Hermaness, Shetland Islands
Roadsign at Hermaness
... Jonathan joined us, thoughtfully bringing with him a bottle of pale-yellow Glenmorangie, the nectar of the Gods.
'Now,' said Jonathan, after he had sipped approvingly, 'tomorrow we go up to the white rocks - that's the headland of Hermaness and a great gannet colony. So we'll climb down the cliff - '
'Just a minute,' I interrupted. 'What cliff? Nobody said anything about a cliff to me.'
'It's just a cliff,' said Jonathan airily. 'All the different species of bird breed on it - guillemots, puffins, kittiwakes and so on. It's one of the biggest breeding colonies of seabirds in the Northern Hemisphere.'
'What about this cliff?' I asked, not to be distracted.
'Well, we've got to get down it,' said Jonathan, 'or we can't film the birds.'
'How high is it?'
'Not really high,' he replied evasively.
The Cliffs at Hermaness ; Puffins at Hermaness
....
'Now we go down the cliff,' said Jonathan.
'Where?' I asked.
'Here,' he said, pointing to the cliff-edge that, as far as I could see, dropped sheer, six hundred feet to the sea below.
....
Meandering down among the tussocks of grass and thrift was a faint line that looked as though once, in the dim and distant past, a flock of inebriated goats had staggered down the cliff-face to indulge in God knows what alcoholic orgy.
'Call that a path?' I enquired. 'If I were a chamois, I might agree with you, but no man born of a woman could go down that.'