The length and breadth of West Mainland
Aug. 3rd, 2013 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWe are on North Ronaldsay:
We were lucky: the previous day's flights had been cancelled because of the fog, and our plane was the first to North Ronaldsay for 24 hours. We sat in the lounge and admired the well-balanced approach to security: "The flight to Glasgow is now boarding, please make your way to the gate via security," "The flight to Aberdeen is now boarding, please make your way to the gate via security." When it came to time for our inter-island flight, it was even simpler: the pilot came to the glass door and called: "North Ronaldsay, please."
But first we had most of a week on Mainland, and did many things:
On our way from Kirkwall to Stromness, looking for somewhere to pull off the road and listen to the News Quiz, we diverted to the Lochside picnic area; and this random stop presented us with a magnificent vista of loch and hills and the Ring of Brodgar just visible in the distance - and a watercolourist at the picnic table, to give a focus to the foreground.
This is what I love about the scenery in Orkney, that you are always looking at a pattern of the land beyond the water, or the water beyond the land; are those hills on this island, but across the bay, or on the next island over? are those two successive headlands separated by a sea strait?
A wet Monday visit to the Orkney Brewery in its new visitor centre and brewery at Quoyloo - which is still, at its heart, the old village school in which the brewery first started. Once, long ago, we visited the brewery, when it was still too new to have decided to decline to be visited: I remember the copper (really? but that's what I remember) vats under the high sloping roof of the schoolroom, and a friendly but slightly bewildered reception from the one member of staff on site, who was also washing out the brewhouse - there was water everywhere underfoot. Now the brewery has a new owner, and is about as large-scale as you can be while remaining a microbrewery; the malt is imported, and the beer is sent to Stockport for bottling. The beer's still good, though, and the schoolhouse serves a tasty lunch to go with it.
A blazing hot Tuesday brought out the crowds for the 11 a.m. tour at the Ness of Brodgar excavations - we were glad we'd got there early and taken the chance to prowl around, and get a sense of the layout first. The setting is extraordinary, on a neck of land between two lochs, within sight - on this bright shining day - of Maes Howe and the Stones of Stenness to the south and the Ring of Brodgar to the north. We were shown round by Roy the archaeologist from ORCA, who with the aid of a big binder full of photographs, managed to fit into just over an hour an explanation which made clear what we were seeing, and how very much wasn't clear about what it all means. There's a lot you can't see, of course, and have to imagine: the stone "dressers" which have been removed from around the hearth of this very obviously not-domestic building, confirming the suspicion that these things aren't dressers at all; the stone with the really exciting decoration, whose position is being so carefully logged by those people over there...
Stromness has the new bookshop, but Kirkwall has the secondhand shop, which defies all probabability by still being there, visi after visit. On this occasion I bought Alice Thomas Ellis' Fish, Flesh And Good Red Herring, e e cummings' The Enormous Room (as endorsed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks) and a pretty little volume of Swinburne which I really do not need, but it is so pretty...
After another visit to Kirkwall, we drove home the long way round, along the south of the island. We paused for a walk on the beach at Scapa, the light dazzling on the pale sand and clear water, the shells scoured to a chalky white. At Orphir we visited the arc of wall and arched window which are all that remains of the medieval round church (modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem). Noticeboards nearby explained which incident in the Orkneyinga Saga took place in the adjacent hall. The road runs past the Hall of Clestrain, John Rae's birthplace, which is privately owned. We hoped we could at least identify it, but kept being distracted by the views of Graemsay with its two lighthouses, and the hills of Hoy beyond.
Likewise, an excursion to the Broch of Gurness was partly about old stones, Iron Age settlements and the thrill of places with serious history behind them (not to mention the lichen), but partly about seeing Rousay and Eynhallow across the (unexpectedly blue) sound.
durham_rambler asked the keeper at the broch "Do you get much wildlife in the sound?" and when the keeper seemed nonplussed by this question elaboated: "Seals, and..." "Oh, seals -" (dismissively) "we get lots of seals. And some porpoise. And whales, sometimes..." But they aren't easy to spot, apparently, because they are just passing through the sound.
Whereas at the tearoom at Birsay (where a notice on the glasshouses proclaims: "The home of Birsay tomatoes since 1982") I had a clear view to my left of seals basking on the rocks (of the Point of Snusan?) - or I could look straight ahead to the Brough of Birsay, a tidal island topped with a little white lighthouse.
