Plan B

The grand plan was to take the passenger ferry to Hoy and take the cliff walk to see the sea stack ‘The Old Man of Hoy,’ but a strong wind out of the south east would likely have blown us all off the cliff. So we had to find another walk and drove over to Yesnaby on the west main island, the walk would have been great but the wind was unreal so we had to abandon that one too. We ended up on a small shore walk in the Orphir area, it was windy and rainy. The pic below was taken during the short shore walk.



Skelday

My gg grandfather on my mom’s side was born in Birsay, Orkney, a fertile farming area. He was born in 1814 but I am having trouble finding the names of his parents since there does not seem to be a Parish record of his birth date or christening date. I will have to look into this further in Edinburgh. Anyway, gg grandfather gave an oral history to a granddaughter in 1899 or 1900 and in that history he said he was born on the Hillside of Birsay in the house called Skelday.

They name the farms in Orkney and the names have remained the same over the years, the farms are even on the map. Today John and I went to visit the farm Skelday. A young farmer was cleaning out the barn with his tractor when we drove in so he stopped. I told him what we were doing so he said we should go into the house to talk to his dad. The dad’s g grandfather purchased Skelday in 1868 and he knew that Spences had lived on that farm in the past but did not know which ones, there were a lot of Spences in Birsay.

The current farmers of Skelday are very friendly people so we talked about farming and whatnot. They are beef farmers, raising Angus as they bring in a premium price and they only drive JD tractors which is hilarious. The majority of their cattle are shipped by boat to Aberdeen so it makes it bit more expensive to raise cattle on Orkney. The prices have improved the last few years for them. He feeds silage and grows barley, I asked how they ever get the barley off with all the rain they get, they take it at 18 minimum and up to 25 moisture. The young guy had a wicked accent so he was difficult to understand but he said something about putting something in the barley to inhibit mould.

When John went to take a few pics of the farm the farmer gave me a tour of the barn, he had just weaned the calves so it was a bit of a racket.







Highland Park Distillery

In the afternoon we went to Highland Park Distillery for a tour. They are one of the few distilleries who malt their own barley but certainly not all of it. We visited the malting floor where the sprouted barley lays and they have a machine that drives over the barley and turns it so it does not clump together and rot. The barley looked okay, they claim all of their barley comes from Scotland as the barley grown in Orkney is not of a high enough quality. They use heather-root peat and coke in the kiln to dry and smoke the barley, the barley then takes on the smoky flavour of the peat. When they make the mash or what the hell ever it is, non-peaty barley is blended with their own to give a less peaty taste. The end result is aged in used sherry barrels from Spain. They gave us 15 year old to taste but it is a lighter and a less tasty whisky than the whisky I had with dinner the other night.

This is our last night in Orkney and it is windy and raining. Tomorrow we leave for the north of Scotland and I don’t know if we will have internet access tomorrow night.

Tomb of the Eagles

View from Wideford Hill



Wideford Chambered Cairn



Tomb of the Eagles

In 1958, a local farmer, Ronald Simison, was looking for flagstone to build corner posts for a new fence he was putting up. On his way back from the cliffs near his farm he saw a mound with a few stones sticking out so he started removing the grass and to his surprise, he discovered a wall. After a bit of digging he came across a few polished rocks that were likely tools and a button. After further digging he found a chamber which contained skulls.

He reported his finding to the authorities, the tomb was sealed up and he was promised an archaeological excavation. After waiting for 18 years and still no excavation, a loophole in the law deemed that the ownership of the tomb went to Ronald and he decided to excavate the tomb himself.

Previously, a burnt mound was also found on his land and as it was excavated, Ronald took an interest in the excavation and learned how it was done. This gave him the skills necessary to excavate the tomb.

The burnt mound was situated near a bronze age structure that is very interesting. It had a large water trough in the centre and rocks were heated in the hearth and then placed into the trough to heat the water. There was also incoming water that went into another trough while wastewater exited through the stone wall. The refuse and burnt rocks were all tossed outside; thus, the burnt mound. There is no way of knowing what the boiling water trough was used for, it could have been used to cook meat or may have had another use.

Back to the tomb, Ronald excavated the tomb and found skulls, bones and interestingly, talons and bones of the white-tailed sea eagle, thus the name, Tomb of the Eagles. Sea eagles are huge birds but are now non-existent in Orkney. They had a wing span of 7.5 feet and liked to dine on new born lambs.

Ronald is now 88 yeas of age and just retired two years ago. The Tomb of the Eagles is still owned by the family and they have an excellent guided presentation where they explain the discovery and excavation of the tomb and the structure next to the burnt mound. They run a laid back operation where they let you touch and hold tools, horn jewellery and talons. Then you head out on your own to explore the burnt mound and the tomb. They have a four wheeled dolly and a rope to gain access to the tomb if you don’t want to crawl down the passageway on your hands and knees, we all opted for the dolly. There is a great walk back to the farm via the cliffs overlooking the sea.





View of the ocean from South Ronaldsay





War Memorial, St. Margaret's Hope, South Ronaldsay

Yeah, I know, but I couldn't help myself.

Isle of Rousay

Today we took the ferry over to the Isle of Rousay as foot passengers, it is a ro-ro ferry so the cars have to back on, the drivers must be old hands at it, as they are very good at backing up. We were met by our guide Patrick, who is Irish, he has only been living on Rousay for 2.5 years but knows everything and everybody. He gave a very well informed tour, toward the end I suggested we stop at his daughter’s pub for a drink and since it was only two miles from the ferry terminal we could walk the rest of the way. The early evening was beautiful with no wind and the change to evening light on a calm sea was wonderful. We stopped in to see one more cairn on the way back to the ferry.


