Beside the road

Cycling gives you time to see your surroundings in a way not possible by car. We see the wild flowers and the birds and hear their songs, unless a car is passing. In Shetland, though, we have been aware of the amount of litter thrown on the road side, particularly drinks cans and bottles. Much more than we saw in Scandinavia, perhaps excepting the discarded oven and tellies we did see! We have also seen far more animals killed beside the road. This may be because we were rarely on the busy main roads, whereas in the Shetlands there was one, or at the most two roads going round the islands. The main casualties have been rabbits (the Shetlands seem to be teeming with rabbits), hedgehogs and birds. Many birds lie dead, The saddest were when we came off a ferry and cycled up the hill from the ferry straight after the cars. There were two large white birds, looking like gannets, lying side by side. They must have been flying together and hit by the same car just in front of us, as nothing had gone over them and the scavengers had not started to eat them. I felt very sad.