This is a driver view Viking narrated tour bus ride on a single lane back country rural road through a substantial portion of the village of Sandwick on Shetland Mainland (the biggest by far island of the Shetland Islands which contains the capital and is the business hub of the islands). This unnamed road turns off the main north south highway, the A970, but does not go all the way through and thus from the last settlement we reach, Hoswick, it requires a bit of backtracking in order to get back to the A970. The date is 5/15/23 and this is about 12 or 13 miles south of Lerwick. I only filmed as far as Hoswick and missed most of the backtracking.
If you noticed that while driving along, the settlements seemed to stop and start and sort of go on and on which is not what one would normally expect of a rural village anywhere, what explains this is that Sandwick is considered a Tier 1 settlement comprising a number of distinct and separate settlements in close proximity although each remains distinct and they are separated by land in agricultural use, to-wit: Old Sandwick, Leebitton, Broonies' Taing, Stove, Swinister and Hoswick. Leebitton is where during tourist season one can take a boat to the island of Mousa to see the Mousa Broch. In addition to the distinct settlements separated by agricultural parcels, this is spring time in Shetland and the scenery along this 1 lane unnamed road is beautiful and green and representative of what large areas of rural Shetland look like. Because this is mid-May, there are lots of young lambs everywhere you find sheep.
One of the settlements, Hoswick, is considered by some to be a separate village from Sandwick due to it being separated from the rest of Sandwick by the Hoswick Burn (a stream or river), and from the hamlet of Channerwick in the south by the hill where Hoswick is located. Our tour guide seemed to regard it as a separate village in her commentary.
I was on this bus ride because we took the Viking British Isles Explorer Cruise and the particular excursion that this trip was a part of was "Ancient Civilizations of Shetland." Our ultimate goal driving-wise this day was the far southern tip of Shetland Mainland, Sumburgh, which contains some ancient civilization ruins and sites and also is where the airport is located. The voice you hear is our Viking hired tour guide.
I am posting these videos now because I discovered to my chagrin that I had not posted a number of videos from this cruise that I had intended to and somehow omitted to do so when I posted the vast majority earlier. I am reasonably confident virtually all the scenes would look about the same during the spring of next year as they did in 2023.
Considering the low population density and presumably fairly low productivity of agricultural land so far north, about 60 degrees north latitude, I found the roads and lanes almost everywhere on Shetland to be in remarkably good nick and overall condition. Kudos to Scottish highway maintenance.
