We were the luckiest people on the expedition having our own private local tour of the Shetlands . Our friend Leah worked for us at Coral Bay and as she left to go home to the Shetland Islands, we jokingly said, one day we'll come and visit. When planning this trip, we saw that the G Adventures tour included the Shetlands and contacted Leah for a catch up. We only had 3 & 1/2 hours shore time but Leah was ready and waiting for us to make the most of it.


We went looking for Puffins first, in Leah’s car and had a couple of puffins spotted and photographed before our fellow passengers had probably even climbed on their bus! As Leah's mother is a breeder of Shetland ponies, we got to enjoy plenty of time with these adorable animals. We wandered around the historic site of Jarlshof and saw where Leah worked close by. 


It was such a pleasure enjoying the spectacular scenery of the Shetlands while catching up on each other’s lives. It had been about 7 years since we had seen each other.    


We even got to wait at the boom gates while a plane landed on the Shetlands runway which cuts across a main road. The only other place in the world this happens is on Gibraltar. Leah took us to the historic site of Clickimin where no other visitors spoiled our viewing time. None of our fellow ship passengers got to see this site. Lastly Leah took us to a supermarket to get a few things we needed and showed us some very old fishing houses, built out over the water in the harbour. We packed a lot into our morning. A big thanks Leah! 


Time to cross the North Sea to the coast of Norway in our ship MS Expedition.