Accommodation for the Shetlands and Orkneys

Well, here it goes as it starts to get more real.

I’ve booked the accommodation. Yeah yeah, I’m a wuss for not camping it. I am a bore for having planned stopping points. I am not spontaneous by not booking on the fly because everyone on the internet “has never had problems finding a hotel on the day thanks to my smartphone”. Well, kindly fuck off on your own trip if you disagree — this is my trip and it is also why I am doing it solo :) This trip is for someone that wants to enjoy the experience of the scenery and the journey with the bike without having the stress of figuring out where to stay… it needlessly takes attention away from enjoying the contents of the trip.

Rant over!

Booking accommodation was tricky. England is coming out of lockdown, with some generic dates being published. Scotland has simply stated they will do something different to England. There are some indicative and aspirational dates. Do we know exactly what will be planned? No — but we know it will be exactly different to what England has set up.

So if you want to play it safe, you’d wait until Scotland announced its dates for hospitality to re-open. But then, everyone else will also be booking their holidays. Yeah I could gamble that I am well out of the way and that the likelihood of stuff getting booked up is low, so that I can wait. I shall refer you to paragraph 2. What I’ve done is find accommodation slots with free cancellation policies — the worst one I have found gives me until the start of June to cancel; the best one gives me until the day before. This takes care of accommodation — and they all do continental breakfast, whoop.

So this is what it’s looking like:

I have three nights to arrange, plus two ferry nights. The ferry nights are a topic for later (I have not broached that yet, honestly). The hotel stays are looking like this:

The first night will be in North Roe, as I will be coming back from a full day in Northern Shetland and this gives me a somewhat-halfway point to return to. Check-in will be between 1400–2200, giving me plenty of flexibility. I will probably have dinner somewhere outside and then come to the hotel for a drink and some sleep once it gets dark. Having had a look at the restaurant in the hotel though, they do do some nice freshly caught seafish meals, so it’s not a bad fallback plan. The hotel is a nice 2 or 3 star hotel and looks seriously nice.

The day after this stay, I will use the starting location to explore the southwesterly and southern coasts of the Shetlands, before heading to the Orkneys via ferry.

Now here’s the kick in the teeth. Leaving Lerwick at 1730, I will be getting into Kirkwall at 2300. I struggled to find places that allowed check-in at the time; I have found one that said “they will do their best”, which is not filling me with confidence. I will have a chat with the owners, but I will either a) take the gamble and be prepared to head to an earmarked chain hotel and pay a premium on the night or b) cancel and pay a premium beforehand to stay in a hotel with a reception desk and formally accepted late check-ins. All I need is a key and a room number at the end of the day… Not a full holiday planning service with a story of the local brickwork and potential attractions. Yeah, I am a miserable git — but this blog is about laying my thoughts bare and not pretending to be some hyper-enthusiastic and ultra-engaged traveller of the world. After years of business travel you do get a bit jaded to accommodation and I have taken a very utilitarian approach to it. If it does not disappear in a sink hole, and it is not draughty, I will take it :D Breakfast is a welcome bonus, but I have often missed it due to the inhuman times I would leave some times. And dinner is often served way too late for me to give a flying fuck about it by that point (oh my, the amount of times I snuck a burger king not-so-subtly past the fancy hotel reception desks… way to lower the tone).

I will then have a full day in the Orkneys, exploring some of its isles. The third night will be at a lodge with a very promising view overlooking the ferries. The Orkneys are not exactly huge, so I picked a hotel based on price, cancellation fee and type of room. The view on this one tickled me, so I went for it. The second day in the Orkneys will be a long one, as the ferry won’t leave until 2300, so I will stick to the main isle — basically not go anywhere that may rely on another sea link that could fail and make me miss my ferry. Then I will find a nice pub somewhere and chill until I am ready to go.

So this is the state of the accommodation. The accommodation sorts out the sleeping and breakfast requirements. That being said, I am still packing one emergency breakfast box (because I am a miserable git, remember?) and will carry a spoon. The spoon also doubles as a self defence weapon, right? All three have private parking, not that it is really going to be a huge concern, but it’s nice to have as many layers of security as possible. I’m not walking back.

Dinner is also nearly sorted:

Day 1 — Ferry to Lerwick

Day 2 — North Roe hotel

Day 3 — Ferry from Lerwick to Kirkwall

Day 4 — Lodge in Orkneys

Day 5 — Pub waiting for ferry to Aberdeen

Day 6 — Home!

Lunch will be covered by sandwiches and snacks picked at local supermarkets. Yeah, living the gourmet life!

Breakfast should be pretty much there, too:

Day 1 — Home

Day 2 — Ferry into Lerwick

Day 3 — Leaving North Roe hotel

Day 4 — Hopefully the hotel I stumbled into the night before around midnight and they will be ok to feed me in the morning

Day 5 — Lodge in Orkneys

Day 6 — Ferry into Aberdeen

Stuff is starting to come together!!

Next up:

• Plan for the ferries
• Petrol calculations
• Mapping and earmarking supermarkets
• Saddlebag impressions (I may have bought something new)

Some questions I am mulling over in the background: do I take my film camera? Do I take a small 10" laptop for blogging on the go? Do I consider floodlights on the bike (without turning into an adventure bike wanker)? Do I take small spares like a spare bulb? Do I have takeaway on the evening I get back home?