Otters are more easily spotted on Yell than almost anywhere else in Britain, helped by miles of peaty shoreline where they dig holts, their dens, into the bank. The car ferry from Toft, on the Shetland Mainland, lands at Ulsta after a twenty-minute crossing that runs roughly every half hour. Most visitors are just passing through, on the road north to Unst and Fetlar, but you’ll find reasons to stop.
At Burravoe, the Old Haa, a merchant’s house from the 17th century and Yell’s oldest building, is now a small museum with a tearoom. In the north, a memorial at Gloup marks the storm of July 1881 that killed 58 fishermen from ten boats, most of them from the township there, leaving 34 widows and 85 children. Inland, walkers and birdwatchers head for the moorland and voes (sea inlets), where great skuas and red-throated divers nest in summer.
