Guided Walk No 2

Check there are no planes or helicopters coming in to land or taking off, and walk across the airstrip and eastwards along the fire engine stance track. Look for arctic skuas and arctic terns, also mat grass, heath rush, buckshorn plantain, and tormentil.

Walk out to the old rubbish tip (1) and look over - to the south are shags on nests on ledges near the foot of the cliffs and guillemots on flat rock at the bottom. Look north to da Gloor - this part of the coast is all Old Red Sandstone. There is a seam of softer mudstone and the sea has eroded it away to make a cave.

Watch for kittiwakes flying by. Da Gloor used to have a kittiwake colony before the decrease in sandeels. There is still a small colony further south out of sight.

Walk south along the coast. Heather grows in a very short carpet due to the exposure, along with small plants of crowberry which have small edible black berries in July and August

Look at the Run Hoevdi (2). These rocks used to be joined to the shore with two arches that boats could go through. It fell sometime between the two World Wars. Walk to the small pools to look for shore-weed, and sphagnum moss. Look for heath spotted orchids, milkwort, field woodrush, common sedge, and tufted sedge or deer grass.

An alternative route is to walk down to the south end of the airstrip. Near the bottom look for a patch of grey chips near the right hand edge. Around that area there are usually several eider ducks on their nests. They pluck down from their breasts to line their nests and when they leave to feed, they carefully cover up their eggs. Do not go too close, or they will get up suddenly and fly off, leaving their eggs exposed, and arctic skuas or bonxies may eat them. They incubate their eggs for four weeks and take their chicks down to the sea at night. Later in the summer, after they have gone, the fine down can be examined in the old nest.

Walk to the Lang Hoevdi (3) - be careful - there is a sudden indentation in the coastline! Go to the mouth of the Geo.

May - June look at the flowers on the north side, out of reach of the sheep - sea pinks, sea campion, scurvy grass, buckshorn plantains.

Look for wheatears, rock pipits, and fulmars nesting opposite. Walk out along the south side and look at the little colony of guillemots in the crack at the foot of the cliff. This colony is very vulnerable to being washed away by the sea, so they are often late, the birds which lay early often lose their eggs.

May - June. Look for guillemots incubating their eggs, sitting close together in huddles. Watch for them coming ashore and walking up the rocks like penguins - they often walk up but fly down. They lay one egg, a pretty turquoise with brown squiggles, and incubate for about a month. You may see the birds coming ashore with sandeel which they carry lengthways in their beaks with the tail sticking out.

July and perhaps August - look for guillemots with chicks. They go to sea when they are only about three weeks old, jumping off the ledges on a fine night. They are accompanied by the male adults, who continue to stay with them until they can fend for themselves. Listen for the chicks calling keeping contact with the parent bird.

Check the maritime sward for sea pinks, sea plantain, buckshorn plantain, ribwort plantain. Look for the scalped area and see the remains of mooldie cooses (heaps of dry peat moold scraped together in summer and used on the byre floor in winter to keep the kye's bed dry. It was then mixed with manure and spread on the land in spring). Look at the plantie crub and the shelter for shooting shags.

Notice the Foula sheep with their rich variety of colours and markings.

Walk south along the coast. Do not go too close to the rocks because of nesting birds. Watch for arctic terns, and for arctic skuas chasing them to force them to drop their fish. Arctic terns are only in Foula from May until July. They nest on rocky coastlines and on wet moorland and feed mainly on sandeel and also small fish. If conditions are bad, the whole colony will desert. There are usually from 500-1000 pairs but in recent years there have only been a few hundred. At the end of June immature birds arrive with their white foreheads and short tails - they like to sit on the airstrip. Come July the fledgeling chicks look similar but have more patterned wings and are slightly brownish at first.

Look out for nesting common gulls but please don't disturb them because arctic skuas will eat their eggs. Also look for herring gulls which sometimes nest here - they have a red spot on their beaks. Gulls are called Maas in Shetland. Watch for kittiwakes roosting on the south side of the burn - they were known as Rippack Maas and they do not have a red spot. Common gulls have yellowy green legs, herring gulls have pink legs, kittiwakes have blackish legs. Immature gulls are mottled with brown. Immature kittiwakes have black markings on their heads.

See if there are tysties swimming offshore or sitting up on the heap of stones - listen for them whistling. (It is not known what this heap of stones was for.) Tysties stay in Foula all year round, but in the winter they turn grey and white. There are usually about 150 tysties nesting round Foula in cracks in the rocks and under boulders. They feed mainly on butterfish and other small fish. Their chicks don't fledge until August and are grey and white, quite similar to the winter adults.

Watch for eider ducks - the males are black and white, the females brown. The in-between plumage of immature males can be confusing. Look for oyster-catchers, dunlin, lapwings, known in Foula as the Tieve's Nacket (thieves' telltale) because of their warning calls.

Look at the remains of an enclosure near the coast and find where the habitation was. Nellie o Guttren lived here for a short time about a hundred years ago, before she moved to Nellie's Toon in the Brae, but it would appear there was something much older here before this.

