News from Nowhere

E. and I don't see each other as much as we'd like, and we always have plenty to talk about: how are you? and what are you reading? and how are the family? and what comics are you reading?... But she took me by surprise on Friday when she told me that she had recently bee on holiday in Orkney.

Being a proper modern person, she had all the photos on her phone, and we used that magic to travel together to Scara Brae, and the Ring of Brodgar, and - video! moving images" - watched the water wheel at the Barony Mill throwing up rainbows in the sun.

In addition to all these favourite haunts, E. had managed to visit somewhere I had never been - never even heard of. Yet it was absolutely a place that we would both like: Betty's Reading Room, next to the ferry pier at Tingwall.

Description in the Ultima Thule blog.

Every holiday let has its peculiarities. Or, to be fair, every holiday let has its own way of interacting with my peculiarities. I could say many things about Westslate: you may be able to tell from the photos that the interior decor is not to my taste, and the exterior, which they don't show, is frankly ugly (in a land whose beauty does not come from its buildings). But it is comfortable, and conveniently close to Stromness.

However, I have not yet found anywhere I can sit and type at a plugged in notebook: hence the lack of posting. I wasted an hour or so yesterday testing the assertion that chargers are now one-size-fits-all, and can tell you that while the fittings allow my phone charger to be plugged in to the notebook, it doesn't actually deliver enough charge to run the device. Which is a pity, as it has a much longer cable. After a brief panic, I reverted to the notebook's own recharcher, with its minimal cable, charged it while I ate breakfast (another feature of holiday lets is, they remind me why I hate toasters and always want a cooker with an eye level grill!) and now I am using what charge it holds from that treatment until it runs out - or until valydiarosada has breakfasted, and we are ready to go out.

So instead of a rapid tour of all the things we have done in he past few days, have a single photo to represent the overall experience:

As I was saying, George Mackay Brown was born one hundred years ago today, in a little house in Stromness. I have stayed in that house (not to be confused with the house in Stromness where he was then living): it was a holiday rental, and there's a picure of it on this page (scroll down).

I shall be in Stromness again next midsummer - hooray!

Meanwhile, have Stromness poem.

It may not be obvious from our increasing reluctance to get up before dawn on the longest day to watch the sun rise, but all four of us continue to enjoy our midsummer week in the north together. Towards the end of our stay on Lindisfarne, we were talking about next year: should we come back to Holy Island? Why not? We always enjoy it... But D. suggested going to Orkney next year: we'd never been to Orkney at midsummer, he pointed out, and valydiarosada has never been to Orkney at all -

Overnight, I remembered why we don't go to Orkney at midsummer: that's when the St Magnus Festival happens, so there'd be competion for accommodation. But D. was not deterred, and has found - and booked - a house in Stromness for midsummer 2022. These are incertain times, and anything could happen in the next 50 weeks, but for the time being we have a plan, and I am very excited about it.

Meanwhile, Morph has been visiting Orkney, and sending postcards home.

So many connections...



Also gannets! (I did not know that a solan goose was a gannet.)

ETA: There's no video for his Tammie Norie (and the album cover shows a gannet glaring at you, which is unnerving).

I started to write this post a month ago, while we were on Mainland in Orkney; then things intervened, and I didn't finish it. Which gives me the opportunity to complete it with more photos than I would have done, had I completed the original version. It was choosing the two photos that I originally planned to use which gave me the title, and then the more I wrote, the more I realised how many old houses there were in the story.

This was the day after that evening by the loch; we were staying at the Barony Hotel. That's not what made me think about old houses, though it is old enough (they have a display showing water colours by a lady who stayed there in 1902). The things that feel old-fashioned are not, of course, the old hotel, but what must be 1960s additions and improvements. But you won't hear any complaints from me about somewhere that gives me smoked haddock and a poached (duck) egg for breakfast!

