Will we be lucky?

 More rain overnight, gosh Shetland was having some crap weather! Didn't bode well for another look at the Puffins at Sumburgh Head. It was either abandoning the idea and drive back to Lerwick wondering what to do for 8 hours in the hope we could get the ferry to Orkney, or just say, sod it we can always put on wet weather gear and carry on. We chose the latter.

If you remember the post of a week ago, when there was an abundance of Puffins, well today it was completely different. Then, no matter where you looked, Puffins were either standing on small grassy ledges or flying. I'm assuming the adults are now away at sea finding food for the Pufflings but saw no evidence of any bringing sand eels back. Looks like we were still too early for that spectacle.

There was a sea bird I couldnt identify. It was flying close to the water, was darkish in colour and had the wings of a Frigate bird but smaller. After both doing our best to identify it on the web,  we came up with a Long Tailed Skua. It was the fork tail that threw us initially.
 

The walk up to the lighthouse was done in the dry,  the rain stopped and we even had a glimpse of the sun.

We left at 3 pm for the 40-minute drive back to Lerwick. Parking was a nightmare on arrival, the terminal car park full. We got lucky when a security lady came past and we happened to ask about parking. When she knew we were on standby for the ferry, pointed to the taxi bay and said if anyone argued about us parking there to go and see her.

So we waited, went into the terminal reception twice, got turned away twice because there had been no news of any cancellations, told to wait until 4.45 pm and just as we were about to lose all hope, a phone call saying we had secured a place. It all happened very fast after that. The amended tickets were brought out, told to go to lane 9 but even before we reached it, beckoned on to board. 

Then the fun started. We had to turn around and reverse into a space between two cars. The crew were fantastic with their hand gestures and Ian followed the hand waving to a T. We  got parked up without incident. Well done that man of mine!

That's it for now. We are waiting to leave port and then the next part of our adventures in the Orkneys begins.