Escaping to Shetland
It feels like I have spent the whole of the summer working fifty hour weeks, stuck in the city and compressed by to do lists and noise. A while back I booked a work trip to Shetland to meet up with Nikita, my Blue Spaces business partner. In the run up to the trip I don’t feel like I have the time. It’s a long journey to Shetland, a tiny archipelago in the North Sea. Roughly 15 hours on the boat and that’s not including all the other travel that goes with.
I make the trip. After a sleepless night on a less than comfortable seat I’m scooped up at the ferry terminal, a coffee placed in my hands and taken to Nikita’s home. All the windows here look out to the sea and it’s mesmerising. Watching the light change and the weather come the long grind of the city work week is now a distant memory.
One of the reasons I fell in love with Scotland is because the landscape feels old. As a child I was taken on family holidays on the west coast. We would swim, hike, picnic and cosy up against the elements when they inevitably came blowing through. I can only describe it as magical. The wildness felt like home.
Shetland feels older, and that’s because it is. Some of the rocks here are almost three billion years old. It is shaped by continental collisions and crashing seas. The landscape is diverse, from long sandy beaches, heather bound moorlands to plunging cliffs. You are never more than three miles from the sea.
First on the itinerary is a plunge in the north sea. Coffee in hand and straight out of the front door the scramble down to the beach isn’t long enough to get my tired travel body psychologically prepared for the cold that is about to hit. But this is why I’m here, Nikita and I have been talking about the power of blue spaces for years. Nikita moved back to Shetland from London during the pandemic to be closer to the sea and the rhythms of nature. I struggled with lockdowns so took up loch plunges most mornings just to get a shock of adrenaline during long and lonely months of isolation.
I dip a toe, then slowly brace myself. It’s not an elegant entry! I make a lot of noise, shrieking and chattering nonsense. Nikita, who is much more acclimatised walks serenely in. The whole dip maybe lasts 3 mins as the wind picks up and we rush out to put a warm robe on. Its enough though. I feel transported. Work, city life, travel and fatigue is washed away. All that I’m aware of is that feeling of being alive: teeth chattering, skin bristling but my mind quiet.
It’s a week of cold plunges and creative work. It’s hard not to feel energised and creative when you are so close to big bodies of blue water. Ultimately that’s what I’m in Shetland to do, this trip isn’t just a chance to recharge; it’s also a much-needed creative reset. My head is more than just clear, I feel reignited. This whole experience really captures what Blue Spaces is all about: finding inspiration and well-being through a deep connection with nature.
I’m ready to live a life filled with more of this, would you like to come with?
