shewhomust | Entries tagged with orkney

While the rain washes the snow away and the wind hurls dustbins down the back lane, I've been sorting last summer's holiday photos and dreaming back to long sunny days. The photos on Flickr are now caught up to the last holiday post I wrote here, up to the point where we left North Ronaldsay. I took photos from the plane, obviously, because I could; but I'm not satisfied with any of them. I could disregard the technical flaws, the sloping horizons and smudged window glass, but nothing catches the brilliance of what you see, the tiny perfect details of the islands.

We paused for a coffee at Kirkwall airport, and I played Kim's game, writing down what I could remember. So have one last photo of North Ronaldsay, a group of black guillemots:

and as for the view from the air, have some words: there, right on the edge of North Ronaldsay, was the broch that I'd never reached on foot; there were green fields edged with white beaches and blue, blue sea; there was a sailing boat in the bay at Stronsay; there were dolls' house farms (such a dishevelled cluster of buildings from the ground, such a neat pattern from the air); here a deeply incised cliff, there someone riding a horse into the sea.

By the time I had written my list, a man from Visit Orkney had arrived with a questionnaire about our trip, and we settled into a conversation about where we had been, what we had seen, where we could buy a bottle of Scapa for

fjm's Raw Spirit project (the whisky for us, the bottle for

fjm).

Once we were settled in our room at the Bird Observatory, we took the sketch map we'd been given (a version of this one), and headed towards the sea: we thought we might just make it to the broch before dinner time. The beach at the south of the island is a crescent of fine white sand, the sea was blue in the sun and the seals bobbed along, keeping pace with us. More seals were sunbathing on the rocks at the end of the bay, where we turned inland. Here we were stymied: the lane ahead was barred, and there were sheep in the meadow, for shearing; June, who was out feeding her alpacas, introduced us to some of her elderly rare breed sheep, and showed us where we could get down to the shore, past the ruined store house with its "window on North Ronaldsay" which had provided the title for a book about the island. From here we could have scrambled round the headland on the stony beach, but we were running out of tie, so we turned back outside the sea dyke past the baby fulmars.

The next day we walked the length of the island, along the road to the lighthouses. There are two, both Stevenson lights of different generations: the red-and-white striped New Light, which was being repainted, and the Old Beacon, Scotland's oldest intact lighthouse, first lit in 1789, which is scaffolded:

We were told that funding had been found for renovation, but that work had ground to a halt because of disagreements about how far the keepers' cottage should be restored: this is what the North Ronaldsay Trust has to say. It's a perfect emblem for the island: a lighthouse, with all that says about safety - of sorts - in stormy seas, its history, the beauty of the building (and even the scaffolding has a certain geometrical elegance), the paradoxical conflicts between the heritage industry and the desire to keep things as they are...

Yes, well. Some word pictures: on the road north, the drystone wall topped a bank. Looking up, I saw above the lush grass and the stone of the wall, white cloud, blue sky and four bonxies wheeling. We approached the Old Beacon through a maze of stone pens, littered with wisps of wool from the recent shearing. There's a café at the New Light, where the staff wear t-shirts with the slogan: "Have you seen the light?" As recommended, we both ordered the mutton pie:

It was delicious, with a filling of mutton, green peas, and - unexpectedly, though it shouldn't have been - mint jelly, adding a lightness and sweetness to the dark and savoury meat.

Back at the Observatory, we were invited to see what birds had been caught in the traps, and watched a linnet being ringed - and weighed, for which purpose it was popped into a film canister: what will they do when there are no more of these to be had?

The next day we walked past the standing stone - unusually, but not uniquely, it has a hole in it:

and peered over the dyke at the black guillemots. Here's the day's mystery object (not the only one of these we saw, but the most pleasingly placed):

We were heading for the old church, where there is an exhibition of material about the island's recent history. I was intrigued by the photograph of Tomima Tulloch, "the only island woman to have been recruited into the armed services (she may have volunteered) in WW1" and a project to photograph everyone on the island. Later,

durham_rambler set off on a second attempt to reach the broch, while I lounged about and read my book, and then went out for a much less strenuous stroll = and ended up again on the beach, watching the dunlins scurrying back and forth along the tideline.

We left North Ronaldsay the next morning: there was just time for one last visit to the beach, to say goodbye to the seals - and the seals came to the beach to say goodbye to us. There were also a family of ducks, and a very clear view of the lighthouse on Sanday, and then it was time to leave.

Photos of North Ronaldsay.

When 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.

( Words, words, words )

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?

