In all happened in Lerwick

On Thursday night / Friday we experienced gales with up to 63 mph winds which shook the place. We had been told that these wooden houses creek and with the force of the wind hitting from the west with heavy rain it certainly did creek. We were concerned that the boarded up window might give way but it held firm, just hope we get sorted soon with a new window replacement.

A week ago the last cruise ship of the current season came into Lerwick from Bergen a day earlier than expected due to the bad forecast, it was on its way up to Iceland. This marked the largest number of passengers coming to Shetland in a year with 43,056, previous to that 37, 572 come in 2012.

Its always interesting walking round the harbour, yacht numbers may be down but there is still plenty of interest with the Swan- over 100 years old and other fishing vessels from  Lerwick and Norway.

Although not on the sea, this tartan van was also interesting

A week last Tuesday was also the day of the siege but we left Lerwick about two hours before it happened so missed it luckily. Armed Police were flown to to Shetland from Lossiemouth to deal with a man who arrived at Scalloway with a gun. He subsequently made his way over to Lerwick , where police advised locals to stay inside and they also blocked the south road leaving Lerwick . They detained him without trouble.

We saw the Sea king helicopter with the armed police travelling south after the incident. This is most unusual for Shetland , usually these types of things are only found in  Anne Cleaves books and on TV.

Mind you this is nothing to the nine people who have just been jailed to 36 years for armed robberies last year in the South Yorkshire area, one reason why we left.

We collected our pre-ordered lamb from the abattoir a few days ago, not really knowing how much meat we would get for our money we decided to get a small one and it easily fit in the freezer so the next one will be a lot larger. Just love the taste of lamb, and I had this when we went down to the Sumburgh hotel the other night to celebrate Diane's birthday- superb