Burra is really two islands, East and West, joined to each other by a short bridge, with further bridges on to Trondra and the Shetland Mainland beyond; before the bridges opened in 1971, the only way in was a ferry from Hamnavoe to Scalloway, three times a day. Most of Burra’s 877 people live in Hamnavoe, a row of fishermen’s cottages built up around a herring fleet, with Meal Beach a short walk south-east. Further down the island, past the old monastic settlement at Papil — where the eighth-century Papil Stone, carved with two hooded monks, was found and is now in the National Museum of Scotland — a path continues to Minn Beach and on round the sea caves and cliffs of Kettla Ness, the island’s southern tip.
