All change, all change

If you have been following my plans to explore the Shetlands, you will have picked up on my intense poo-pooing of camping. Heh… hehe… heh. Well.

The idea of landing on a relatively remote set of islands at midnight, on a bike, straight after a pandemic, was not filling me up with joy. The entire plan felt like it was hinging on people being decent/good or at least able to stick to a plan. To recap:

The plan was to ferry from Aberdeen to the Shetlands, spend a couple of days over there, and ferry down to the Orkneys afterwards. The only ferry connection southward to the Orkneys would get me in at 2330, which was hardly a sociable time. I had planned on booking a B&B, and I mentioned the late check-in in the notes. All I got back was “we will see what we can do”. Sadly, having been royally fucked over with accommodation in the past, that was not filling me with glee. I therefore moved the plan to camping, thinking of a whole paradigm shift to a full camping trip. This seemed reasonable, until I started looking at the camp sites. As an aside — did you know you can’t really wild camp in the Shetlands? You are supposed to ‘seek permission from the landowner’… when you have miles and miles of fucking desolation all around you in the middle of the night, what in hell are you supposed to do? If you want to be cynical and perhaps a tad unfair you would be forgiven for thinking that it’s a move to siphon campers to the campsites on the island.

So back to traditional hotels I went - and it seemed doable. Bit more expensive, but what the heck. However, once again, I had to focus on making sure I could find somewhere with a 24/7 reception (haaah!!) and facilities for late check-in. Yes, could be done, but having done it a lot with work, it can go wrong at some point. That late at night I am groggy, annoyed, grumpy, sleepy, tired, and generally not a very social person — at the one time where I actually have to interact with a human to get something I want. Screw it.

Yeah, I could easily put up with it, smile and get my hotel room… but you know what? This is a good excuse to go Full Nomad.

So, yeah. Camping. Three nights of camping. Why not. I have done a lot of thinking in the background on how it will work, what I will need, the type of set up, packing system and logistics. It’s all sorted, which I did as part of the assessment on whether to go down that route or not, so in the coming weeks I will illustrate all those decisions. There will be a trial run in mid May, in order to test everything out.

Coming up next:

• how to fit an entire campsite and a week’s worth of clothes in two saddlebags
• Ferry schedules and detailed itinerary
• what to take on a week’s motocamping trip
• whatever else will come to mind
• Interim report on any possible camping disaster during my dry run in May