Where to begin? Our eagerly anticipated trip to Fair Isle almost didn't happen as Ophelia made her blowy presence known and Loganair screwed up our flights. We booked in April this year with Loganair as they were advertising direct flights from Manchester to Sumburgh. Ideal. Only it wasn't. They cancelled the flights in September and re-routed us from Manchester to Inverness and then on to Sumburgh. What they failed to tell us was the plane also stopped at Kirkwall in the Orkneys. This meant we were almost two hours behind Jason who'd taken the regular Flybe flight and with the weather closing in Directflight were trying to contact us to being our flight forward from Tingwall to Fair Isle. A few frantic texts and missed phone calls and we managed to contact them and say we were on our way. We eventually set off from Tingwall an hour earlier than the scheduled time and took the short 20 minute flight in the twin Islander to Fair Isle international airport 0- the only airport in the UK where they use the fire engine to chase the sheep off the runway!
Arriving safely we werte met by Susannah who loaded our bags into the Obs vehicle so we could go straight off to Quoy where Derek Shaw had found a juvenile Black-headed Bunting the previous day - a lifer for Chris and one that showed well on occasions feeding in the crop field with Bramblings.
We soon met up with Fred and Andy who were staying at Springfield (probably the last year this croft will be available for rent as the owners are selling up).
A pleasant few hours was spent looking around the island before returning to the Obs for a shower, dinner and a few beers!
Distance walked: 19.29 km
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