Hm, maybe I should come up with an easier naming convention, this is starting to get unwieldy! Also – hooray! I have internet in the B&B in Kirkwall! Which is great because I have no mobile reception here.
Started the day off well with a nice cooked breakfast at the B&B in Inverness. Bit of an early start too as breakfast was at 0700 so that I could be at the tour bus by 0745. And it turns out that one of the couples on the tour was at the same B&B as me, so we met at breakfast and walked down to the bus station together. Today is the start of the 3 day Orkney Explorer tour with Rabbie’s tours. I’ve done 3 of the one day tours with Rabbie’s, one each time I’ve been in Scotland, and they’ve all been fantastic so I figured it was time to try a multi-day one. And it’s off to a great start!
While we were the last to arrive at the bus, we still managed to set off about 10 minutes early, which was nice. Our guide for the next 3 days, Helen, is fantastic – informative and funny! As we travelled northwards towards John O’Groats, Helen told us of the ‘Highland Clearances’ – the forcible eviction of Highlanders from their lands between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. In the area we were travelling through, this was ostensibly done by the Duke of Sutherland in order to provide a better life for his people, but it actually appears to have been to provide a better life for his sheep… he felt that the prime land was worth more being used for sheep farming than having tenants, and so the highlanders had to go. As a result, the population of the highlands is far less than it should be, especially in Sutherland, the area we were passing through. It seems to be a fairly dark period in Scotland’s history, and wasn’t much talked about until recently. That seems to be changing though, which is good – sweeping these sorts of things under the rug rarely ends well.
On the way we also stopped off at Dunrobin Castle, primarily built in the 1830’s as the home of the Duke of Sutherland, and is still owned by his family today. Although apparently open to the public, only 8 of the 189 rooms in the castle are accessible. We didn’t have time to go inside, so we just walked down to the edge of the sea to have a look at it. From there we were back on the road to the tip of Scotland. On the way we passed the remains of a ‘broch’, a type of iron age fort that was only built in Scotland and only between around 200BC and 200AD. There were also many farms and crofts that we passed. Interestingly, some of them even had their own wind turbines. Scotland is getting into renewable energy in a big way, including some of the largest off-shore wind farms in Europe. Given how windy the Highlands and Islands area is, it’s a good idea, and it’s interesting that farmers are making use of it as well. Helen told us that Orkney produces a large chunk of the wind power for the UK, but also pays the most for it, as the rates are based on the distance the electricity has to travel to London and back, and the Orkneys are about as far from London as you can get!
We passed through the town of Wick, and then stopped right on the coast at Duncansby Head, the most north-easterly part of the British mainland, and a great place to view the Duncansby stacks from – these great sea stacks have resisted the force of the ocean for a very long time, forming prominent spikes of rock just off the coast. From there it was a short hop along the coast to Gills, where our ferry to the Orkney Islands was leaving from. We had a short wait between checking in and driving on board the ferry, which was just enough time to eat the lunch we’d purchased at a previous rest stop. Luckily for us, we were last on the ferry which meant that we would be first off.
The crossing promised to be a bit of an interesting one, as the North Sea is rarely calm, and the part that we were crossing is where the Atlantic Ocean meets the North Sea. It got a bit rough in places, but not too bad. I spent the whole trip up on the top deck, slightly sheltered from the wind by the bridge, but holding on all the same, given some of the swells we encountered! We also sailed past the island of Stroma, which was inhabited until the 1960’s. Despite being close to the Scottish coast, the strong tides and harsh weather meant that Stroma is very isolated, and it eventually became too difficult to try and get supplies across. Although most of the residents left in the 1960’s, it wasn’t until the 1990’s that the island was completely abandoned – the lighthouse keeper and his family stayed on for 30 years until the lighthouse was finally automated. As Helen was telling us – imagine how strange it must have been to be on an island with only your neighbours abandoned houses for company… As if lighthouse keeping wasn’t lonely enough as it is!
The ferry sailed through Scapa Flow, which is quite sheltered from the worst of the tides. It was used as a naval base during both of the World Wars, and in fact it was here that in 1919, the capture German naval fleet was scuttled by it’s commander to avoid the fleet falling into British hands. 53 of the 74 ships of the High Seas Fleet were successfully sunk, and although a number of them were salvaged, there are quite a few that can still be visited today and are popular dive sites. (Incidentally, the dive company based in Stromness is called Scapa Scuba, which I think is great!)
Scapa Flow is also the final resting place of the 834 sailors of the HMS Royal Oak, a Royal Navy battleship sunk at anchor in 1939 by a German U-boat. As well as being a terrible loss of life, it was also a blow to morale, as Scapa Flow was widely believed to be impenetrable. Although the channels into the Flow were blocked by booms, nets, and deliberately sunk ships, it wasn’t enough. After the sinking, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, ordered the building of a number of barriers to add to the obstacles. These inevitably became known as ‘Churchill Barriers’, and the 4 barriers now serve as causeways linking Mainland (the main island of the Orkneys) to the southern islands, including South Ronaldsay, which was the ferry’s destination.
Because we were last on the ferry, it meant we were first off which was a bonus – not getting stuck in traffic is always nice! We made a brief stop near one of the Barriers so we could get a better look at it, and then another one at a beach near Kirkwall Airport (which is actually the originating airport of the shortest scheduled flight in the world! The plane makes a 15 minute flight from Kirkwall to the island of Westray, and then on to the neighbouring island of Papa Westray, which takes about a minute and a half. The record is actually about 53 seconds for this section of the flight!).
Then it was on to Kirkwall, the largest town of the Orkney Islands with a population of around 10,000. It’s a lovely town, and was to be our base for the next two days. We stopped first to have a quick look around and do some souvenir shopping (the last day of the tour is Sunday, and most places will be closed) and explore the magnificent 12th century cathedral of St Magnus. It’s the most northerly cathedral in the UK and although it was begun around 1137, it took 300 years or so for it to be completed. It’s an amazing building though, built of the red and yellow sandstone common to the area, and the inside contains many early gravestones from the 1600’s. It’s interesting to see how the styles of the gravestones change as the years go on.
Finally it was time to head to the B&B, after a long day of travel and history, having covered around 250km and a couple of hundred years! Tomorrow promises to be more history than travel as we head to Skara Brae, which was built even before the Great Pyramids of Egypt!
