming to Foula is a kind of gambling. You can't be sure an airplane will be able to make the way back as scheduled. Fog and gusty winds never leave this place for long. We were lucky to come back the same day

The locals

Not that many people one meets walking along the Shetland hills. However, sheeps and ponnies are always there

Puffins are not so available. They only stay on a few cliffs of some pretty remote islands. It took the Dad some big effort to make this shot

These are real autists! Seals running away from us with all their clumsiness

Two (out of 30, as they say) inhabitants of Foula island