Around Mainland - Kirkwall, United Kingdom
Kirkwall, United Kingdom
One of the great joys of the Northern Isles is that the largest island of both the Orkneys and the Shetlands is called "Mainland." I don't know what that makes the rest of Britain - let alone the Continent!!
We had booked our breakfast for 8:30 (here the choice was 8:00 or 8:30) but long before 8:30 we could hear gales of laughter from the breakfast room. We went in on time, to be faced with our host, John, and five guests all in fits of laughter about something or other. They all looked at us expectantly as we walked in, so that we felt we were going to be asked to do a comic turn or something; I said as much and the ice was very quickly broken, and we had a very jolly breakfast full of lots of teasing and joshing.
Before going out, though, we found and booked both dinner and a bed for the night - at a hotel in Kirkwall with rather mixed reviews but beggars can't be choosers. It was only available for one night, and was about the eighth establishment we tried, so we realised we will have to go back to Thurso on Thursday. Luckily we had an arrangement with Raymond that we just had to email him and let him know our dates; if he couldn't accommodate us, he'd find us somewhere. So we are alright until Friday night now. Phew! What a mission it's been, finding a bed for each night!
The weather report was predicting that the day would clear at lunchtime, so we thought we'd do the Kirkwall places first, and then see what the day held. First to St Magnus Cathedral, which we had admired from the outside. It is known as the Polychrome Cathedral, and is made of several different colours and types of stone, obviously as it has been repaired over the centuries. First built in the eleventh century by the Nordic inhabitants (hence the name) it is well before the more famous Gothic cathedrals: somber, rather dark, but very atmospheric. The sandstone portals are particularly lovely, all dissolving slowly away - the weather has actually carved some of the columns into tubes. Ancient, ancient, ancient.
Over the road is the Bishop's Palace and Earl's Palace - the Bishop and Earl apparently deadly enemies so they needed to be well fortified against one another. More than leylandii hedges! The larger and better preserved, the Bishop's Palace, was made particularly lively by the presence of several primary school classes, one in period get-up and running a sort of history day under the rather stern tutelage of their teacher, for groups of slightly younger children, so wherever we went there were groups of kids being shown interesting things or playing games. One of the games was a sort of "Simon Says" which involved running from place to place and performing some sort of action; the person who got there last or faced the wrong way was out. We were so impressed by the good sportsmanship the kids showed when their teacher said they were out: just smiled, and came over to where the "out"players were waiting, and then clapped enthusiastically for the final winner. We couldn't help wondering whether competitive little Aussies wouldn't have whined and argued, "I was there before Timmy, and Mary wasn't rubbing her head properly!"
We then had time for one museum, either the Museum of Orkney, which would doubtless have been big, clean, professional and well organised, or the Museum of the Wireless, which was small, crowded, dusty and run by doddery old volunteers. Guess which we chose?? I enjoyed seeing the wartime exhibits, which included photos of the planes my Dad flew and the radios my Mom repaired - probably the very ones!
Then we set off, intending to go to Maes Howe, the important burial tomb at the heart of the Orcadian Neolithic sites, but on the way turned off to see two things. The first was an "Earth House," which turned out to be a sort of underground cave used for storing crops for the winter, and accidentally discovered by the farmer in whose yard it is, right in amongst his barns and tractors and bales of wire. We were required to park some distance down his drive and walk the last hundred yards. Halfway along, we were greeted by a very handsome tabby cat called Tiggs (we know this because we asked; also, he had a tag around his neck) who demanded a scratch on the head in payment, and then importantly led the way to the Earthhouse, stood guard while we were underground, and then saw us safely off the property, checking that we hadn't nicked the family silver as we left. And then sat down in the middle of the drive to await the next visitors.
The second place was the Wideford Hill chambered cairn, which we thought would be just a little way off the road but turned out to be about halfway back to Kirkwall on a small secondary road. This also involved driving up a very narrow farm track and on up into the cloud and mist of Wideford Hill. Right at the top we found a lot of radio and TV antennas, and an old cottage, but no chambered cairn, and so after a fair bit of tromping about in very wet heather, we went back to where we had seen a parked car, and there found an information board and map showing a map of the short walk to the cairn. It felt quite adventurous, setting off into the lifting and lowering mist and rain of a real Orcadian day, tromping through the springy heather. Just before we got there, we stood waiting at a fencepost for the only other person we saw, a young Canadian photographer, to labour up the narrow path towards us and realised the fencepost, and a fallen gate near it, were decorated in that weird knitted graffiti - who carefully measures a fencepost miles off the beaten track, goes home, knits it a hat, and brings it back???
