Due to an Air Traffic controller strike I am still in Edinburgh… went shopping, went out for tea with a couple of colleagues, then back to the hotel for an early night as I need to be up at 04.30 to get the flight back home.
So tonight we have some touristy pictures 😱
I also made a little friend..
This was just after he scampered up my leg!
And finally… what is with the hotel carpet in the corridors?
Round about 6 Miles south of Gunnister is my next interesting locale, well it is if you are me 😁.
Next up is Mavis Grind. This is the narrowest point in Shetland. One one side is the Atlantic and the other is the North Sea. Why is it interesting, well, apart from the actual geography, the history of the place is pretty cool too.
As mentioned above, the Shetland Islands (never, never call it ‘The Shetland’s’ up here) sits with the North Sea to the East and North Atlantic to the West.
As Vikings colonised this part of the world they took advantage of this narrow strip of land… rather than sailing all they way around they would drag their boats across from one side to the other. The name is from the Norse and means something along the lines of: ‘Gate of the narrow isthmus’ . This method pretty much carried on for centuries especially in the winter months when coming round either end of the islands was asking for trouble.
In times gone by the ground level was a lot lower, the main road built it up. Supposedly at the narrowest part it is something like 33m (110 feet) from high water to high water.
in the late 90’s the BBC or someone similar did a test…
They did indeed pull a boat from the sea to the ocean. Not sure why they needed to try as in the archives there are lots of pictures and testimonies of people doing just that. http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk/index.php?a=ViewItem&key=SXsiTiI6MTE2LCJQIjp7InZhbHVlIjoiTWF2aXMgR3JpbmQiLCJvcGVyYXRvciI6IjEiLCJmdXp6eVByZWZpeExlbmd0aCI6IjMiLCJmdXp6eU1pblNpbWlsYXJpdHkiOjAuNjUsIm1heFN1Z2dlc3Rpb25zIjoiNSIsImFsd2F5c1N1Z2dlc3QiOm51bGx9fQ&pg=54&WINID=1558564105627#ZIk6J2xfZQ8AAAFq4ajpUA/130428
Okay it isn’t as big as the one above but they did indeed do it up until relatively recently.
No models, painting or nothing tonight as I am sitting in a hotel room in Edinburgh eating salt and vinegar Pringles and drinking tea… what a rock and roll lifestyle I lead!
Back to Shetland on Friday morning…
Another road trip with work to the north of the island led me past the scene of an extremely important find.
Picture the scene… 12th May 1951. Two men were cutting a new peat bank and came across some human remains at a depth of 75cm or roughly 3 feet down. Police were called and thankfully it wasn’t an ‘orrible murder but something historical and very interesting indeed.
What they had come across was a burial from the 17th Century. By the time they found him there was nothing left but his finger and toe nails, some hair and a few fragments of bone. His clothing and personal effects however were pretty much intact.
His purse still held three coins (1 Dutch and 2Swedish). One of the coins had the date 1690 and his clothing was of a style typical of the 17th century.
The reconstruction of his clothing looked like this…
His grave location was marked by the men who erected a large stone…
I think it was the one above as the sign wasn’t that specific…
It was common practice up here to simply bury someone who was found up on the hill, a shallow grave was dug away from any peat workings if the body was unrecognised. This was especially the case if the body had been there a while.There are no records of this man being buried or no folk memories either so this could possibly be the case. Hypothermia or some illness could have caused him to die between townships. Was it murder, although there is no evidence on the clothing and the fact that there were coins in his purse, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t. He may have had pack ponies with him with valuable goods in… we never can tell. One theory I have heard was that he might have been out collecting rents from the various crofting communities… who knows?
It is a bit sad to think that this man one day simply disappeared, potentially leaving family and friends to wonder why he never came back.
So there you go… the Gunnister man… an extremely important archaeological and historical find.
Next time we will look at some geographical history, or potentially historical geography…
Today I am knackered and I blame my children,
we went swimming and their way of enjoying themselves is to chase me round and round and round in the rapids then chase me in the indoor pool and then chase me in the outdoor pool. Then sit on my back as I have to test my lung capacity to get across the pool before I expire…
Anyway, I managed to get some more paint on this lot, only half an hour’s painting as there was homework etc to do too.
I am trying for the 30 minutes a day for 50 days. Up to day 16 and had one pass so far.
I have also ordered some more figures, these are some Star Saga miniatures from Mantic and will hopefully be ideal for my fleet officers and fleet rescue teams.
http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/star-saga/product/corporation-minion-booster.html
12 figures for £7.99 isn’t too shabby. The top 5 would have been ideal for proxy MI infantry too. Oh well… I don’t know how big they are compared to the EM4 ones, but hopefully Mantic haven’t gone down the mega sized miniature like GW have.
On the 3D printer front, I made this for my Wife’s colleague. Everything is designed by me apart from the actual letters. I downloaded those and put them together to make the word he wanted. It is backwards as it will be imprinted into the wax.
Although it is a really basic thing I am quite chuffed as I designed it. The lettered bit sits inside the pot, the hole is there to technically push the whole thing out..
Well I gave them a good spray this morning along with the Plasma bug.
The two at the front are going to be my ‘downed’ fleet crew hence the smg and pistol. I sprayed them grey and once dried I attempted a highlight in white… quite frankly I ballsed it up big time.
The big fella was sprayed grey and then the bulb was sprayed white. I will attempt to paint it sometime. I will more than likely use my airbrush on him.
Once I gave them a good 8 hours curing (I know it should be longer) I started blocking in the uniform colours on the troopers. I left the officer and fleet crew as a I am trying to think of a uniform for them.
