A whole lot of history coming up today, as we explore some of the best preserved neolithic sites in Europe! Also, and I think I’ve said this before, the nice thing about staying in a Bed and Breakfast is getting a cooked breakfast before we set off. It’s a nice way to start the day, especially when you’re not sure when lunch is going to be! The nice thing about doing a group tour as well is that you get picked up, so I didn’t have to hike into town to meet the bus this time (which admittedly isn’t too long of a hike but still).
This may end up being a bit of a quick one, as I’m starting to run out of time if I want to get enough sleep before tomorrow’s trip back to Inverness. (And I probably won’t be getting much sleep tomorrow night as we arrive into Inverness around 7pm and I need to be up at about 3am I think to get to the airport on time…
Not the best weather today at all, but it had it’s up and downs, as we’ll see. Our first top for the day was the Stenness stones – a set of standing stones thought to be among the oldest in the British Isles. It is estimated that work began on the circle around 3100BC, and originally there were 12 stones inside an earthen ditch. Now only 4 remain standing. Although they are fairly thin, around 30cm, they are around 5m high, so shaping them, transporting them and planting them upright must have taken a lot of work, and it remains an impressive sight. It was here that we started to encounter the vagaries of Scottish, and in particular, Orcadian weather – even though the rain was light, the strong winds typical to this area meant that it stung when it hit exposed skin! We hurried back to the bus and then headed for an even more impressive site – the Ring of Brodgar. Whereas the Stenness stones only have 4 remaining, Brodgar has 27 remaining out of 60 original stones. It’s also around 100m across, and is estimated to have been constructed between 2500BC and 2000BC. Unfortunately the rain and wind really picked up here, so although Helen lead us in walking around the whole ring, we got quite wet doing it, and I haven’t got too many photos for fear of getting my camera wet! It was an amazing thing to see though, and one benefit of the weather was that we were the only ones there!
Once we were back in the bus with the heater on, we made for Kirbuster Museum, the highlight of which is a ‘firehoose’ from around 1595 that has barely been restored (the old roof beams were replaced with old GPO telegraph poles in the 1960’s and the original roof reinstalled and that’s about it). It’s interesting to see how the room has a ‘fire-back’ in the middle of the room, rather than against a wall with a chimney, which would come later. There was also a peat fire burning, and although it was filling the room with quite a bit of smoke until the wind could suck it out of the opening in the roof, it also made it nice and warm, which was a nice change from outside! The museum also has some of the North Ronaldsay sheep, which is a breed that eventually evolved to be able to survive on the seaweed washed up on the islands. Interestingly, their diet apparently gives the meat a very salty flavour.
After a quick stop at a town called Twatt (because c’mon, we had to), the next place on the list was a place called Birsay, which has some amazing views over the cliffs, and also some amazing wind. (Astonishingly, that wasn’t the worst wind we would face today.) The wind did mean there were some great views of waves rolling in and crashing against the cliffs though!
And then, finally, we were on our way to Skara Brae, which has been on my bucket list for quite a number of years now. So you can imagine my disappointment when we arrived to find that they’d had to close the site due to the weather. Given it’s right by the ocean and there’s quite a drop between the walkways and the site itself, you can understand why they had to, but it wasn’t the best news for us. Some parts of the site were open, including a reconstructed chamber and the nearby Skaill House, so we queued up to get tickets anyway. You can probably also imagine our relief when the wind died down and they opened the village again as we were getting our tickets! We pretty much rushed down there as fast as we could in case they had to close it again, but luckily that didn’t happen. If you’re not familiar with Skara Brae, it is the most complete and best preserved neolithic settlement in Europe. It’s estimated that it was inhabited from around 3180BC, making it older than both the Great Pyramids in Egypt (2580BC) and Stonehenge (2400BC)! It’s almost mindboggling to be able to see the houses where people lived and worked over five thousand years ago. And the buildings are amazingly preserved – you can see the stone furniture, including beds and storage cupboards, as well as passageways between different parts of the village.
Also near Skara Brae is Skaill House, an early 17th century manor house that has been restored and opened to the public. It’s an interesting look into the life of people of that era, and worth a visit since the ticket for Skara Brae includes entry into the House. We also had time at Skara Brae to have lunch in the cafe, which was nice and enclosed out of the wind! And then we were off again. Apparently Helen thought that we hadn’t had enough wind today, as our next stop was Yesnaby cliffs. Some of us braved the gale force winds to get out of the bus and make our way (slowly, as we were going against the wind) to the edge of the carpark. The cliffs are impressive, but considering the wind was blowing the sea spray up into our faces even quite a way back from the edge, none of us were stupid enough to get too close! I’m not sure if it was raining as well or if it was just sea spray, but whatever it was stung as it hit any exposed bits of skin, so we didn’t stay out there long!
Our next stop was the town of Stromness, the second biggest town on Orney. Luckily this was a lot more sheltered, so we got a bit of a reprieve from the wind, and the rain had slackened off, as we had a look around. And then we were back on the bus and headed to our last point of call for the day – Maeshowe.
Maeshowe (Maes Howe) is an extremely well preserved neolithic cairn and passage grave. It’s a surprisingly large building (5m square by about 4m high) considering it was built around 2800BC and is made up of massive sandstone flagstones, some weighing up to 30 tons. One of the sides of the 10m long entrance passage is a single block of stone, so getting just that one part in place must have taken a lot of effort, never mind the rest of the structure! While it is an impressive site, and archaeologists are sure it was a burial chamber, no human remains exist inside Maes Howe, primarily because it was looted by the Vikings in the 12th century and, being a particularly superstitious bunch of people, they got rid of all the bones, probably by casting them into the nearby loch. They did leave behind plenty of carvings and graffiti though – Maes Howe contains around a third of all the Viking carvings found in the UK. Most of them are just simple boasts, carved in straight runes, but there is one, the Maes Howe Dragon, which is an amazingly detailed and curved drawing. Sadly they don’t allow photos inside the chamber, so you’ll have to take my word for it! Oh and also, on the winter solstice, in December each year, there’s a shaft of sunlight that spears right through the entrance passage and on to the back of the chamber wall. When it was originally built, this light would reach into the far back chamber, but 5000 years of the Earth tilting on it’s axis means that the light now misses the hole in the back of the main chamber and illuminates the wall next to it instead. Eventually, the Earth will shift enough that the light won’t even make it into the entrance passage any more, but we’ll all be long dead and gone before that happens.
Maes Howe is also an amazingly sheltered chamber, as we found out when we emerged from the entrance passage into a heck of a rain storm. Rain as heavy as it’s been all day and wind driving that rain almost sideways. Unfortunately for us it’s quite a walk from the tomb back to where the local bus was waiting to take us back to the visitor centre. We were all absolutely, thoroughly soaked by the time we got back to the local bus. Helen had been waiting in the tour bus at the visitor centre, so she was the only one of us who was nice and dry! We were very glad that this was the last stop of the day, so we were able to head right back to the B&B and have a nice hot shower and get changed.
Tomorrow could be interesting, as we’re supposed to be heading back to St Margaret’s Hope to catch the ferry back to the mainland of Scotland and then drive back down to Inverness. As I write this though, around 9.30pm Saturday night, Pentland Ferries has cancelled the first sailing at 0745 tomorrow morning due to weather. We’re booked on the 1100 ferry, so we can only hope that conditions have improved by then! Could be interesting either way, but I’m hoping we’re not too delayed, as while I would love to spend some more time in Orkney, it would mean missing my flight to Amsterdam on Monday morning… We’ll just have to wait and see!