The cairn itself was interesting because you could take a torch (rather weak) from a closed box, open a latched hatch and scramble down into the dark space, from which, if you had been willing to get even wetter and filthier than we already were, you could have wriggled on your tummy into the three side chambers. I suppose someone who constructs something like that way up on a wet and heathery hillside is even dafter than someone who knits hats for fenceposts.
On the way down we had two interesting encounters with cars trying to come up, and nowhere for us to pass. In the first case we were able to back up about 20m and squeeze ourselves onto a tiny bit of verge, just enough for the other guy to pass; the second one was more hair-raising as it involved a convoy of four big 4x4s all going up for a photographic meet (to take photos of the inside of clouds??) and as soon as I had backed up opposite a farm gate which would have given them space to squeeze round, another car came down behind me and caused a complete logjam. Gray had to get out without his jacket in the drizzle and try to guide the idiot woman back to where we had parked for our walk, which took some time as she was pretty incompetent, before the photographers could pass.
And so to Maes Howe! Except, o woe, it would appear that one has to go as part of a tour group, and today's tours were all full. No amount of pathetic looks and pleading would change the hard hearts of the neckless guide, (built like the side of a barn) the problem being not so much the number of people on the tour as the number of cars in the carpark; apparently the Council will only allow six cars at a time, and there was no space for us. We were very sad, as we had been planning this visit since our arrival, but kept thinking we should do something else first for some or other reason, not knowing that there was any limit on when you could visit.
Instead, we took some advice and looked at our map and set out for a most wonderful afternoon of unplanned and serendipitous places.
First the village of Dounbey, where we had a nice cuppa, and then set off on a small road across the moors, which were quite beautiful as the heather is starting to go golden (the purple flowers appear to dry and go golden; the leaves don't change colour) and there were huge ditches where peat was being dug. Our destination was the Brough (fortified settlement) of Gurness, on the northern coast of Mainland. It was a place I'd seen in a postcard in the Bishop's Palace shop that morning, and wished we'd had time to visit.
First problem was finding it. We drove up and down, and the most promising sign (or was it an omen?) was one pointing in the right direction, to the WC. So we went there, parked, and found ourselves on the far side of the Sands of Evie, which the neckless fellow at Maes Howe had said was a lovely walk. We hadn't planned to do it, but if we wanted to get to the Brough, it would seem we were going to. It was lovely, and a complete change from our earlier walk, along a rutted ditrt road and then the beach... and onto the tar road that we should have been on, with a car park right outside the Brough.
The Brough of Gurness is probably one of my favourite places on Orkney - I felt it left Skara Brae in the shade. It was much better preserved, less visited (we only saw one other couple while we were there, and two women with a dog arrived as we were leaving) and much, much more accessible, as one was allowed to wander into all the structures including the great central structure. It was also far more extensive - Skara Brae is only about five houses, whereas this is a large settlement, and with a most wonderful processional entrance to the main structure.
Back to the car along the beach; by now it was getting on and we had a dinner booking back in Kirkwall, on the far side of the island, for 7pm which we wanted to be on time for as the lady who had taken my booking had said there was a party of twelve booked for 7:30pm. But on the north western corner of the island is another Brough, Birsay, which is famous for being the one that is on an island cut off by the rising tide, and our neckless friend had told us that the tide would be out from about 5pm to 9pm. So we thought we would at least drive past and see what we could see, and indeed it was only a short distance across the fascinating seafloor, some of it on a seaweedy concrete path raised above the rockpools. The rocks in the gap between the mainland and Birsay are just wonderful - all sorts of different layers of sandstone, tilted up so that you can see the different types all laid out like a fanned deck of cards. And the kelp, instead of being just that long brownish stuff that one finds all along the Cape coasts, comes in about five different species, thick and thin, flat and curly, and a range of wonderful colours from creamy white through pink to mahogany brown.
The Brough of Birsay includes a rather fine little church with stone benches around the edge and some of its round apse still standing, and a lot of little houses all set in an emerald lawn on the slope of the island.
And so back to Kirkwall, where we found the hotel that we had expected to be a little dodgy to be absolutely wonderful, very old and gracious, with huge rooms packed with old furniture and books and decanters of whisky - just like staying with a wealthy elderly relative. Although decent modern bathrooms! The staff were sweet, and soon had us sitting in comfort in a comfy, quiet bar, with a drink in one hand and a menu in the other; half an hour later we enjoyed a delicious, rather too large, dinner and waddled off to bed after a surprisingly lovely day.