End of our holiday

Our last two days in Orkney were spent taking in a few sites and habitats we hadn't been to before. Antonia and I went and explored a burn and 'wood' near the airport. A wood on Orkney of a thin line of trees on either side of the river, where it has cut deep enough into the land to offer some shelter. We went for a couple of little walks, visited the eagle's tomb and the sights of Kirkwall. We failed to find a groatie buckie, but we've done pretty well otherwise. Antonia has done enough of her Orkney Nature Detectives book to earn a silver award. That's pretty good for a week's work, and I don't think it would have been possible if we hadn't had a strong prior interest in natural history. To get a gold award, you really need to live in Orkney, at least for a few months! Our transport between Orkney and Inverness doubles as a tour bus, so we had a last sight as we were leaving, the bus stopped at the Italian Chapel, decorated by Italian prisoners of war who were brought to construct the causeways. It is quite a moving place.

I thought as a model for our longer term trips, this trip to Orkney worked quite well. It's nice to have a house and few time pressures so you can just hang out, and even decide to stay in for a whole day. The great thing about self-catering homes is that you have all the advantages of being at home but none of the disadvantages in terms of lots of housework and administration to take care of. Mike got some work done, once he managed to get the internet fixed and I was pleased with the roadschooling aspect. We had enough time to get some traditional work done as well as the Orkney nature project which was very valuable.

Now we're on a really slow train between Inverness and Edinburgh, so we're getting to see a whole other bit of Scotland. Antonia and I have a bit more holiday with my parents, but Mike is heading back to London, then home tomorrow. We are already starting to think about what we have to do next in the way of doing our house up.

Orkney West Mainland

Proof of puffins!

There's something about wind when you're not used to it that's completely exhausting. Orkney did the wind thing on us today. It blew so hard that the weather fronts sailed over fast enough that we had everything two or three times: clouds, rain, and bright sunshine. It was just like those unbelievable weather icons that try to show every possible weather type in one picture. By the time I got home, I needed warm food, a large glass of wine and a bath, just to restore my body's reserves! Anyhow, today was our big touring day. We went to the Ring of Brodgar, the Brough of Birsay and the Broch of Gurness. The last two were places on our Orkney Explorer passes. The Ring of Brodgar is part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney complex. In between all that we went and searched for Groatie Buckies or European Cowries on Aikerness Beach, but although we found just about everything else there, we drew a total blank on cowries. If you wanted periwinkles, all you have to do is put your hand down and scoop, and up they come, in every possible colour. The people staffing the Broch of Gurness told us cowries were more common in winter. Oh well! At least we found hermit crabs and shore crabs in abundance today, so that just about makes up for it.

We also spent a certain amount of the day instinctively looking for shelter. It's incredible how exposed a great flat tabletop of grass such as the Brough of Birsay can be, but fortunately, nearer the sea there are all kinds of collapsed bits. We hid in one of them for lunch, and Antonia and I hid in another while Mike leaned over a high cliff getting a really good shot of some cooperative puffins. Lucky Antonia had already seen some, because we weren't too keen on having her so near the cliff edge. I think the strangest things of our day were seeing a party of teenagers in full swimming gear walking across the Brough of Birsay causeway soaking wet through. They had clearly been swmming, but they weren't getting any drier just then, because it was raining hard and the windchill factor was intense. They looked cold. So did we, and we were in all of our warmest gear. Mike was wearing his New Zealand hat under his North Face jacket hood and his scarf wrapped around all that. I was envying the scarf. The other strange thing was a chilling tableau someone had constructed at the end of the causeway. A freshly dead decapitated swan lay spreadeagled in front of a tombstone that had been constructed from the local beach pepples. Ugghh! what were they thinking. Orkney is wild enough that there are plenty of carcasses around, especially of birds, and I can cope with that, but there's something about this 'iinstallation' that's quite freaky. I suppose the person who built it had a different view, and I know Mike finds our biology-orientated interest in dead animals a bit icky.

Orkney working day

This was really a working day, at least it was supposed to be. It was more a day for discovering that Antonia is totally disinterested in anything except natural history (and poetry), and that only in a haphazard, low-concentration kind of way. Anything that has to do with people or technology or thinking about something for more than three minutes in a row gets impolitely ignored. I suppose she did learn a few things about doing research on the internet. Mind you, I am not such a great example. We went for a short walk to Lerwick Head, and I made Mike stop the car twice: once to photograph a lapwing, and another to photograph a curlew. I have a nice collection of bird photos, but they all need cropping. Antonia did not really come into her own until about 5pm when she started collecting and drawing grasses. Mike got lots of work done today as well.

Orkney has the healthiest seaweed biodiversity of any place I have ever been to. I found several more kinds today, including some that look like mushrooms. It's certainly pretty good for birds as well.

Orkney Ancient History

We drove to Skara Brae on the West Mainland to see the major neolithic sites. As we passed Finstown, the skies cleared to a beautiful blue. The four wold heritage sites lie on a line approximately between two large freshwater lochs, and we had dazzling views of the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar as we drove through. Lucky, because we didn't really end up with time to go and seem them. We spent a while at Skara Brae. I already knew quite a bit about the site so there were few surprises. The little museum and reconstructed house were unexpected and very nice to visit. We also went to 'the finest neolithic tomb in Europe' and saw Viking graffiti along the lines of "Ineberge is the fittest woman" and a dragon.

