Foula Rangers Guided Walk Number One

On way down to Pier (1) check flat rocks (da Cletts) below The Haa for Common Seals. If they are there, climb over the stile and walk carefully down to the big yellow rock. This is about as near as you can get without them taking fright. How can you distinguish from Grey Seals— they're more round-headed, more dog-like face, nostrils meeting in a sharp V.

Look for yellow lichen on the rocks. In 18^th century it was collected and balls of it were exported for use as a dye. It gave a purplish colour.

Look for the rectangular holes cut in the rocks. These were used for washing fish in if it was too rough to use the sea. Fish were salted and dried for export, mainly to Spain and her colonies. They were laid out on the rocks to dry during the day and gathered up at night. The foundations of the old salt cellar, where the salt was stored, can be seen. This was a very important trade in Shetland up to the end of the 19^th century. The islanders had to sell their fish to the landlord and could only buy their goods from the landlord's shop. In this way they were kept permanently in debt and enslaved to the landlord. (The infamous 'truck system')

Walk up the road. See Shetland ponies with foals on upper side of road, if any are there. There are about 20 mares on the Isle and one stallion. The mares carry their foals for eleven months. The foals are sold in the autumn in Lerwick for breeding, children's pets and for riding and driving. Some go abroad to Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden etc. The ones in Foula measure 31 to 38 inches at the shoulder. They live on the hills most of the year.

May - Cross the head of the small bum (da Peerie Bum) and walk slowly down to the edge above where the seals lie. Stop before you scare them off.

June-August. Common seals have usually dispersed along the coast but one or two may be seen

swimming in the Voe. Around 100 Common Seals lie up here through the winter, with occasional Grey Seals. They are mainly young seals from the Shetland Mainland. Common Seals rarely breed on Foula. They have pups in June.

May - Sept. Look for silverweed, Foula name Muriks, found on sandy croft land near the sea.

The roots are edible.

May - See the celandines, Foula name Buttercups, very common all over the crofts. Flowers

only open in the sun.

Fulmars nest on the cliff face opposite. They are known as Maallies and only colonised Foula in 1878. They are resident all the year round. A member of the petrel family, they can be

distinguished from gulls by their straight wings and their tube shaped nostrils. Individuals can be

recognised by the shape and colour of their beaks and nostrils. They defend themselves by spitting a foul smelling oil at intruders, so if you come across one inland, take care, because the smell does not wash off. May - Some fulmars are courting and some have laid. They lay one egg, which takes about 50 days to hatch.

Go down to the beach (2) where the boats used to be kept. See the noosts, where the boats

were pulled up for the winter and the boathouse (used for keeping fishing gear). Look at the old ‘Arthur’ which was temporarily used as the mailboat after the 'Island Lass' was lost in a storm in March 1962. The mail service started in 1879 after Robert Gear wrote to Queen Victoria asking for a mail service to be extended to Foula. The landlord's factors, The Garriocks, first got the contract and then when it became fortnightly, it was awarded to Johnnie Jarmson of Walls. In 1892 the contract was awarded to the Foula men, Magnie Manson and Lowrie Gray, and it ran weekly in the summer and fortnightly in the winter. The Foula men sailed or rowed across to Walls before the days of engines. The total trip often took 24 hours from first launching the boat to pulling the boat up again. The fastest they could row across was four hours if the boat was light and conditions were favourable. There were six oarsmen and this type of boat was called a saxern.

Fulmars sometimes nest in the old boat. Watch no one gets spat on.

May-June. At head of the beach near the yard look for silverweed flowers and red campion

called Sweet William in Foula. It is a subspecies known as Zetlandica, flowers more vivid in colour, sometimes pink or even white, thicker stemmed and sometimes downy. Also found in Scandinavia.

