The Orkney Tourist

Well, we did some tourist bits, but there’s loads left to do, we’ll just have to go back…

3rd July

Replica of Skara Brae

Hole perfectly sized for a 10 year old boy, but no lock and key

No hole big enough for a strapping 14 year old

The remains of the real thing

Skail House

Kayak graveyard in Stromness

What?!

5th July

    The Italian Chapel

An interesting WII PoW story, but I won’t go into the details here.

Astounding interior

One of the wrecks as we crossed the Churchill Barriers

Bronze Age site at the Tomb of the Eagles

The Original Visitor Centre

Recycling at it’s best…

      One..

…by one…

…by one…

  …they disappeared!

My interior photographs are not very good.

  10th July

Bishop’s Palace, Kirkwall

St Magnus Cathedral, well, bits of it

Inside the Earl’s Palace

11th July

  A terrible photograph of The Gloop

It was a tunnel from the sea into a cave until the roof collapsed. Or it could have been a blow hole.

The nice steps going to the Brough of Deerness

The slightly less nice steps…

There is currently an archaeological excavation at the Brough, but I didn’t get any photographs.

We made our way to the trig at Mull Head and carried on to complete a circuit. Well, for a little while, before we turned back to try to find an alternative route. The resident arctic skuas didn’t like us much, poor Aedan was dive-bombed! If I had realised they were nesting there, obviously I would have found the other path straight off, but we’d grown so accustomed to seeing them patrolling the cliff tops, I hadn’t paid attention. As soon as I saw it swooping along the moorland skyline towards Aedan, I realised my mistake and we beat a hasty retreat to find the less distinct cliff top path. Ooops. Added a little excitement to the day.

12th July

The causeway to the Brough of Birsay

This trip has to be well planned, there is a four hour window which allows you to walk the causeway to visit the Brough

The orange ant in the middle is TTS going back to the car to retrieve the picnic

14th July

  The Broch of Gurness

15th July

Waulkmill Bay

Who needs the Med?

Next, the Nature Bit

A good start

We got off to a flying start when we set off, leaving the house just before 8 am. That’s pretty good for us!

Getting on to the ferry at Scrabster

  A beautiful day as we leave the mainland behind

We’re soon passing the Old Man of Hoy

And we arrived to find a beautiful house, Burnlee

Where we could watch the wildlife from our armchairs

On our first night we watched a short-eared owl hunting over the moorland in front of the house. On the second, we watched a hen harrier. We saw them both regularly during our stay and others on our journeys around the islands. We watched dozens of hare as we ate our meals or lounged in the evening. As we explored the islands we saw seals, fulmar, puffin, gannets, common and black guillemots, shag, eider duck and just briefly, a merlin and an otter.

We did a lot of tourist stuff, a little walking, a lot of eating, a bit of shopping and some geocaching. More of that later.

(There’ll be more. I’m still organising over one thousand photographs, groan!)

Did you miss me?

Yeah, sure you did. I can hear the stampede of bloggers rushing to read the new post... Well, you can wait a while longer, I've lots to do before I can spend time writing up our activities, not least charging the camera battery so I can download a million and one photographs, then choose a couple to punctuate the post. Onwards!

It was an accident, cough.

Well, sort of. After The Challenge, I’d decided that my waterproof jacket needed a rethink. I love Montane, all three of my main jackets (waterproof, soft shell and down) are Montane and they are great, but I felt the Quattro didn’t perform as well as I would have liked. Mind you, they were challenging conditions, so I shouldn’t have felt too let down. I just felt a bit damp.

I think the  main issue was breathability, which actually could have been my own fault as I was determined to keep my Dynamo on underneath the Quattro. The Dynamo breathes brilliant, but when really, really wet, the Quattro, struggled, so between the two was damp, although my base layer was fine (merino, of course!) I should have taken off the Dynamo perhaps, but the strength of the wind made me feel cold (psychological, I’m sure). I came to the conclusion I needed to change something and as I love my Dynamo so much, it was the Quattro that had to go. At least into my day pack rather than for longer trips (if I get to do any more, honeybun…)

The plan was to try out David’s Paramo before buying one for myself. It’s obviously too big for me and that probably adds to it feeling so heavy, but I was lacking in wet weather, somewhat surprisingly, to really try it out. I had to make do with testing it’s breathability in warm, damp conditions and as it was, it seemed ok. Then, there came an opportunity and lo and behold…

Oops!

I don’t know how that happened.

Fortunately, I still had my birthday money from mum to spend. It’s neutral, so it won’t clash with any of my black gear or any of the other stuff that, er, clashes with each other.

Obviously, the reflective stripe works. Excellent.

So long as I don’t fall into a drift of grubby snow, I’ll be fine.

I don’t do things like that. No, not me. Never…

Trivia

Whilst on the Challenge, I had many pleasant chats with a lot of people, but one in particular has been bugging me ever since. Fairly near the end of my walk, on the way from Tarfside to North Water Bridge, Laura and I walked a short way with a group of chaps we’d both bumped into intermittently along the way. I walked and chatted with one of them who was being sponsored on his Challenge, (I think his name was Andy, but I’m rubbish with names) and we were talking about a small market town in Lincolnshire, Louth. We got to talking about well known figures that came from or who had lived there or had connections in the area and I mentioned an actor who crops up all over the place and has recently played a professor in the Harry Potter films, but I couldn’t think of his name (no surprise there then…)

His name came to me in a blinding flash whilst I was in the hotel room at The Park, but of course, the moment had passed and the information was now immaterial. Now, however, I can’t get the name out of my head! I’m hoping that once I’ve declared it out loud, it will leave me alone.

Jim Broadbent.

There you go.

Hopefully, I can happily forget it again now.