Lerwick

Lodberries and the sheltered waterfront

The Lodberries are stone merchants' houses built out into the sea, so that boats could once unload straight into the storerooms below. They stand at the south end of the waterfront, and in the BBC's Shetland one of them serves as the home of detective Jimmy Perez. The old lanes climb the hill behind them, and the whole town arranges itself along the sheltered water, with the island of Bressay across the sound holding off the North Sea.

Commercial Street, known locally as Da Street, is the flagstoned main lane that runs along the harbour. It is lined with independent shops, cafés and old merchants' buildings, and it is the centre of the Shetland Craft Trail. This is Fair Isle knitwear country, and the patterns turn up in shop windows and, more thoroughly, in the Shetland Museum & Archives at Hay's Dock, a short walk north. The museum is free, has a boat hall with floating exhibits and a café, and covers the maritime, fishing and whaling history that made the place.

Da Street, the museum and Mareel

Next door to the museum is Mareel, the arts centre on the waterfront at North Ness. Its auditorium seats up to 350, depending on layout; it also has two cinema screens and a café bar looking out over the water. It opened in 2012, built in part to replace the town's live-music venues that had closed one by one through the 1990s and 2000s. The name is the Shetland word for phosphorescence on the sea. For seafood, Fjarå Café Bar sits on the shore and is known for regional cooking, and around Commercial Street the town's pubs and bars keep going, with traditional fiddle sessions at the Lounge Bar.

Fort Charlotte stands on the waterfront in the middle of it all. A fortification was erected here during the First Anglo-Dutch War in 1652, though no trace of it is visible today; a second fort was built during the Second Dutch War in the 1660s but never finished. It was re-established in 1781 and never saw hostile action. The site later served as a jail, courthouse, custom house, coastguard station and reserve depot. Today, G (Lerwick) Troop, part of 212 (Highland) Battery, is based there.

The Knab and Clickimin Broch

From the fort you can walk the Knab, a coastal route round the headland past the Lodberries with the sea on one side. In the other direction, Clickimin Broch sits on the shore of its loch within walking distance of the centre — an Iron Age tower begun as early as 400 BC, with a rare free-standing blockhouse just inside the entrance.

A young capital shaped by Dutch trade

Lerwick itself is young by Shetland standards, founded in the seventeenth century as a herring and white-fish port trading with the Dutch fleet. The early settlement was twice burned, once by Scalloway residents who objected to its "immoral and drunken activities." It became the capital in 1708.

Ferries, flights and Up Helly Aa

There is no railway; Shetland has none. Sumburgh Airport lies about 25 miles south, and NorthLink Ferries run overnight to Aberdeen. On the last Tuesday of January, up to a thousand costumed guizers march the town by torchlight and burn a replica Viking longship, and the winter dark makes room for the fire.