Hopefully you’ve enjoyed reading about my time at the 31st Shetland Folk Festival. It was a fantastic experience, and it’s an event lovers of folk music and natural splendor should consider when planning a trip to Scotland. To help make your Shetland Folk Festival experience the best it can possibly be, I happily endured countless hours of lost sleep and repeated abuse of my liver.
The following tips will put you in pole position to enjoy an amazing 32nd Shetland Folk Festival.
The 32nd Shetland Folk Festival is only 350 days away. Time to clear the calendar for May 3-6, 2012! Read more...
I was eating breakfast again, shoveling beans and rashers into my face with the poise of a narcoleptic zombie. The fourth and final (sort of) day of the Shetland Folk Festival was upon me, and, based on the lack of tragic news at breakfast, I figured nothing untoward happened to the festival club the night before (i.e., it hadn’t collapsed).
My body withered in the absence of caffeine so I sucked down cup after cup of the black stuff before hitting the streets of Lerwick. This was it, the final day of the festival, the grand finale. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, the bodies of exhausted and desiccated festival-goers to crumple into heaps. Me. Read more...
The alarm on my iPhone was ringing again. You know that annoying marimba sound? Yeah, that one. 8am.
Where was I again? I sat up on my single bed and put my glasses on. Oh yeah, Lerwick. Shetland. I could hear people laughing down the hall. So I had made it home last night through the primordial darkness of Shetland. I’d even had enough wits about me to set my alarm so I wouldn’t miss breakfast.
Day Two: The Day I Tried to Spang
Despite not getting much sleep and being hungover, I still felt refreshed since I had actually gotten some sleep. Such was not the case for many of my festival compatriots. I learned that the place was flooded with people last night. Who knows, maybe I was there last night too… Read more...
What could send me trawling the waves of the frigid and desolate North Sea?
After all, it takes more than a passing fancy to journey to Britain’s northernmost islands. Shetland. Cast like stones halfway to the Arctic circle from the hand of some primordial giant, today it’s known for little more than ponies and wool. It’s an austere, treeless place where the sounds of human industry are rarely heard over the din of the wild and unchecked wind.
Except, that is, during the Shetland Folk Festival. For the last 31 years, the end of April and beginning of May have born witness to four nights (more like six) of folk musicians taking back the night. And day. And wee hours of the morning. I quickly found the endurance of Shetlanders to be legend. Read more...
A hunter, oft-stubbled and bleary-eyed, driven by an insatiable hunger for exploration and experience - and perhaps a chance to thin the herd of caffeinated and alcoholic beverages. From the highlands and islands to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Borders, I explore Scotland with a pen in hand and a fire in the belly (which could be partly from the whisky). 