Our morning visit, though, was to the seriously old houses of the stone age village at Skara Brae:



( More old houses under the cut - but none as old as that one: )

We are in Stromness, and the holiday is nearly over. There is a longer post half-written which fills in some of the details, but rather than try to complete that before we go out to enjoy our last day in Orkney, one quick question and answer.

Where would you find a 5000 year old figurine? In a museum, of course!

We were briefly at the Stromness Museum yesterday. It was almost closing time, but tickets are valid for 7 days, so we had a quick look round and will go back today. Quite soon.

Another day, another island. I interrupt this tidy narrative of our adventures on Mainland to report that we are now on Westray, with DIY wifi: our cottage's wifi is currently out of order because something to do with BT, who may possibly reinstate it on Friday (we leave early on Saturday). Luckily, durham_rambler loves a challenge, and has whipped up a wifi hotspot tethered to his mobile phone.

We left a bright if slightly hazy Mainland on the Varagen and sailed into the haar, the sea mist which reduced the islands to indistinct shapes traced on the surface of the sea, and docked at the south end of Westray lost in the mist. The road runs up the spine of the island to Pierowall village. On either side there's a low drystone wall, the light grey stone bright in the sunlight; then a lush green field dotted with dandelions; a blanket of cotton wool hovered just above the grass - you can tell the sea isn't far away.

Time for bed; we'll see what tomorrow brings.

We are back on Mainland, at the Barony Hotel. We first came here long ago with desperance, and then, more recently - this journal tells me that even that was ten years ago - with Gail. Our host claims to recognise us, which is impressive, if true. We are in the bar, with a pot of tea, because although wifi was installed throughout the hotel, it stopped working when they were converted to fibre broadband; but it is no hardship to sit in comfort at a table with a view of the Loch of Boardhouse, and I have just uploaded a photo, so there's nothing wrong with the broadband once you find it!

Yesterday afternoon we took the Westness Walk along the coast in the southwest of Rousay. It's only about a mile long, but it is crammed with interesting things to see. It's a pity that the best of them are at the beginning: it might even be worth reversing polarity. You would then end with a steep scramble back up to the road, instead of starting, as we did, with a steep scramble down, but you would finish with the beautiful broch at Midhowe, and the massive chambered cairn. The sequence of ruined farms which follow are not in the same class, though they are still a delight -in fact, my favourite of yesterday's pictures might be this sunny corner of the farm of Brough (or Broch):



After this, the path gets trickier, picking its way along the stony shore, and the archaeological finds are increasingly difficult to detect on the ground. Eventually, the path spits you out into a farmyard, and then its up the track and easy walking along the road - hard on the feet, but with great views below of the way you have come, and the island of Eynhallow beyond. One final treat, just before I reached the car, was that rare thing, a bird I could both see and hear, which makes identification a lot easier: first from the hillside above me, a sound as of knocking small stones together, then, posing on a fencepost, a bird about the size of a sparrow, dark wings, black tail, light russet breast - I'm pretty sure it was a stonechat.

This morning we said farewell to Rousay and took the morning ferry back to Mainland: a beautiful bright day, the sea glassy clear and glittering. The road to Birsay led straight past the Yellowbird Gallery, so we called in to say hello. I was delighted to see that, after a break, Jon Thompson is carving wooden birds again, but what I bought (in addition to some cards) was a print in which the outlines were pure Jon, but the colouring reminded me of Lesley Murdoch's landscapes.

After lunch at the tearooms, tucked in next to the tomato greenhouses, we crossed the causeway to the tidal island of the Brough. I should not have been surprised that it was busy, on a fine sunny Bank Holiday Sunday. We walked up the hill to the lighthouse, across a hillside strewn with constellations of blue squill, and then poked about the Viking remains, all cushioned with pink thrift (I don't remember the chamber labelled 'Viking sauna?', that must be newly excavated, or perhaps just newly identified).

And when we had had enough of the sunshine, we came here to relax.