The sniper is having dark green armour with a splinter pattern instead of the grey blue that everyone else is having.
It was a nice day so I took a quick photo on the way back from my daughter’s riding lesson.
Not a bad place to stop off at. I am not sure what happened to the photo, it seems scratched and grainy. I think one of the filters must have been open…
Other Shetland News… we have had a fair few Humpack sightings over the past week, there used to be a population up around here that were almost wiped out by the whalers. Perhaps these are from the stock that survived….
My printer has been taken over by my children!
So far we have a lizard and an Octopus…
Further to this I decided to support a Humble Bundle charity sale. I plumped up £25 and got sooooo much stuff.
To be honest I wasn’t going to bother but it did have a few useful bits and bobs in it, well more than a few to be honest.
What I didn’t actually realise is that the total value of my downloads is over $300😲.
I did find a designer who I hadn’t seen before, and shall keep an eye on him.
Anyway the bundle is here…
I reckon it would take me months to print everything if I wanted to.
Some of these are going to appear in my Starship Troopers mix.
My Sister in Law went back home on the boat tonight so we decided to take her and my mother in law to the Smugglers Cave, the same one we found a year ago.
I was really proud of my eldest who overcame her fear to come down into the cave.
As can be seen from the photos below there was a bit of a swell.
It was a great morning’s stroll out.
The last photo above shows the power of the sea. Those boulders (roughly the size of a fridge) were put up there by the waves. The top photo of the two shows the extent of the boulder fields.
As it was such a good evening we actually had an impromptu barbecue.
I also managed some hobby time…
More work on my cultist and robots and a start on my teddy bear trooper…all 3D Printed again 😂
Firstly look what came in the post today!
This thing is huge, I can’t wait to get it painted.
Secondly I resprayed the crashed drop ship as the paint that had gone onto it had gone all shiny and horrible. So a quick drop into the car place and voila…white…or rather white-ish. It really does need another coat.
I also sprayed the intact vessel too.
Third on my busy schedule were the two combat robots from Ill Gotten Games. I am considering using them a CHAS units for Starship Troopers.
These came in bits. Legs and torso printed with the two separate arms next to them. To make sure these were secure I printed them on a raft, I should have got them off straight away but forgot! By time I got to them they had decided that they wanted to stay attached 🤬.
As the white spray can was out then I gave the Elves a blast too. They had gone all horrible and shiny too.
Yesterday I went over to my mates and we played UBoot. We sank 10,000 tons of merchantmen, locked horns with some rather nasty corvettes. Survived two depth charge attacks, with various leaks and a major fire we ended up with an exhausted crew and errrr… ran aground in Norway.
The highlight of the game was passing within 750m of a convoy in a massive storm at 01.00. We thought we would risk it and it worked.
One final thing… some of you may remember my gallivanting around the WW2 defences of Lerwick.
I eventually got a copy of one of the original maps ….
Interestingly the map was drawn to allow certain land owners to have evidence of what was on their land, these are denoted by the various letters inside the circles. My wife added the red to make it easier to see. It doesn’t show any of the seaboard defences apart from the tubular scaffolding round the coast at Brei Wick.
In my pictures I showed a trench system that didn’t face the front, it can be clearly seen in this map. The Germans were to be funnelled into a killing zone near to where it says South Staney Hill.
The other thing that it shows is my offices when it was an HQ building as well as a dotted circular shape between two HQ’s this was where a battery of howitzers were sited. These were to be used for fire support on the far side of Staney Hill.
I will try and get to the battery some time soon and get some pictures of that.
Today was the last day of our Easter Holidays…
for some reason Shetland has the school Easter holidays at a set time this means we go back on Monday, w3 are back a week then off for Easter Monday…🤨
My little boy is over the chicken pox and my good lady is over her lurgy and off work so off we went on a mini road trip, involving two ferries.
First stop was the reconstructed Viking Longhouse on the Island if Unst…
There is also a full size reconstruction of the Gockstadt longship. A bit of a long story, but basically it sailed from Norway, got as far as Shetland and never got any further…
A bit more Viking Shenanigans took place with a visit to an original Viking longhouse. This one is a bit of a do-upper. It was built before 1100ad
This appeared due to coastal erosion. Over the last 900 years the sea has worked its way inland and something that was on good farmland is now nearly in the sea.
We then went decidedly modern by visiting Muness Castle. This was built in 1598
It is more of a tower house really, but it was involved in a bit of a fracas with Earl Stewart who built Scalloway Castle (both had the same architect!)
Holes for firearms are everywhere…
The kids enjoyed exploring with the supplied torches…
All in all a good day.
On the hobby front I started printing off the dropship as well as meeting a Facebook Challenge of 30 minutes painting a day for 50 days… we will see how that pans out…
I wanted to get something done, but too tired. The reason is that I have sat in a digger for the last two days.
We had to dig a 220m trench to put a fibre cable in. The first bit see below was a nightmare as it was all rock from when the track was put in.
Most of the digging was yesterday, today was back filling. We then cut towards the house across the track…
I armoured the armoured cable a bit more by running it through a 25mm water pipe. This had to go under a wall and into the garden.
Things worked quite well apart from some nightmare rocks that were filling a gate opening, they were massive. The other slight problem I had was when I was backfilling the track. I might have inadvertently smacked the caravan with the digger…
It was already buggered and is held together by the straps. A storm tried blowing the roof off last year (luckily I had a digger then and managed to hold the roof on until we could get it strapped down).We were waiting until May to make sure the winds don’t blow up before I cut it up.
We got it finished by teatime tonight…
Bogenwald 