After lunch we visited our old friends at the Yellowbird Gallery: I love Jon's birds (and I may have bought a puffin picture), and this time I begin to get Lesley's landscapes too. We spent so long admiring the work, and the changes to the gallery (wonderful new window), and just chatting, so we didn't reach the Barony Mill until five to five, which is five minutes before closing time. The keeper didn't seem in any hurry to close, though. "Is it your first visit to Orkney?" he asked me. "What makes you keep coming back?" I was tempted to say I come for the way the locals are always up for a conversation, but I said something anodyne (but true) about the scenery. So we, and another couple who turned up shortly after us, had an hour long tour of the mill, in the strongest Orcadian accent I've heard this trip (I suspect him not of faking it but of doing it deliberately; every tenth word was "peedie").
We spent a wet morning at the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness: I love the gallery, the personal nature of the collection, the way items are arranged within the space of the old building - and the old building opens up in the new extension. But I really don't get modern art, and there are very few actual pieces there that I like. On this occasion there were two temporary exhibitions, one of which (Nathan Coley's BURN THE VILLAGE, FEEL THE WARMTH) we loathed, but the other (Jim Pattison's MODELS OF MIND: Carved Stone Balls from the Islands of Scotland) we warmed to. The artist started from the mysterious carved stone balls which have been found at a number of archaeological sites in Scotland, and derived a set of images from each one - a computer analysis, a trompe l'oeuil representation, a repeating pattern, a silhouette and a photograph of the place where it was found. That's all - though the Pier exhibition also had one of the actual balls, and I do think that added something.
On our last morning the mist was hanging around, but we decided to visit the Ring of Brodgar anyway. One change we've seen in the years we've been coming to Orkney is that the presentation of tourist attractions has become much more conscious. When we first came to the Ring of Brodgar, there was a layby opposite the Ring, and you took your chances crossing the main road. Now there's a big parking space, further away, but this actually improves the visit, because you approach the stones more slowly, through wildflower meadows, with the stones ahead of you on the horizon.
We joke about Scottish weather that if you can see the hills, it's going to rain; but if you an't see the hills, it is raining. But I begin to think that the opposite is true: the mist coalesced, so that as the rain began to fall, the sky cleared and the hills of Hoy appeared rising out of a fluffy white blanket of cloud. The sun came out, and so did the midges. But the stones were magical.
All the photos of Mainland (and more.
We were lucky: the previous day's flights had been cancelled because of the fog, and our plane was the first to North Ronaldsay for 24 hours. We sat in the lounge and admired the well-balanced approach to security: "The flight to Glasgow is now boarding, please make your way to the gate via security," "The flight to Aberdeen is now boarding, please make your way to the gate via security." When it came to time for our inter-island flight, it was even simpler: the pilot came to the glass door and called: "North Ronaldsay, please."
But first we had most of a week on Mainland, and did many things:
On our way from Kirkwall to Stromness, looking for somewhere to pull off the road and listen to the News Quiz, we diverted to the Lochside picnic area; and this random stop presented us with a magnificent vista of loch and hills and the Ring of Brodgar just visible in the distance - and a watercolourist at the picnic table, to give a focus to the foreground.
This is what I love about the scenery in Orkney, that you are always looking at a pattern of the land beyond the water, or the water beyond the land; are those hills on this island, but across the bay, or on the next island over? are those two successive headlands separated by a sea strait?
A wet Monday visit to the Orkney Brewery in its new visitor centre and brewery at Quoyloo - which is still, at its heart, the old village school in which the brewery first started. Once, long ago, we visited the brewery, when it was still too new to have decided to decline to be visited: I remember the copper (really? but that's what I remember) vats under the high sloping roof of the schoolroom, and a friendly but slightly bewildered reception from the one member of staff on site, who was also washing out the brewhouse - there was water everywhere underfoot. Now the brewery has a new owner, and is about as large-scale as you can be while remaining a microbrewery; the malt is imported, and the beer is sent to Stockport for bottling. The beer's still good, though, and the schoolhouse serves a tasty lunch to go with it.
A blazing hot Tuesday brought out the crowds for the 11 a.m. tour at the Ness of Brodgar excavations - we were glad we'd got there early and taken the chance to prowl around, and get a sense of the layout first. The setting is extraordinary, on a neck of land between two lochs, within sight - on this bright shining day - of Maes Howe and the Stones of Stenness to the south and the Ring of Brodgar to the north. We were shown round by Roy the archaeologist from ORCA, who with the aid of a big binder full of photographs, managed to fit into just over an hour an explanation which made clear what we were seeing, and how very much wasn't clear about what it all means. There's a lot you can't see, of course, and have to imagine: the stone "dressers" which have been removed from around the hearth of this very obviously not-domestic building, confirming the suspicion that these things aren't dressers at all; the stone with the really exciting decoration, whose position is being so carefully logged by those people over there...