Look in the kale yard (4). Every house had a kale yard because kale was a very important part

of the economy. Before potatoes came to Shetland towards the end of the 18^th century, people

preserved kale in barrels of salt, similar to sourkraut in Germany. They also fed it to livestock

through the winter. Only five kale yards are still in use in Foula. The kale is a special variety known as Shetland Kale and it is very slow growing, only hearting in the second winter. It is slightly more bitter than cabbage. One or two of the best hearts with clean bare stalks are kept for seed. Look for one over the dyke. The seeds are grown in special structures called plantie crubs (we will see some later) and the seedlings planted out the following spring.

May-June. Woodpigeons on migration can be a pest - hence the scarecrow.

Look for ginger mint, a hybrid, escaped from the kale yard and now wild. The tea leaved willow is also a hybrid, introduced from Tresta. The sycamore against the back wall is almost 50 years old, but pruned off to the height of the wall by the wind each winter.

If there are people interested in history or archaeology, walk via Ham (3), look at the boat-house - shaped like a boat because a boat (lost in a fishing disaster and salvaged off the north end) was used for the roof. Wood was valuable and hard to get.

Querns and millstones. There is a knocking stane outside the workhouse, used with a heavy wooden mallet, and the rotary hand millstone inside the generator shed. Knocking stanes fell out of use at the end of the 19^th century but the hand mills were still being used in the first half of the last century, mainly for making burstin (meal made from roasted barley). Look for the broken quern built into the yard dyke. It was said that the landlords encouraged the building of watermills and then charged a tax on islanders using them. To force the islanders to use the mills they broke the knocking stanes. Sometimes the islanders built them into a dyke to hide them. At the lower side of the lower Ham yard there is half of a big trough quern turned upside down. See if you can feel the hollow underneath with your hand. There are several of these trough querns on the island and they date back to the Bronze Age. There is half of a smaller one at the side of the burn just below the Leraback fence. They were used with a rubbing stone.

Listen for Wrens singing - a Shetland sub-species, larger and lighter in colour and Starlings also a distinct race bigger than Starlings down south.

May-June, Sept. The Ham Yard and valley is also a good place to see various warblers and other migrants as well as Swallows which breed in Foula.

May - June. You may also see Northern bumble Bee, striped yellow, black and white. They

disappear in July.

May - August. You may see a Shetland Bumble Bee, orange with a buffy white or yellowish tail. They nest in clumps of dead grass, dry cracks in rocks and under old bits of wood.

Stop on the Ham Brig and look for trout. These are burn trout. In late summer or autumn you

might see sea trout coming up to spawn. In the Mill Loch there are Loch Leven Trout, a variety

of Rainbow Trout with pink flesh. Trout were introduced to the isle at the beginning of the last

century by Willie Gear and Dodie Isbister. They fetched in a pail full of fry from two burns in

Walls. Before that there were only eels in the burns and lochs.

Halfway up the path is the well that was used by Brae, Ham and the Haa, from where they fetched pails of water. In fine weather they would do the washing at the side of the bum, building a bonfire and heating water in a big zinc tub. House sites were chosen where there was a water supply within carrying distance. The water scheme was installed in Foula in 1982.

Look for hard ferns - called Trowie Cairds because trows were said to use them for carding

wool. Trows are a small version of the Norwegian trolls.

May - June. Inside the little gate at the top look for squills - called Grice's Onions because the

pigs (grice) used to root them up to eat. Unfortunately the Shetland pig has become extinct. It was small, coloured and hairy. Ribwort plantains are also in flower - called Rabbit's girse. Walk along the track towards the laamus.

May - early June. Walk through the marsh marigolds - called Block in Foula. See the variations - lemony ones, orangish ones, pointed petals, rounded petals, 5 petals normal but some have up to 8 petals and you may even find double ones. This area is cut for hay later on. The crofts are mainly used for winter grazing and for fattening lambs in the autumn. The most important crop is grass or rather herb-rich grassland.

Look out for Meadow Pipits, Lapwings nesting, Skylarks singing. Shetland has one of the

highest concentrations of Skylarks in Britain.

