Orkney (1)

17 – 19 September

A Day without Rain

The hour and a half sailing to Scrabster was reasonably calm (thank goodness) and we admired and photographed the sea stack “The Old Man of Hoy” as we passed by.

Before heading to our site in Kirkwall we stopped off at the Standing Stones at Stenness, one of the many historical sites on the islands.

We spent the next day in Kirkwall, visiting the magnificent St Magnus Cathedral in the morning. Nearly 900 years old, the “Viking Cathedral” dominates the skyline of the town; inside however, inside decoration is very simple, only the stained-glass windows and the banners, celebrating 900 years since the birth of St Magnus, adding colour.

In the afternoon, John insisted on a visit to the Highland Park distillery. The tour was informative, following the whole process through the maze of picturesque old buildings. Highland Park still uses some old techniques (for example, laying out the barley to dry on large malting floors) and is proud of its use of as many local ingredients as possible. The visit was rounded off with a tasting; I still prefer brandy, however!

If you ignore the light shower of rain around 8 am, we had our first “day without rain” on Tuesday, 19 September!  Not only that, the sun shone and the temperature reached the giddy heights of 17 degrees C in the afternoon.  More please!  On this remarkable day, we drove south, over the Churchill Barriers, which were constructed largely by Italian prisoners of war during World War II, to protect Scapa Flow from attack by German submarines.

Just beyond Churchill Barrier 1 is the Italian Chapel, also constructed by Italian prisoners of war.  Such a beautiful place, and created from two Nissen huts, assorted scrap and a lot of genius.

The fourth Churchill Barrier takes you onto the island of Ronaldsay, where we headed down a single-track road to Hoxa Head for a walk along the coast, overlooking the Flotta oil terminal on the south side of mainland Orkney.  We intended to support the Hoxa Tearoom, but it had sadly changed over to winter opening hours, which do not include Tuesdays.

The final port of call was to the Tomb of Eagles, dating from approximately 3000 BC.  The name comes from the many talons and claws of sea-eagles found among the burials.  John dared to venture inside!

Prior to reaching the tomb itself we had had interesting introductory talks and a walk to a mound from the Bronze Age, which is believed to have been a workshop.

On the way back to the site, we commented that we had put in an eight-hour day – hard life!