sallyhammond.com.au

April 9, 2006

Hello,

Some years ago we visited Shetland. Those remote islands scattered across  the North Sea officially belong to Scotland but we learned once we spoke to the locals that their mindset is more Norwegian than Scottish. 

For years I had wanted to visit this remote outpost, and as our plane circled over Shetland I was momentarily disappointed as we peered out at a flat Rorschach blot of islands, treeless and pale in the cloudy light. Lower still and we made out raw black cliffs frilled with foam, and green fields, then swarthy moors striped by peat cuttings.

If you are a tree-lover, Shetland may not be the place for you. While the Gulf-Stream-tempered climate is not as bleak as you might expect, January gales can lift a young tree from the ground, and so the landscape is plucked bare of anything much larger than a shrub. Strangely, the result is not ugly.

The people there are hardy souls, as they must be, and speak their own Shetland dialect. At one place our guide pointed out shreds of clouds against a dark, bare hillside.

“We call those ‘henty liggets’,” she said. 

When we looked blankly at her, she explained. ‘Henty liggets’ is Shetland-speak for the tufts of sheep’s wool caught on a barbed wire fence. We saw the resemblance immediately. 

I feel as if we leave ‘henty liggets’, ourselves, as we travel. As I fall for somewhere new, discover a hidden village or taste a dish in a local restaurant, or meet people I would love to have the time to make friends with, I leave a piece of my heart.

This does not mean I am less happy or less complete by travelling so widely. The reverse is true. My career as a travel writer takes me, and usually my photographer-husband Gordon, to places we might never have been able visit. We sometimes have extraordinary opportunities to see behind the scenes, to learn and experience things (and to photograph them, Gordon would add) that we might not otherwise have been able to. 

Our ‘henty liggets’ do not diminish us. Quite the opposite – they stake a tiny claim for us to some place somewhere, and in return they fill a corner of our hearts and minds forever. 

That is the magic of travel.

Please fell free to accompany us as we share our fun-filled, frivolous, and occasionally fearsome expeditions week by week on this website – or see the section that outlines the books we have written and illustrated.

You are welcome to come along for the ride. Maybe you will leave behind some henty liggets somewhere too.

 

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