Go down to the big gate (5) opposite the pier. Look across at the seals, sometimes playing in the water, and eider ducks, called Dunters (males black and white, females brown). Through the gate, look for flowering common sedge, common cotton grass flowers (called Luk a Minnie's Oo i.e. grandmother's wool), field wood rush, more squills (in May- June). Look out for white and pink squills. Tormentil (Foula name - bark) has red coloured roots that were used to make a tea to cure fevers and was also used for tanning. It is the plant with the longest flowering season in Foula.

May - June. Look in the drain on the upper side of the path and the old peat bank. Find lesser

spearwort, called Liver Girss because islanders thought it caused liver fluke) lady's smock

(called Pepermint Floors - the flowers can be eaten), field horse tails and lady ferns. Look for sphagnum moss.

Blanket Bog is common over most of Shetland but is rare worldwide and often under threat

elsewhere from draining, commercial peat cutting, forestry etc. Peat is only formed in cool damp

climates on acid rocks. A big component is sphagnum moss of which there are about 20 species in Shetland. Point out the floppy wavy fronds of the species that grows in the water and the compact sturdy whitish or reddish species growing on the drier peat. The vegetation that makes peat does not break down and decay because it is anaerobic and water-logged. Invertebrates and lesser organisms that would break it down in normal soil cannot survive. You will not find any earthworms in peat. It is therefore a nutrient poor environment. On the back of the peat bank, look for some good specimens of tufted sedge or deer grass.

May - At the end of the bank, if you go down on your hands and knees and look carefully at the

sphagnum moss, you can find sundew plants just starting to come up. They trap insects on their

sticky leaves to supplement the lack of nutrients. You may also see marsh pennywort and the

leaves of marsh violet, called May Floors in Foula because it is one of the earliest plants to

flower.

June - July. Look for the red leaves of sundew in patches of sphagnum and its white flowers.

Look for bluey purple butterwort flowers and the round leaves of marsh pennywort.

Walk down to the Fishermen's Bod (6). This was used by fishermen, coming from the mainland to fish during the 18^lh and 19^th centuries. A boat from Walls was lost when the men were having a race with a Foula boat. They were wrecked on an underwater rock that lies just off here and were all drowned by the time the Foula men noticed they were not still following them. Go to the lower side of the bod and look across at the little stone cupboards built into the wall, common in the older Shetland houses.

Walk down to the rocks, or look at the stones in the bod wall. Look at mica schist. The east side of the isle consists of metamorphic rock, mainly mica schist, formed by the melting and reforming of older rocks. This happened before the sandstone, which forms the rest of the island, was laid down. Walk along the coast and point out the glacial moraine left behind as the ice melted at the end of the Ice Age. An ice cap covered Shetland and much of the rest of Britain and stretched out to Foula, piling up against the face of the hills and pushing out through the Daal (the big U shaped valley cutting across the south end of the island). You can find pebbles and bigger boulders, called glacial erratics, which are of types of rock that do not occur in Foula and were carried here by the ice from the Shetland Mainland. When the ice melted, the sea level rose, drowning the lower end of the valley to form the Voe.

Look out for rock pipits. Rock pipits are darker and bigger than brighter marked meadow pipits. The Foula names are Banks Sparrow and Hill Sparrow. The rock pipit stays here all year round but the meadow pipit goes south for the winter. Oystercatchers, known as Shalders and Redshanks can usually be seen. Oystercatchers may be nesting on the rocks.

May - At the corner of the far peat bank look for flowers of chickweed wintergreen which are very stunted and usually pink in this spot. Walk along the cliff edge. Look for shags, called Skarfs, which are resident all year round. Foula is one of the largest colonies in Europe with about 2,500 breeding pairs. Look for Puffins swimming at the entrance to Ham Little.

May - Look for Eiders and listen for the drakes crooning.

May - June. Squills, birds foot trefoil and red campion grow on the grassy slopes. Just 4m.

inside the little gate at the east side of the path is a good clump of butterwort. Like the sundew, it catches small insects to obtain sufficient nutrients.