Check the boat noosts (4) where the small boats were hauled up during the winter and bad weather by a careful route up the rocks. Fishing was a very important part of the economy during the 18th and 19th centuries, when fish was dried for export to Spain and for use at home through the winter. Fish heads, small saithe (known as piltaks) and fish livers, along with tatties, were the main diet throughout the summer.

Go to the track before it crosses the mouth of the burn. Look at the ruins of the old mill (5) that was demolished by the sea in a big storm in 1900 and see the internal structure and the water race. There is an even more ruinous second mill which can be identified by its channel for water. The stones from this mill were removed to build Davie a' Niggards' Grave, which is the small stone enclosure with a gate. Davie went for a walk along the shore one afternoon in April 1933 and was never seen alive again. His clothes had been left in a neat pile and his body came ashore six weeks later. Because it was thought he might have committed suicide, he was not buried in the church graveyard, as was the custom then. He was only 22 years old.

Look at the best mill. These mills are known as horizontal mills or click mills, because of the noise they made when running. The millstones lying inside the mill are made of mica-schist, which occurs along the north east coast of Foula. It was called millstane grit and the Foula men used to make millstones and export them to Orkney to trade for grain, sailing there in their small open boats. See the 'tirl' below, which turned the millstones, and look at the water race and the remains of the sluice. All the mills on the burns were worked in sequence off the same head of water. Each mill was owned by several houses.

Nearby you may see marsh marigolds, marsh pennywort, and yellow iris, known as segs, which people believed made you stammer if you ate the roots.

Go back up to the crubs below the Bankwell dyke. One is still being worked. The covering net is there to keep fulmars out because if they get in, they cannot raise their flight enough to get out again.

Look at the old Bankwell house (6). Note the drystone walls, small rooms, small windows. The last person to live there was Jessie Henry who left at the beginning of the 20th century.

Look at the Bankwell dyke and find the big thin stones set up on their edges and the coping stones, a different style from the old Foula style. This wall was built by men brought in to the island by the landlord after the population decreased drastically as a result of the smallpox epidemics in the first half of the 18th century. It was said there were only six people left to bury the dead.

The boathouse was roofed with a boat in the 1960's to make a hen-house. During the spring when crops were sown, the hens were banished to out of the way places to stop them scratching up the corn seed.

Go across to the Aald Skeos (7). Skeos were small stone buildings used for drying fish, particularly before the days when salt was readily available. The fish were hung up inside and the wind blew through the gaps left in the walls. These skeos are probably 18th century or earlier because nothing is known about who built them nor are there any stories or anecdotes mentioning them.

Look for da Tooers ida Ness (8). These cairns were used as fishing meeds (position-finding points). They were lined up against landscape features to enable the boats to find good fishing spots. They have been built on the remains of something else, probably a skeo.

Walk to Little Surpeidle (9), but approach carefully in case the shags are on their nests on the rocks just below. Look for the tystie sometimes outside its nest site opposite near the top of the cliff.

Go to the burial cairn (10). This dates back 3000 - 4000 years to the Bronze Age. There are two stone slabs set up on their edges to form part of a stone cist in the middle. Pottery urns with cremated ashes were placed in the cist.

Look for "Steven's hoose" on the edge, (called after Steven Smith who found it). Its age is unknown, possibly Iron Age, because it looks as if it may have been rectangular. Look for signs of the old walls.

Go to Surpeidle (11) and look for shags, fulmars, possibly razorbill, puffins, tysties, grey seals. See the old driftwood - wood was very scarce and expensive, so driftwood was a valuable resource. There is still a 'lesnin' (fastening point) at the edge of Suderakeeden (12). This was used for attaching a rope to when fetching up driftwood.

Go to the Heid ida Hurd (13), out at the north point. Look for razorbills and shags, and sea pinks flowering on the top of the flat rock. Puffins sometimes sit up here. Look south at the guillemots opposite, and see the Rippack Stack called after the kittiwakes that used to nest there.

Go to the windmill (14). It was part of the Foula Electricity Scheme, and was erected in 1987. The scheme was installed as a research project by an English company with funding from the EEC, Shetland Islands Council, and Highlands & Islands Enterprise. It originally comprised the wind turbine. a small hydro turbine, and a diesel generator, all three controlled by a computer which tailored supply to demand. The wind turbine was damaged by a lightening strike and ceased functioning about 1995. Electricity is currently provided 17 hours daily by the diesel generator, but a new sustainable island electricity scheme is being designed, using solar panels, an upgraded hydro scheme, and a small number of 15kw wind turbines to augment the diesel generator.

Look at the remains of old dykes crossing the South Ness. We don't know what age they are, but they are probably ancient.

Go to Skarvatung and see the shags (called 'skarfs' in Shetland) which give it its name. There may also be puffins, tysties, and grey seals. Razorbills often sit up near the top on the south side at the head of the geo.

Walk south past Bonibrik. See the large stones along the edge thrown up by the sea in the winter. Look out for ringed plovers - they are called Sandy Loos in Shetland and make a well disguised nest of small stones. They sometimes distract intruders by pretending to have a broken wing. Look for shags flying past the point of the South Ness in small parties. They prefer to feed in the shallow water around the east side of the island.