After a very late lunch, wee returned to our local beach, the thin natural causeway between East Mainland and the near island of Deerness. On the rocky side we found only the usual things, though I did find several new species of seaweed I didn't get to yesterday. I watched the tide a bit anxiously, knowing that it was coming in, upredictably due to the uneven shoreline and the mist. The most exciting thing that happened to us was seeing one of the piractical birds, perhaps a skua, actually attacking an ordinary gull (as in David Attenborough!). The two flew low over our heads for about a minute, both crying loudly. I couldn't tell why the skua was pursuing the gull, in any case it got away. Of course, the camera had about five things that needed adjusting before it could even think about taking a picture, so I didn't stand a chance. Oh and we also found the highly decomposed carcass of a seal pup (I think). Yuck!


We walked out into the broad stretches of the lagoon and had soon lost the road behind us in the mists. I wasn't too afraid that we would lose our way. Every so often, a car would rumble unseen on the road behind us. Even if there had been no road, the mounds of seaweed lay with their fronds pointing inland. Drifts of white shells had been trapped behind them, in a small triangle protected from the outgoing tide. It was still a strange feeling to be lost in the endless grey of sky, and wet sand. Every so often the sun would dominate, and light up the mists around us to a golden glow. Anywhere further south, it would have burned through in minutes. At other times, we would find ourselves in denser fog, with fine droplets blowing against our faces. The mounds of yellowish brown seaweed and the tiny coiled cones of the lugworms as our only landmarks. Antonia noticed these were of a different colour from the sand around them. We found out that the top sand is a golden brown colour, whilst only a little way down, it turns dark grey. We found that out because, despite her disdain of Neolithic houses, Antonia obviously has some ancestral instincts lurking deep within her. She discovered that she could crack the cockles open on a rock - there is one rock, it seems, in the whole lagoon. But most of the cockles were empty, and were only hard to open at all because they were held together with algae. So then she learned that she could find live ones by digging. So she dug and cracked quite happily for more than half an hour, with her hair trailing in the sand. I think she might have done quite well living at Skara Brae, though it certainly more comfortable to have warm baths and bread and jam at home.

Orkney Natural History

Antonia at work, drawing seaweed

We got down to some serious natural history work today. After a bit of maths over the Internet (which blissfully worked for about half an hour), Antonia and I went down to the beach to study seaweed and various other things. We spent the first hour generally beach hunting, and the next hour drawing and writing about all the kinds of seaweed we could. For written resources, all we have are a seashore sticker book, an Orkney nature detective book and some natural history leaflets about Orkney. It seems like nearly nothing, but it's enough.

After lunch, we dragged Mike out for a hike around Mull Head on Deerness. We really excelled ourselves on this one. It was a five kilometre hike, and it took us five hours. That's because we did some serious bird watching and also tried to get to grips with our camera. The first part went very well. We were excited to see puffins for real, and also some razorbills. I don't think we would have found them without the help of the real birdwatchers on the cliffs. The camera, we are having trouble with that. We are just about in a position to prove we have seen puffins, but not until I'm able to crop and sharpen them up in photoshop.

Cute, but not a puffin!

In the meantime, the clouds were swept away, leaving bright blue skies. Orkney is like Iceland in that when the sun is out, it glows. And this evening, Mike might have, maybe, probably fixed the Internet. I'm sure our hosts must think we're crazy caring so much about the Internet. Our usage isn't quite what people who use the Internet a little bit must expect. Leaving Mike aside, one minute I'm looking up the weather forecast, then the tide tables. Then Antonia wants to find out what insect lives in Cuckoo Spit or what a Bloody Henry starfish looks like. Next, I want a recipe for flapjacks, or to know when Skara Brae is open, or what concerts are on at the music festival. Besides that, having the Internet gets us out of lugging books around, since we can read something on Gutenberg. It's not a case of constant usage, more constantly intermittent.

Quiet day in Orkney

It's drizzling as promised, but we spent the morning hanging around inside working anyway. Our house is a typical Orkney shape in that it seems very small on the outside and quite spacious inside. It has huge windows in almost every available space from which we can watch the ducks and chickens. Last night, I saw a curlew hovering over the farm, and this morning, a flock of sparrows came down and seemed to be feeding on the red hot poker flowers that seem so popular in the gardens here.

In the afternoon, we went out, first to the beach for a little while, where we had a good time bothering the local wildlife. Antonia is armed with a seashore sticker book and a nature detective book and she is developing a more precise view of the species she finds: they are not just 'shells', but whelks, or limpets, or periwinkles... Mike and I are trying to use our new camera, but we are not very good at it yet. It has to be said that the weather isn't really doing us any favours, and we don't have a suitable macro lens for close up nature shots. At least I can now recognise an oystercatcher whenever I see it!