In the cliff face just opposite the side of the gate is a big stripe of reddy pink rock called por-

phyyritic microgranite. This sort of feature is called a dyke and was formed by molten rock

whooshing up through a crack. It is pink because it contains a lot of feldspar.

Through the gate (7), you leave the croft land behind and come into an apportionment, an area of hill land fenced in for the crofters own use. Each croft is allowed 6 hectares. They are used in spring for the lambing. Point out the poorer grazing, the big patches of heath rush, known as Burra, occasional crowberry and cotton grass.

May - Look for the flowering cotton grass.

May - June. Look for flowering common sedge and tufted sedge.

June - Look for flowering sweet vernal grass and purple moor grass.

June - July. Look for white fluffy heads of cotton grass. If interested in flowers take a short

detour into the upper part of the apportionment (you will have to untie and re-tie one of the gates

in the dividing fence) for the full experience of walking through the drifts of white.

Look for wheatears. They nest in old walls and dry cracks in the peat. They are only here in the summer and spend the winter in Africa. Look along the cliff faces on the north side of Ham Little, if it is in the shelter, for Puffins at the entrances to their burrows. Puffins are known as Tammie Nories in Shetland and this used to be the nickname for the Foula folk because there were so many puffins here. There are about 20-25 thousand pairs here, mainly on the high cliffs on the west side. They are only here from April to August and spend the winter out at sea.

May - They lay one egg (white and rounded). The egg takes about 40 days to hatch. The reason you do not see many in May is because one bird is in the burrow sitting on its egg, while its partner is out at sea feeding. At this time of year you might see them digging out their burrows or plucking grass and carrying it for nest material or billing their partner or fighting with the neighbours.

Walk across to the War Memorial (8). If you are tired and want to sit down you can always find shelter on one side or another. The Memorial was built after the First World War. The landlord, Ian Holboum, designed it and the Foula men built it. At the time the population was over 100 and the five men who died represented a high loss of young men. Others were injured and did not return to Foula after the war. RNRT stands for Royal Naval Reserve Trawler Section. The men killed were :

John W Henry of Gossameadow who died in hospital of bronchitis.

George Robertson who died of wounds received in Rouen.

Cedric Robertson who died at Poona, Bombay.

John Henry of Quinister who was blown up on HMS Bulwark when she was in harbour

John Henry of Niggards who died in hospital in Gosport.

Only one Foula man was killed in the second World War and he had moved to Scalloway shortly before. He was Bobs Umphray and he was killed when trying to carry an injured friend to safety.

Walk to Shobul (9). This is where the fault line emerges that divides the two types of rock on the island, the metamorphic rock from the sandstone. The other end of the fault is at Wurrwick. The rock is altered and fractured at the fault by the heat. The sea has cut away a small cave. The Foula men fetched some of the shingle used in the pier extension (1946-49) from here in small open boats. The original pier was built in 1913 with shingle fetched from the Smell Geo and the Mid Shooting Geo. There may be Puffins on the grass slope or at the rocky inner end of the grass slope. Look for a herring gull nesting near the foot of the cliffs opposite.

May - June. Just inside the gate look back at the cliff face for sea pinks and scurvy grass

flowering in the shelter and out of reach of the sheep. Go through the small gate, not the big one,

and check that the bolt closes property afterwards as it is inclined to stick. Now we are on the hill ground. This is Common Grazings, known as Scattald in Shetland, used by all the crofters and close cropped by the sheep.

Look for sheep, if any are there. These are the Foula Sheep, the old original type of Shetland

sheep. They belong to the Northern Short Tailed Sheep, which are found in the north of Europe

and have tails with less than 18 bones. The Foula ones have 13-15 tail bones. (The Southern Long Tailed Sheep have 22 tail bones or more.) The Foula sheep come in many colours, the commonest of which is moorit (or brown). The dark lambs you may see will fade to moorit as they grow older. Many of them have markings on their faces and sometimes white feet and tails. Some are the same colour as Soay sheep on St Kilda. They often lose their wool naturally and may have no fleece left by the time it is time to clip. The wool is very soft and weatherproof. Some female sheep have small standing horns. Most of the rams tend to live in small bachelor groups up in the hills. The sheep's ears have different notches cut in them to show who they belong to. They are very nimble footed and climb down through the grassy slopes in the cliffs. Sometimes they fall and are killed.