Look for oystercatchers nesting. In Foula they feed mainly off limpets, which they prise off rocks with their bill.

Look at the old cru. It was designed so that sheep could be driven into it along the dyke from either side.

Go to the Automatic Weather Station (15). It records temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and barometric pressure, and sends the computerised data by radio telephone link to the mainland. See how well the vegetation is growing inside the fence where the sheep cannot graze. Look for squills, plantains, sea pinks.

Walk to the lighthouse, which was erected in 1986. See the solar panels which run it.

Go to the Giants Grave (16). It is said that the giant that was buried here, came across to Foula by stepping on Vaila and the Shaalds (a submerged reef about 3 miles offshore from the airstrip.) It may be connected with the old dyke that runs across South Ness from Skarvatung.

Go to the Yogins (l7), (shallow pools or indentations) just south of Jock Ratter's shooting hide (made out of concrete and stones). Here are the very ruinous remains of two, possibly three structures. They are thought to be oval houses dating back to late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, 4000 - 5000 years old. The older houses were oval, later ones were round. At this time Shetland had a climate more like the south of England and much of Foula would have grown shrubs and small trees such as willow, hazel and birch. The people were farmers growing grain, including wheat and keeping livestock. After this, the climate deteriorated and peat formed over the lowland, making life harder. Look for the rounded extension on the east side of the east-most house. It is not known what this was for. The hole in the centre is a recent excavation. The bigger house would have had upright stones dividing off partitions. The smaller house may have been a workshop.

Just north of the old dyke is another possible oval house with the entrance pointing towards the windmill.

Just north of the Yogins are three burial mounds in a row. The furthest west has only a few of the kerbing stones left. The middle one is a big circular heap of turf and stones. The third one has some of the stones showing that formed the cist. These cairns were probably Bronze Age, later than the houses, about 3000 - 4000 years old.

There are also mooldie cooses here (heaps of dry peat dust used for bedding kye in winter).

Go to the old Knab cru (18) at the back of the dyke. It is unusual for a Foula cru in that it has several compartments. Sheep were driven down off the Noup, through the cru onto the Ness, then the cru was closed and they were driven back up into the enclosure. Look at the little gate - it is made in traditional design with the foot of the post rotating on a buried upturned glass bottle with a dimple in the bottom.

Go through the big gate at the Norderhus dyke please be careful to shut it properly. It is essential to keep to the track. Look for squills, common dog violets, sorrel, daisies, celandines, scabious, autumnal hawkbit, sheeps bit.

Walk past the auld kirk (19) and down to the road. If you want to go into the churchyard use the small gate at the north side beside the old church which is said to be one of the oldest in Shetland, probably built on the site of an earlier pre-Reformation church. The roof was taken off then replaced by the film crew in 1936 when they made the film 'Edge of the World.'

Go through the big gate and down to the bridge. Swallows sometimes nest underneath.

Look at the old Wurly Mill (20) beside the burn. Although it looks very ruinous now, it was in use up to the 2nd World War.

Walk up the road a little and look at the burnt mound, Wurly Knowe. These mounds are always found beside water. They consist of a heap of burnt stones and within them is a stone cist They date back to the late Bronze Age and are around 2000 - 3000 years old. Stones were heated up and then dropped into the cist full of water. They were thought to have been used for cooking, washing, etc.

In May and June vernal squills grow on top of the mound and water horsetails just inside the fence.

Observe the lynchettes which mark the edges of cultivation in the past. These were formed by people cultivating downhill so that a deepness of earth gathered at the foot of the rigs.

Look out for the Niggards geese. These are Shetland geese, a small breed usually grey and white or sometimes plain white, similar to the Faroese geese. Look out for a pinkfoot goose, which sometimes accompanies them.

Look for the old Grinds house site (22) on the west side of the road at the edge of the old Hametun boundary dyke. The News house was built outside the old Hametoon dyke and the man who built it was known as Robbie Oota-daeks. The Dykes was built at the dyke and the Punds was also outside it. The township dyke was moved north to its present position about two hundred years ago.

Watch along the roadside for Lady's smock, called Peppermint Floors, lesser stitchwort, marsh dandelions, nesting snipe, called Horse Gok because of the drumming noise they make.

Go over the cattle grid. You are now back onto scalped moorland.

Foula Heritage Ranger Service 2006

Guided walk 2 ... Airstrip to South Ness

Old Rubbish Tip 1. Run Hoevdi 2. Lang Hoevdi 3. Boat Noosts 4. Old Mill 5.

Bankwell House 6. Auld Skeos 7. Tooers ida Ness 8. Little Surpeidle 9.

Burial cairn 10. Surpeidle 11. Suderkeeden 12. Heid ida Hurd 13.

Windmill 14. Automatic Weather Station 15. Giants grave 16. Yogins 17.

Knab Cru 18. Auld Kirk 19. Wurly Mill 20. Grinds house site 21.

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