How it all began.

Have you ever watched How to Train Your Dragon?

“This is Berk. It’s twelve days north of hopeless, and a few degrees south of freezing to death. It’s located solidly on the meridian of misery.”

Well… that pretty much summed up how I felt stepping off the ferry in the winter of 2006.

I was 18, and after stubbornly refusing to move to Shetland with the rest of my family in the summer of 2006, I had finally given in. In my mind, it was bleak, dismal, and completely cut off from everything I knew — and if you asked my mum, she’d probably say my mood matched the weather perfectly.

Over the years, I found myself going back and forth between Somerset and Shetland. On one hand, there was the busyness of life in the West Country — show season, working as a relief milker on local dairy farms, and helping out on my grandad’s smallholding. On the other, there was the quiet, steady rhythm of Shetland life — my parents’ croft and regular work in hospitality. Two completely different worlds, both pulling in their own way in 2019, I finally made the move back for good — this time with my little boy, Logan. And something shifted. He absolutely loves calling Shetland home, and somewhere along the way, I realised I did too. Almost 20 years since I first arrived, it’s become easier to see the  beauty in a harsh winter storm than to get lost in the misery of it. Storms pass — and what they leave behind is always worth it.

Since then, our little family has grown in the best way. I met Aaron in 2021, we welcomed Tayah in 2023, and got married in 2024. Together, we now run his sixth-generation family croft in Bigton, where Withyburn Croft Tours is based.

Now, I’m not saying that when I first came up with the idea of opening up the croft to visitors — to meet the animals and experience croft life — that everyone jumped on board straight away…

In fact, there may have been a few raised eyebrows. And by a few, I mostly mean my husband.

But to his credit, he’s gone along with it all — the ideas, the plans, the ever-growing list of “just one more thing we could do.” Whether it’s fixing something last minute, helping set things up, or quietly nodding along while I excitedly talk through the next plan, he’s always there. I suspect he does a lot of it simply because he knows how much it means to me — and honestly, I couldn’t be more grateful for that.

So if you’d like to follow along and see how this journey continues — the ups, the challenges, and everything in between — make sure you keep up to date with the blog. There’s plenty more to come, and I can’t wait to share it with you.