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walking in Unst
yes, yes, we know!
Alice and Jonathan
Stuart gets technical
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Odyssey Blog - a journal of events 30 March: by Claire Thursday. Dawns brightly, and we are off to Baltasound for our final day of workshops. We met the wonderful music teacher there, Alice, briefly whilst waiting for the ferry at Ulsta (whilst we were having a speed-meeting with Siri Malmstrom from Stavanger 2008, who had come over specially for our concert in Lerwick. Although it was cancelled she did a spot of detective work (we were out of mobile range on Fair Isle) and turned up for our workshops on Yell, then came to the rescheduled concert at the Garrison... phew). Alice had cleverly organised a schedule for the day which included both primary and junior pupils from Balatsound and Uyeasound, not missing out the group from Fetlar who had not been able to join in on Tuesday due to the ferry strike. A chronicle of events can be read here. The music hut at Baltasound School is a wonderful place (in fact the whole school had a great atmosphere - and the school lunches were fab)... despite the large numbers of pupils moving in and out during the day, order was maintained and all the sessions were very satisfying. Not only that, but the view out of the window was breathtaking! After a very full day we made arrangements with Alice and her partner Jonathan to meet up later, and we set off to explore Unst. We had waved goodbye to Marcus and Helen at lunchtime as they had to get south (to Nice in Marcus' case!) for concerts. That left Stuart, Evgeny and I as the intrepid explorers, determined to reach the "most northerly house in Britain"! It's at Skaw, and by golly it felt like the ends of the country - there's also a beach, where we wrote "most northerly beach" in the sand and took the obligatory photos of us being a bit giddy. We also found the Dome which is very high up and has great views - abandoned now that the RAF have left Unst, but this didn't stop the man from BT kicking us out as he wanted to get on with some work up there. After a bit more pottering and climbing and communing with yet more sheep, we headed back to the hostel, Stuart cooked supper (delicious as always) then headed out to Alice and Jonathan's place up by the river. We spent a lovely evening with them, discovering people in common (Nigel Osborne - Alice worked with War Child in Mostar, and I produced his 1994 opera Sarajevo whilst with Opera Factory), swapping anecdotes and being scared silly by their mischievous assertion that the house we were staying in is haunted by an old lady with red hair who peers in at the windows. They also told us the story of the very haunted "Wind House" on Yell - a gothic mansion that Evgeny said looked like the Fall of the House of Usher when we passed it. Suitably spooked we drove back to Gardiesfauld, checking carefully for little old ladies with red hair and closing the curtains firmly before going to bed that night...
Unst - Skaw beach, (most northerly in Britain) 30.03.06
the amazing view from the music hut
Claire's Blog (the project in chronological order):
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