Stromness is long and narrow, squeezed between the natural harbour of Hamnavoe and the hill - Brinkie's Brae. Much as I love it, I wouldn't call it a pretty town, though there are some pleasing perspectives as the long main street straggles along, none of which I managed to photograph. The picture I like best is atypical, because most of the houses are a drab shade of brown, and the crow stepped gables are uncommon too. But all of this side of the street backs onto the sea.

On the other side, narrow lanes snake up the hillside, and one of the steepest and narrowest of these is Khyber Pass (the internet doesn't seem to know whether there is a proper imperial rationale for this name, or whether it is entirely a joke). For the almost-week we spent in Stromness, we lived in Khyber Pass Cottage.

Walking down from Franklin Road, the new road which (thankfully) takes most of the traffic out of the town, the landmark is a gooseberry bush growing above the retaining wall, by a footpath cutting (past the garden of ther cottage, in fact) between two lanes. The next front door you come to is Khyber Pass Cottage. Go in, and the bathroom is on your left, bedroom on your right. In front of you is a spiral staircase, which you climb, a little warily at first but with growing confidence, to emerge into a single open room, sitting room to one side, kitchen to the other. The kitchen has a back door which - because the hill rises from the front to the back of the house, as well as side to side - opens onto the garden: a pocket-handkerchief of lawn, a bench, a clump of rhubarb.

Four rooms, wrapped snug as a snail in its shell around that central spiral, but it felt very spacious for two. Downstairs is enclosed: the windows face onto the high wall across the narrow Khyber Pass, but upstairs feels light and airy. "Do you have a view?" someone asked us. "Can you see down to the harbour?" I had to think about that: there's a view across grey-tiled roofs, but you can't see anything beyond them - unless the Hamnavoe, the big ferry, is in port, towering about the rooftops (and then you can hear the ship's announcements, too).

I didn't want to leave - but it was time to move on to North Ronaldsay.

ETA: Orquil on Flickr has a better photo of Stromness:

The Main Street Of Stromness, a photo by orquil on Flickr.

One last visit to a stony little beach, from which we watched the ferry emerge from Scapa Flow into the bay - time to board!

We left the islands in sunshine on smooth seas, disturbed only by a cacophony of car alarms (not ours, fortunately; we have learned how to turn it off). We sat on the sun deck and watched the islands pass by.

And now we are in the Highlands, at the Balavil Hotel in Newtonmore, where the internet consents to speak to me (that at the Creel didn't, for some reason; it preferred

durham_rambler). But it must be time for dinner...

Home tomorrow.

We are on North Ronaldsay: ( and this is how we got here. )

But first we had most of a week on Mainland, and did many things: ( which I will hide behind a cut to save your f-page. )

Our almost-week in Stromness has flown by; tomorrow we leave our home in the Khyber Pass and take the plane from Kirkwall to North Ronaldsay. But here's what I wrote soon after we arrived:

The sun was shining
Every other shop window was decorated wih a tribute to John Rae, who is, as I have said before, one of my heroes.: A month or so ago, looking for something else, I stumbled over the fact that the bicentenary of Rae's birth falls in September this year, and muttered to myself that despite the passion of the media for commemmorating annversaries, this one looked likely to pass unnoticed. But not in Stromness, where the museum has expanded its habitual display about him into a mini-exhibition, where there is talk of erecting a statue and where the shop windows carry displays ranging from the seriously educational (the pharmacist's display of the historical medical and navigational aids relevant to Rae's service as a doctor for the Hudson Bay Company) to the cheerfully minimalist (the whitewashed window inscribed 'John Rae in a BLIZZARD in Stromness in summer 1833')
They had laid on a parade to greet us.: We had managed to arrive for the culmination of Stromness Shopping week, whatever that is, and were in time for the parade of floats. While we waited for the show, we listened to the band, Genuine Draft, working their way with gusto and some nifty fiddle playing, through an eclectic repertoire: their first three numbers were Dirty Old Town, the Eagles' Take it Easy and "an old Country song" which turned out to be On the Bayou.

The parade was another glorious mixture: there was a pipe band - in fact, two - a squad of purple robed Vikings, small children labelled 'William' and 'Kate' with a pushchair containing 'George', and elaborate floats making complex allusions to the misdeeds of Northlink ('Nolink') ferries. Later there were fireworks*, but we didn't stay for that - we came home and cooked pasta with the smoked mussels we'd bought at the Farmers'Market in Kirkwall that morning.

*ETA: in fact there weren't. This morning's Orcadian reports that the fireworks were cancelled because of the mist - so it's as well we didn't wait up.

