Fitful Head
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The point of The Nev is to the left, and the Thief's House cave roughly dead centre of the picture.
Fitful Head is a headland located at the SW corner of the Shetland Mainland in Dunrossness. It rises steeply from the surrounding farmland of the Quendale area to the east, to a height of 283 metres at its summit, it has a brief reasonably flat top, before terminating abruptly in sea cliffs on its northern, western and southern sides which vary from very steep to sheer.
The terrain on the landward slopes is mainly poor quality heather and wet, the flatter top is more marshy, with a number of old abandoned water filled peat banks which are treacherous to the unwary, and the foliage is of moss and very poor quality coarse grasses.
A very basic (and very steep in parts) single track road leads from the township of Gord, in Quendale to near the summit at Fitful's northern end, its main purpose is to provide access to communication equipment; including a TV transmitter, a Coastguard radio relay, and a Radar Dome which is part of the Air Traffic Control system for Sumburgh Airport which is just to the SE.
On the south west side there is a granite memorial to the crew of a Halifax that crashed into the cliffs in 1942.
Sea Eagles are reputed to have been a common sight on Fitful in the not too distant past, and a very inaccessible cave, called the Thief's House, in the western cliff face is the setting for the local folklore tale of Black Eric, a supposed 'Giant' and notorious sheep thief.
Fitful cliff scenes
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