My favourite place

HEALTH promotion officer RACHEL STEWART describes her many favourite places this week – Shetland’s beaches. Rachel, who has had great success in her smoking cessation work for NHS Shetland, finds walking and playing on Shetland’s beaches both inspirational and enjoyable. The beaches here are just as good as those abroad, she feels, and there are many more to discover.

My favourite places are the beaches in Shetland, I have just found a new one recently at Noss. The sun was out and there was no one about other then me, my husband (my best friend) and our children. We usually go to Portugal for our summer holidays and the beaches there are just like here but with a lot more people, so it was a joy to have the whole beach to ourselves on such a beautiful day.

We have invented many of our own games, like who can stand in the water (cold is an understatement) the longest gets to pick what we have for dinner that night. I never win this game and end up eating cheese pasta with marshmallows, or something along those lines. We also have to find the strangest object. Which I have won and to this day we don’t know what it is I found.

May be you can help?

I go to the beach as much as I can, mostly with my family. My husband and I go every New Year for a walk on a beach and decide on what changes we are going to make for the following year, Spiggie beach seems to bring us good luck so far. I have some great photos of the sea on wild days and ones of the kids and dog in all types of weather. When I really think about it, the beaches here play a large part of my life because I think they replace the woods down south that I grew up around.