Photos of Stromness

I'm in Stromness Library, where they have wi-fi - with such super security that I can't access my webmail. No obligation to do work, then, just on with the next installment of our travels. Here's one I prepared earlier:

It had rained overnight, and seemed to have cleared as we left Tain, crossing the Dornoch Firth in a gleam of silver and into woodlands, the roadsides still busy with flowers, meadowsweet again and spikes of foxgloves, as many white as purple. The fog came down as we drove into the Highlands, not just to treetop height this time but blanking out sometimes even the middle distance, sometimes everything but the road. We made good time, and allowed ourselves a quick stop in Wick, with the aim of picking up provisions for picnics for the next couple of days. I enjoyed this glimpse of the town, depressed rather than smart but quirky with it and - as the mist coalesced into a mixture of rain and sunshine - colourful too. We didn't find any convenient little food shops, though, and ended up making a quick dash through Tesco's.

After this it was mainly ferries. Pentland Ferries' new catamaran crosses from Gill's Bay (a place unknown to our satnav, but well signposted) to St Margaret's Hope. Despite the grey weather, I was grinning like a loon all the way up to Kirkwall, across the Churchhill Barriers, just so happy to be here. By the time we'd confirmed and paid for our reservations for Eday at the ferry office, it was after half past two and we had less than an hour to wait for the ferry, but that gave us time to cross the road to the Shore and lunch on soup for me and a burger for

durham_rambler. The crossing to Eday was uneventful; not exactly misty, not exactly raining, but too close to both to make me want to sit on deck and watch the islands come and go. I huddled in the saloon with my book.

We stayed on Eday at Sui Generis, home of furniture maker extraordinaire Colin Kerr. Colin and Sherry have adapted and extended what was, I suspect, the furniture showroom, to create two bedrooms and the communal sitting / eating area in which I typed the first section of this post. The décor is indeed sui generis, one of a kind, full of beautiful and interesting things of all kinds, from the green men peeping out of corners to the framed and fitted bookshelves that line the passage to our room. I lie on my back on the bed and gaze at the ceiling, green stained and ribbed with wooden beams in flowing natural shapes. The downside is that everything is so perfectly fitted to itself, there isn't necessarily room for our many belongings. The toilet is down the hall, which isn't a problem, because we have the place to ourselves, but I'm selfishly glad the other room isn't occupied.

Sherry doesn't offer evening meals, but because the Roadside Inn was fully booked for both nights of our stay, she very kindly made dinner for us on our first night. After dinner we went out for a walk - I'd envisaged just going down to the jetty and back, but we ended up doing a two mile loop along the road to the Roadside Inn and back. On our way we saw a hand-made sign pointing to Green Farm archaeological dig, and apparently inviting visitors.

That was our morning sorted: we had no trouble locating the site, which seemed to be deserted, so we nosed around a bit and were just heading back to the car, when one of the archaeologists arrived. They hadn't planned to be working that morning: since you have to take a day off occasionally, you might as well do it while it's raining. But since he was here (to collect some stuff and see if he could get anything planned for the next few days) he gave us the tour. It's quite a small dig, a small-scale domestic structure (a neolithic dwelling), which the team have, over the past seven seasons, exacavated almost completely, which was very satisfying.

After this we visited the shop, the heritage centre and the airport - London Airport, because it's on the Bay of London. I like the way airports in the Northern Isles are left unlocked as public conveniences: it's very considerate of them, and I appreciate it.

The rain, which was getting serious by the end of the morning, seemed to have eased off by the time we had had lunch, and we decided that rather than try to shuffle by car between those points of interest that are accessible by the road, we would stick with plan A and follow the 'heritage walk' put together by the Council. Just as we were setting off, a tiny animal - much smaller than one of the numerous rabbits - ran across the road in front of us: was it the Orkney Vole? That would be a good omen.

The walk is about five miles long, which wouldn't be much if there weren't so much to see along the way. In the first 20 minutes we covered about a hundred yards - as far as the bird hide overlooking Mill Loch. Actually, I think bird hides are wasted on me: they are great for serious birders with serious binoculars, who will put in the time to wait for the desired sighting, and who will know they have seen it when they do. We sat in the hide and discussed whether the birds we could almost see were seagulls or skuas (some of each, when viewed by

durham_rambler's camera), and what that flock of even more distant waterfowl were (mallard, probably). Then we emerged and were buzzed by two families of low-flying geese in rapid succession. They may even have been the red throated divers which are the local rarity - I'm certainly not competent to say that they weren't (or that the vole wasn't an Orkney Vole)...

