North Ronaldsay for beginners
Sep. 20th, 2013 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWhen I said 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, uncertain where one island ends and the next begins, I wasn't thinking about North Ronaldsay. This most northerly of the Orkney islands is more isolated, the view a narrow band of green farmland between sky and sea. But from the Bird Observatory, where we stayed, at the very south of the island, the sea is bounded at the horizon by a hazy line of the bright sands and darker mass of Sanday, and the silhouette of its lighthouse - on a clear day, at least. Further round you might see Papay, or the hills of Westray. From the north it is possible to see Fair Isle's south light, but we didn't.
The Observatory is a pleasant place to stay: you don't have to be a hardcore birder to stay in the guest house, though doing so helps fund the ornithological studies. Our room was comfortable, though not large - it probably works best for people who are fairly sociable, and happy to spend evenings in the bar (it's no hardship: there are separate tables, the wifi is stronger there, drinks are reasonably priced and not compulsory). It has a public license, and the island has no pub, so a variety of people turn up in the evening. Dinner is served at a single long table, to a mixture of holiday visitors like ourselves, observatory staff and others (the men who were painting the lighthouse, for example), good home cooking brought out and set in front of us: a fellow guest remarked that we were like a row of baby fulmars (I'll get to them) opening our beaks and waiting to be fed.
The dinner table was also a great source of gossip. We visitors compared notes on what we had done during the day, and the residents helped fill in the gaps: yes, those were alpaca that we had seen (and who they belonged to, and the rest of her collection of elderly rare breed sheep), the reason the shop was closed, why the post office sells knitwear but not postcards... The population of North Ronaldsay is in the 50s, so people tend to know each other's business - because one person's business touches everyone. Once there were 500 inhabitants, but that was after the kelp boom of the nineteeenth century: as that industry declined, the emigrations began. All of Orkney is dotted with abandoned crofts, but elsewhere they are more likely to be converted into new houses, or to form part of a farm, with a new house built on, and the old buildings serving as barns and sheds in various degrees of decrepitude. On North Ronalsay, entire farms stand empty: one explanation we were offered was that the owners who live on the island are reluctant to sell, because what if you discovered you didn't get on with your new neighbours? On an island some three miles long (and one across) selling a house must be like finding a new member for a flat-share.
It's also a bit like staying on a working farm. We could watch the progress of haymaking, and the tractor ballet as the bales were gathered up and transported along the narrow road; there were cattle everywhere, and we were warned not to go into fields with cows in them; but what everyone is interested in is the North Ronaldsay sheep. These are a distinct breed, small with curly horns and fleece in a range of shades from cream to coffee. They graze on seaweed, shut out of the grassy fields by a wall which encircles the entire island: the grass is poisonous to them, we were told, it's too rich in copper. I don't know whether the North Ronaldsay sheep have a specific mineral intolerance, or whether it's just that, being small, they are sensitive to lower doses*, but they are banished to the stony shore while other livestock graze in the meadows. Sheep are marked with a pattern of nicks in the ear, to show who owns them, and then roam all together until it's time to gather them into the pounds, the network of walled enclosures, for shearing. This is a communal task: "They're punding tomorrow, if anyone wants to help," but we were leaving next morning, and had to decline.
Maintaining the sea dyke is another communal task. But, this being a working farm, it is carried out for convenience, not for beauty - and that isn't necessarily the visitor's convenience. The beautiful dry stone wall is patched with wire and bits of fencing, and crossing points may well be closed off in the process. More than once we described difficulty in following a walk as describes, to be told "Oh, yes, the sea dyke's down, you can't get through there..."
So this is my strongest image of North Ronaldsay. Reading from top to bottom, the blue sky, the wire mesh reinforcing the green and gold of the stone wall, the fulmars' nests tucked in to the base of the wall - no nest to be seen, just the chicks, great balls of grey fluff, looking so soft and hissing so angrily as we walked by. Then the fine white sand of the beach, and behind me the blue sea, and the seals bobbing up to see what's going on.
