A Late Afternoon Walk

I left the old men enjoying the quiet windless afternoon resting in the sun.

And took BeAnne out for a walk in the scattald.  She loves the hill so much more than traipsing up and down the boring road with me.

It was still, not very warm, but sunny.

For those of  you now hysterical at the thought of a dog on the hill, BeAnne is honestly not that kind of girl.  Sheep mean nothing to her.  The crofter who owns the hill sheep is also aware that BeAnne is not that kind of dog too. So please do not be alarmed.

Anywho, back with the walk.

The circular enclosures are called planticrubs (From the Shetland Dictionarynoun a small circular dry-stone enclosure for growing cabbage plants. They are sometimes used for sheep and are just called crö then. I am not sure if these are for plants or sheep as, although they are in the hill, they are relatively near my croft.

BeAnne had a lovely time.

And we also met three errant sheeple who were also enjoying their freedom.  I am allowed sheep on the hill.

 

I had let them out earlier in the day to go and find some friends.  Lambie gave me his filthiest look – that of a teenager whose Mum has come to collect him from a party and he doesn’t want to go home.

So I duly ignored them while they disowned me and BeAnne and we went on with our walk.

And then I saw why we were being cast aside.  There were girls!

We saw a few rabbits and a pair of black grouse squawked past.

We did a circular walk – returning through our field where the view is very special – no houses to be seen.

This is the gate at the end of our field which I have sleepless nights about constantly blowing open letting all the horses and ponies out into miles and miles of hill.

Just BeAnne and I, across our large field.

But, of course, little did we know we were being watched.

Always watching.

It was a very special walk. Just me and my wee dug. ❤️

 

4 thoughts on “A Late Afternoon Walk

  1. Sam

    What a lovely Girls Afternoon Out you had, moody Sheeple aside. Nice to see BeAnne bouncing in the fields. She looks very happy.

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  2. Carol E.

    Beautiful pictures! What a lovely walk.

    I spoke to a fellow from the bird observatory about a lot of planticrubs I saw on Whalsay. He said that you’d leave some cabbage plants in there each year to go to seed so it would be a self-perpetuating patch. Old fishing nets might be thrown across the top to keep birds out. Then, if your regular garden failed and it was a hard, hard winter, you’d at least have some cabbage to help you get through to spring. It seemed like a survival tactic for desperate times, but a good one as it’s so low-effort.

    I later heard that Shetland cabbage was referred to as kale, and have wondered if it’s the same vegetable that foodies in the US are going nuts about as a super food. As I found in an article linked below, Shetland kale is its own variety going back hundreds of years in Shetland, and not grown commercially. So its continued existence depends on people saving and sharing seeds from their own gardens. Here’s a bit more about it.

    https://www.shetland.org/60n/blogs/posts/shetland-kale-oldest

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