Up the grassy track to the Stone of Setter, a magnificent standing stone, like a raised sandstone hand in a badly-knitted mitten of lichen. From here the path climbs in quick succession to a stalled cairn, a chambered cairn (waterlogged), and Vinquoy chambered cairn: think of a miniature version of Maes Howe, a beehive of red sandstone dripping damp and colonised by ferns, wonderful and well worth the crawling required to negotiate the entrance. But we had entered in pleasantly hazy light, and we emerged a quarter hour later into heavy fog. This obliterated all the fine views over the Calf of Eday about which my guide book was so lyrical, and made the next stretch of the path over heather upland quite unnerving. We lost the path a couple of times, but found it again - or found an acceptable substitute, and stumbled out of the thickest cloud down the grassy slope between the lighthouse and Carrick House.

We'd cut the walk short (by not pressing on to the headland) but were still quite weary, and the last long stretch of road work back to the car was stretching very long indeed - when a kind motorist stopped and offered us a lift. We were only a quarter mile from our destination, but we were very glad to accept, not only the lift, but a recomendation of a beach to visit "past where I live..." Well, perhaps - we added it to the list of things we wanted to fit in before the next day's ferry back to Mainland.

By the small hours of next morning, it was evident that we had no electricity; over breakfast we learned that this wasn't just our room, not just this household, not even just Eday, but the whole of the North Isles. A major cable had been damaged, generators would be shipped out, it was hoped the supply would be restored by the end of the day. Meanwhile, thank goodness for calor gas!

Undeterred, we packed our belongings, made our sandwiches and set off. We had seen a reference at the heritage centre to the Red House Restoration Project, at a croft in the north west of the island. After some hesitation, we parked outside the closed tearoom, abandoned except for a very bouncy puppy, and followed the waymarks across the hay meadow to the croft. There were information boards to read, but no sign that anyone had been there recently, no tracks in the thick grass- and did I mention the mist shrouding the hillside? I loved it, and took lots of photos.

We took the advice of our rescuer of the previous day, and webnt up to Castles Beach, which was charming; we returned to the Bay of London (by the airport) and took our sandwiches down to where the old road went straight ahead into the sea, before the bay was formed; we drove south until the road ran out of island, and followed the Warness Walk round the cliffs, which ought to have been wonderful, but was hard work because the path was well enough worn to be a narrow groove, and sufficiently overgrown that you couldn't see where the groove was. Puffins nest in the grass covered cliffs known as the Greeny Faces, but we didn't see any. Nor did we see any of the splendid views of the Green Holms (fog, still). And then it was time to go down to the jetty and meet the ferry. We were pleased to see that it was bringing a generator - two, in fact, because the voyage to Kirkwall was via Stronsay (no, this is not the most direct route) and the ferry had Stronsay's generator, too.

When we finally reached Kirkwall, the sun was shining, but our adventures weren't quite over, because the West End Hotel, which we had booked well in advance, had decided to bounce us out to "the house", accommodation a mile away, perfectly adequate for an overnight, but not the return to normality we had been looking forward to. This was a mere hiccup, though, and everything has gone well since...

ETA: Green Farm excavation dig diary
Photos of Eday

*Pronounced EEdee, not eDAY. I hadn't known that.

So far, so good: we are in Tain.

The forecast for the last couple of days has been that the hot weather would give way imminently to thunderous storms. Our weather had already cooled to tolerable, but the thunderstorms were reportedly travelling up the country. Meanwhile the staff of Orkney Island Ferries are in dispute with the employer, and are working to rule.

Never mind. It's a long drive up from Durham - we set off at eleven this morning, and were here just before seven. We took the A68 up through Northumberland, between verges frothing with cow parsley and meadowsweet, and crossed the border at Carter Bar, under darkening skies. A break for lunch at Earlsdon, a petrol stop at Edinburgh, and as we drove on through the highlands the showers stopped and the mists closed in, veiling the firths and hanging low above the forested hills. Very atmospheric, especially accompanied by Stewart Hardy's fiddle playing on the car CD (still a novelty, a CD player in the car).

We ate at the St Duthus Hotel, described by our host as "good pub food". The alternatives were the more upmarket Royal Hotel, and the Indian restaurant, also recommended, but it's been a long day, and good pub food sounded about right.

We shared a starter of haggis-stuffed mushrooms, battered and deep-fried (of course) and served with a really peppery pepper sauce - crisp on the outside, moist and tasty inside, if you're going to do this, here's how you do it right. The smoked haddock fishcakes were OK but didn't live up to the starter (I'm always optimistic about fishcakes, and almost always disappointed). The chocolate fudge cake was evil, but then it always is. There was a choice of three wines, pinot grigio, chardonnay or cabernet merlot (I think). I asked for a dry white, so that's chardonnay in that glass; it's surprisingly disconcerting drinking white wine from a red glass.

It's a two hour drive to the north coast, and we're booked on a lunchtime ferry, so it should be an easier drive. The storms seem to be fading; well, so long as we don't meet them in the Pentland Firth...