*ETA: This short film, discovered by D., claims that in the couple of centuries that the sheep have been excluded from the fields, they have "evolved" and "adapted" to eat seaweed, and extract copper from it more efficiently: if so, presumably their extraction of copper from grass which is naturally rich in the stuff is *too* efficient. But evolution within centuries, really?
The Observatory is a pleasant place to stay: you don't have to be a hardcore birder to stay in the guest house, though doing so helps fund the ornithological studies. Our room was comfortable, though not large - it probably works best for people who are fairly sociable, and happy to spend evenings in the bar (it's no hardship: there are separate tables, the wifi is stronger there, drinks are reasonably priced and not compulsory). It has a public license, and the island has no pub, so a variety of people turn up in the evening. Dinner is served at a single long table, to a mixture of holiday visitors like ourselves, observatory staff and others (the men who were painting the lighthouse, for example), good home cooking brought out and set in front of us: a fellow guest remarked that we were like a row of baby fulmars (I'll get to them) opening our beaks and waiting to be fed.
The dinner table was also a great source of gossip. We visitors compared notes on what we had done during the day, and the residents helped fill in the gaps: yes, those were alpaca that we had seen (and who they belonged to, and the rest of her collection of elderly rare breed sheep), the reason the shop was closed, why the post office sells knitwear but not postcards... The population of North Ronaldsay is in the 50s, so people tend to know each other's business - because one person's business touches everyone. Once there were 500 inhabitants, but that was after the kelp boom of the nineteeenth century: as that industry declined, the emigrations began. All of Orkney is dotted with abandoned crofts, but elsewhere they are more likely to be converted into new houses, or to form part of a farm, with a new house built on, and the old buildings serving as barns and sheds in various degrees of decrepitude. On North Ronalsay, entire farms stand empty: one explanation we were offered was that the owners who live on the island are reluctant to sell, because what if you discovered you didn't get on with your new neighbours? On an island some three miles long (and one across) selling a house must be like finding a new member for a flat-share.
It's also a bit like staying on a working farm. We could watch the progress of haymaking, and the tractor ballet as the bales were gathered up and transported along the narrow road; there were cattle everywhere, and we were warned not to go into fields with cows in them; but what everyone is interested in is the North Ronaldsay sheep. These are a distinct breed, small with curly horns and fleece in a range of shades from cream to coffee. They graze on seaweed, shut out of the grassy fields by a wall which encircles the entire island: the grass is poisonous to them, we were told, it's too rich in copper. I don't know whether the North Ronaldsay sheep have a specific mineral intolerance, or whether it's just that, being small, they are sensitive to lower doses*, but they are banished to the stony shore while other livestock graze in the meadows. Sheep are marked with a pattern of nicks in the ear, to show who owns them, and then roam all together until it's time to gather them into the pounds, the network of walled enclosures, for shearing. This is a communal task: "They're punding tomorrow, if anyone wants to help," but we were leaving next morning, and had to decline.
Maintaining the sea dyke is another communal task. But, this being a working farm, it is carried out for convenience, not for beauty - and that isn't necessarily the visitor's convenience. The beautiful dry stone wall is patched with wire and bits of fencing, and crossing points may well be closed off in the process. More than once we described difficulty in following a walk as describes, to be told "Oh, yes, the sea dyke's down, you can't get through there..."
So this is my strongest image of North Ronaldsay. Reading from top to bottom, the blue sky, the wire mesh reinforcing the green and gold of the stone wall, the fulmars' nests tucked in to the base of the wall - no nest to be seen, just the chicks, great balls of grey fluff, looking so soft and hissing so angrily as we walked by. Then the fine white sand of the beach, and behind me the blue sea, and the seals bobbing up to see what's going on.
*ETA: This short film, discovered by D., claims that in the couple of centuries that the sheep have been excluded from the fields, they have "evolved" and "adapted" to eat seaweed, and extract copper from it more efficiently: if so, presumably their extraction of copper from grass which is naturally rich in the stuff is *too* efficient. But evolution within centuries, really?