Sit down at the north end of Hedlicliv (10) near the corner. From here you can look down at the guillemots, razorbills, shags and fulmars at the foot of the cliff and hopefully also some puffins. Guillemots have narrow pointed beaks, razorbills have heavy blunt ones with a white stripe. Guillemots are called Lungwees in Foula and there are about 40 thousand birds on the island, mainly on the west side. They like to nest close together in big gatherings usually on cliff ledges. They lay one egg, very pretty turquoise with brown squiggles. They carry sandeel lengthwise in their bills with the tail sticking out. Some birds have a white eye-ring and a white stripe back from the eye and are known as "bridled" guillemots and the percentage of them in a population increases as you go north. Razorbills are known as Welkies in Foula and there are far fewer of them - about four thousand individuals. This is probably because they like to nest on their own under rocks or in cracks. They lay one egg - white with dark brown blotches. They are heavier and more aggressive than the guillemots and sometimes mug the guillemots for the fish they are carrying. They often carry their fish across their beak and can carry several at a time like puffins.

Look out for bonxies hunting or killing birds on the surface of the sea and for arctic skuas

chasing other birds to get them to drop their fish. Watch for gannets flying offshore or diving for

fish. Walk along the cliff edge. Look at the possible burial mound, Bronze Age 3000-4000 years old. Originally it would have a cremation in an urn. Walk to the remains of the hen house (11). In the spring when crops were sown, the hens used to be banished to out of the way places to stop them scratching up the seed. This one was last used in the 1950s by folk in Momington.

Look at the stones in the wall. Sandstone is made of grains of sand stuck together to make rock. It was laid down in the Devonian, or Old Red Sandstone period, about 360 - 400 million years ago. At that time Shetland was part of a continent in the southern hemisphere, which had a desert climate. Its mountains were eroded to form sand, which was washed down rivers to the edge of an inland sea. In Foula there are only a few fossils of simple plants, but in Orkney there are many fish fossils from this era.

Walk to the plantie crub. This was used for growing kale seedlings. The seed was sown in

August and the plants were transplanted to the kaleyards the following spring. Just below the crub you can look north along the cliffs to see guillemots, razorbills, possibly puffins and closer views of shags.

May - June, There may be some shags on their nests of seaweed. Look for ones with their crests up, ones flying in with more seaweed and immature shags (dull brownish coloured). They lay several pale bluish white eggs and nest both on cliff ledges and among jumbles of rocks.

Walk further on to the mooldie cooses. In the summer, dry peat dust was scraped up and used for bedding under cows in the byres in the winter. It was stored in stone covered heaps called cooses and fetched when needed, by barrow or kishie (a basket carried on your back). Good earth was also scraped off and carried onto the croft land to improve it. This was known as scalping and large areas of the south east part of the island were scalped. The last of the scalping stopped about 40 years ago and the bare areas are growing over again.

Make your way towards the airstrip (12) through the arctic skuas or go on and cross to the fire engine road. Look for the different colour phases - dark, pale and intermediate. There is a higher proportion of pale ones the further north you go. Arctic skuas are called Allens in Foula. They are here from April to August and there are usually about 110 pairs. They winter south off Africa. They feed by chasing and swooping at other birds, forcing them to drop their food.

Occasionally they kill small birds such as pipits or eat their eggs. They lay two greeny brown,

spotted eggs but bonxies kill most of their chicks. They defend their territories from intruders by

swooping at them so they may hit you on the head.

Look for crowberry, known as berry heather. It has small black edible berries in July and August.

Check there are no planes or helicopters coming in to land before stepping onto the airstrip.

There are toilets at the top end of the airstrip shelter.

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