It stopped raining while we were at the beach and started again just as we were setting off to visit the local whisky distillery. We've been round whisky distilleries before, but I enjoyed this one. If felt quite small and intimate, and it was interesting to be able to handle the barley, peat, and casks and smell them. I didn't know this before, but all the whisky distilleries are black becase they get covered in an alcohol consuming mould. It's funny to think that there really is an 'angel' drinking the so-called angel's share (the alcohol that evaporates out of the cask), and that it's a tiny black mould. Our guide said this mould is pleasant in summer, but gets quite slimy in winter. Also, we finally got our whisky!!! They gave us a taster and we bought a few small bottles for later.

That's about it, apart from a quick drive around and a bit of shopping. We will start exploring properly tomorrow.

Long journey to Orkney

View from Horrie Farm in Orkney

In various ways, we have worked our way through the whole of Scotland: from the border to Milngavie by train, to Fort William on foot, along the Great Glen to Inverness by coach, then up to Orkney by coach and ferry. After all that walking on the West Highland Way, it feels strange to be sitting on coaches. We had great views all the way, though I have been along Loch Ness before and I find the landscapes around there too banal for my taste. This just means that it looks a lot like the lowlands of Yorkshire where I spent several years of my life. It's very nice really, and probably quite exotic to some people. I think that Mike, for example, finds this area very attractive. We wandered around Inverness a bit in the afternoon. For the last eight days we had no time to do much except walk, wash, eat and sleep. Now that we have nothing much to do I think we're torn between creativity and exhaustion. Antonia and I started thinking of art projects, and we are all thinking (not very enthusiastically) of getting back to a bit of work when we get to Orkney.

Inverness has very good restaurants and we found a nice seafood one for dinner. The food and wine were excellent, but everyone is too tired to talk, and it's pretty tedious just sitting around eating. We might have been better off in a pub, with a football match to entertain us, though I don't think I could stand another plate of chips.

We got up in time for the 7:30 coach to Orkney which took us through beautiful countryside along lochs and firths, across new causeways, where, until a couple of decades ago, we would have had to take ferry crossings. Since this coach doubles as a tour bus, we had some commentary along the way. I was struck by two hilltop monuments, created by the landlords of the areas we passed through. One was ordered by a local lord as a way of keeping his tenants employed during a famine. The story goes that he paid a day-shift to put the monument up in the day, and a night-shift to undo their work - the idea being that they were too proud to just take the money. I couldn't make out what the monument was, but it is apparently a copy of something he had seen in India.

In the other case it was the landlord who had a problem with pride. He had his tenants erect an immense statue of himself as a 'loving' memorial. From a distance, I thought it was one of those statues of Mary that you find in southern europe, and it seemed rather out of place. This earl of Sutherland was not very popular because he was at the forefront of Highland clearances. His county of Sutherland is one of the prettiest we passed through. As we reached Caithness, it really felt a little bit like the ends of the earth. Half the houses are abandoned, and not just very old ones. It is very windy today, and the sheep and cattle, like the remaining houses, have an enduring look about them. Mostly they are lying down in little huddles. There are virtually no trees, except where householders have built fences and walls to nurture them, but not all the land is pasture either. There is a lot of black moor. Off shore, we can see a few drilling rigs, which seem to be keeping the towns going, but our commentator told us that about 150 years ago the area was the centre of a herring boom, and so overpopulated that workers were housed in horrendous conditions.

The impression of delapidation increased when we reached John O'Groats ferry terminal which consists of a few squat buildings for cafes and shops and a ruinous but very over-the-top Victorian Gothic hotel. It was freezing cold, with a strong wind, and I wished I had dressed rather differently. Our ferry, when it arrived, looked so small I thought for a while we were going to have to sit outside, but no.... We were down in the hold, on basic seats that had been bolted to the floor,with our life jackets in nets along the walls. I rather thought I wouldn't be needing mine in any circumstances, as the water would be cold enough to finish me off on contact. Being a smallish boat, our ferry went up and down rather a lot, and before long, dogs and children started getting sick. I advised Antonia to look out of the windows to try to anticipate her motion, and she pulled through, though she looked a bit pale at times. Orkney was a very welcome sight, though it was a bit of a shock when we found out that the crossing we had taken was the shortest possible one. I do know there are much larger and presumably more stable ferries than this coming into Orkney, but this is the one the Inverness bus takes you to.

In fact, we had been able to see Orkney from the mainland, it is so close, but when we actually got our feet on it, it seemed very rich and green and, well, safe. It has a less desolate feel than Caithness, although all the houses are still very sober and plain. When we got to Kirkwall, we found that everything was very close and convenient. We got all our information about what to do around here, an excellent sandwich in a cafe-come-music-centre, our hire car and our shopping, and we found our farm out in the country without any trouble. The only fly in the ointment is that it is bitterly cold here at the moment. It reminds me of the first day we spent in Iceland, when I wondered if were even going to be able to get out of the car. As soon as the wind dropped, it got reasonably warm there, and I think the same will be the case with Orkney. I hope so, because I'm looking forward to just messing around on beaches and archaeological sites and taking short walks. Though, if it rains, there is a pool table here, and plenty of other things to do.