Stromness has the new bookshop, but Kirkwall has the secondhand shop, which defies all probabability by still being there, visi after visit. On this occasion I bought Alice Thomas Ellis' Fish, Flesh And Good Red Herring, e e cummings' The Enormous Room (as endorsed by
rushthatspeaks) and a pretty little volume of Swinburne which I really do not need, but it is so pretty...After another visit to Kirkwall, we drove home the long way round, along the south of the island. We paused for a walk on the beach at Scapa, the light dazzling on the pale sand and clear water, the shells scoured to a chalky white. At Orphir we visited the arc of wall and arched window which are all that remains of the medieval round church (modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem). Noticeboards nearby explained which incident in the Orkneyinga Saga took place in the adjacent hall. The road runs past the Hall of Clestrain, John Rae's birthplace, which is privately owned. We hoped we could at least identify it, but kept being distracted by the views of Graemsay with its two lighthouses, and the hills of Hoy beyond.
Likewise, an excursion to the Broch of Gurness was partly about old stones, Iron Age settlements and the thrill of places with serious history behind them (not to mention the lichen), but partly about seeing Rousay and Eynhallow across the (unexpectedly blue) sound.
durham_rambler asked the keeper at the broch "Do you get much wildlife in the sound?" and when the keeper seemed nonplussed by this question elaboated: "Seals, and..." "Oh, seals -" (dismissively) "we get lots of seals. And some porpoise. And whales, sometimes..." But they aren't easy to spot, apparently, because they are just passing through the sound.Whereas at the tearoom at Birsay (where a notice on the glasshouses proclaims: "The home of Birsay tomatoes since 1982") I had a clear view to my left of seals basking on the rocks (of the Point of Snusan?) - or I could look straight ahead to the Brough of Birsay, a tidal island topped with a little white lighthouse.
After lunch we visited our old friends at the Yellowbird Gallery: I love Jon's birds (and I may have bought a puffin picture), and this time I begin to get Lesley's landscapes too. We spent so long admiring the work, and the changes to the gallery (wonderful new window), and just chatting, so we didn't reach the Barony Mill until five to five, which is five minutes before closing time. The keeper didn't seem in any hurry to close, though. "Is it your first visit to Orkney?" he asked me. "What makes you keep coming back?" I was tempted to say I come for the way the locals are always up for a conversation, but I said something anodyne (but true) about the scenery. So we, and another couple who turned up shortly after us, had an hour long tour of the mill, in the strongest Orcadian accent I've heard this trip (I suspect him not of faking it but of doing it deliberately; every tenth word was "peedie").
We spent a wet morning at the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness: I love the gallery, the personal nature of the collection, the way items are arranged within the space of the old building - and the old building opens up in the new extension. But I really don't get modern art, and there are very few actual pieces there that I like. On this occasion there were two temporary exhibitions, one of which (Nathan Coley's BURN THE VILLAGE, FEEL THE WARMTH) we loathed, but the other (Jim Pattison's MODELS OF MIND: Carved Stone Balls from the Islands of Scotland) we warmed to. The artist started from the mysterious carved stone balls which have been found at a number of archaeological sites in Scotland, and derived a set of images from each one - a computer analysis, a trompe l'oeuil representation, a repeating pattern, a silhouette and a photograph of the place where it was found. That's all - though the Pier exhibition also had one of the actual balls, and I do think that added something.
On our last morning the mist was hanging around, but we decided to visit the Ring of Brodgar anyway. One change we've seen in the years we've been coming to Orkney is that the presentation of tourist attractions has become much more conscious. When we first came to the Ring of Brodgar, there was a layby opposite the Ring, and you took your chances crossing the main road. Now there's a big parking space, further away, but this actually improves the visit, because you approach the stones more slowly, through wildflower meadows, with the stones ahead of you on the horizon.
We joke about Scottish weather that if you can see the hills, it's going to rain; but if you an't see the hills, it is raining. But I begin to think that the opposite is true: the mist coalesced, so that as the rain began to fall, the sky cleared and the hills of Hoy appeared rising out of a fluffy white blanket of cloud. The sun came out, and so did the midges. But the stones were magical.
All the photos of Mainland (and more.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-08-03 09:36 pm (UTC)The photos are spectacular. I would so love to visit!
no subject
Date: 2013-08-04 09:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-04 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-04 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-04 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-04 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-04 08:22 pm (UTC)A troll masquerading as an artist
Date: 2013-08-04 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-04 09:36 am (UTC)You're making me homesick for somewhere I've never lived again. :o)
no subject
Date: 2013-08-04 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-05 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-08 05:08 pm (UTC)