View Larger Map

Before leaving the Orkney mainland, we walked down a country road since we had time before the ferry departed. We came upon a wayward chicken who had escaped from her yard and was making her way down the rock wall. John caught her and put her over the fence where she belonged with the rest of the flock.

Chicken walks the wall



Rock walls are everywhere



Farm buildings



Tingwall Jetty



Isle of Rousay



Old fish houses by the sea



This rock wall is very staight and very long



Midhowe Cairn

This cairn is the largest and longest in Orkney. It is covered by a building to protect it so you get to see the outside walls as it is not covered by grass. The bottom slabs are horizontal while the walls are slabs laid in an angle in a herring-bone fashion.



Midhowe Broch

The Midhowe Broch is situated in a very good defensive position; on one side is the sea, on either side are two natural trenches in the rock filled with sea water and then the builders cut in a ditch in the landward side. This broch is very large and the guide said it was likely three times its current height.












Whisky and Haggis, What Else?

We headed out for dinner to Stromness to the Ferry Inn. Our Belgian friends and John had beer but I decided to have a local whisky, Highland Park. Single malt whisky is very different from any ‘Scotch’ I have ever drank, it is smooth and has layers of flavour. Then we all decided to have ‘Robbie Burns Chicken’ which is a chicken breast stuffed with haggis, wrapped in smoked bacon and served with a white wine and tarragon sauce. Haggis has a very distinctive flavour, quite sharp and has the texture of wet dressing. The dish was very good and we had lots of laughs while having dinner.

Birsay to Stromness

Brough of Birsay

The Brough of Birsay is a tiny tidal island off the coast near Birsay. We had to find out when low tide occurs as you have to walk across the ocean floor to reach the island. There is a concrete walkway for part of the way otherwise we would have been wading in water.

There is evidence of a pictish settlement, the picts lived in the area during the 600's and 700's. The Norse arrived and built over top the earlier pictish structures. A pictish stone was found but the original is in the museum in Edinburgh and a replica stands on Brough of Birsay. The Norse built dwellings, a church, a smithy and possibly a sauna and bathhouse. One interesting thing to note is how square the corners are and how straight the walls lie, all completed in dry stack stone.

A walk up the hill to the lighthouse gave us great views of Birsay on the main island and of the Atlantic ocean. The place is loaded with rabbits as well, we cannot seem to get away from the little beasts. The weather was fine, a bit cool but as we left it started to rain a bit.

When we walked back across the concrete walkway, a young Historic Scotland worker was scrapping the sea plant life off the walkway so we stopped to chat. He was hilarious and we had to strain our ears to understand him. He had been to Canada and told us he had never heard of Wayne Gretzky before, hahahaha. His workmates, three older men, sat in the truck on the main island the whole time we were there so John knocked on their window and said something like 'what, he works and you guys watch,' they said they were waiting for the tide to come in so they could rescue him, hahahahaha, we all had a laugh.









Skara Brae

By the time we drove over to Skara Brae it was getting windy and raining. Skara Brae was not discovered until 1850 when a huge storm stripped the grass from a mound known as Skara Brae. What the ocean revealed was a perfectly preserved village, some 5,000 years old.

Skara Brae was inhabited for 600 years, between 3,100 and 2,500 BC, but was then abandoned. There is really no way to determine why the village was abandoned but theories abound. The people who lived in Skara Brae were farmers, there is evidence that they grew barley and wheat. There was some barley put into a display case with a milling stone, of course we checked out the barley and it looked like total shit, definitely would not make malt, as John put it! The people also raised cattle, sheep and a few pigs.

Every dwelling is of the same layout so there is speculation that those who lived in this society were equals; as well, there were no weapons found. I guess the thing that freaks people out about Skara Brae is the furnishings in the dwellings, they had beds, a stone dresser, nooks built into the stone walls and a central hearth, not unlike more modern homes. The dwellings were also linked together with low passageways.

Skara Brae is a hot-spot on the tourist trail, it is more intensively managed by Historic Scotland which makes it less inviting to us. We enjoy the less visited sites with no tourist infrastructure where you can just go and look around without being roped off from this or that and without Historic Scotland guards around to tell you were you cannot go.







Stromness

This is a really neat place, in the old section by the sea the streets are very narrow and there are really interesting street names like Grieveship West and Hellihole Road.

The cannon was supposedly salvaged from the American ship `Liberty`in 1813. It was used to fire a salute to the Hudson`s Bay Company ships. HBC ships also took fresh water from the well in the other pic, they also took on young Orcadian men to work in HBC posts in Canada, such as my gg grandfather, but we will get into that later.











Maeshowe Chambered Cairn

OMFG, the most managed site by Historic Scotland, you have to be guided at set times and generally have to book ahead but not at this time of year, thankfully. There is really nothing to be guided to, you enter this cairn like all the others, via a low passageway, but this cairn is huge compared to the others we visited. There is a barrier between us and the walls so we stand like cattle wondering why the hell they do this while the guide stands on the other side. No touching the stones, no crawling through or even looking in the side chambers which, we are told, are L-shaped, they take all the fun out of it! It gets worse, the guide then puts his christian spin on the use of the cairns, complete with total bullshit theories. Interestingly, there are low passageways connecting the dwellings in Skara Brae but low passageways into a chambered cairn, according to the theorizing guide, have a religious significance and we are supposed to be reverent about it, omfg, in reality, they have no clue what the ancient people believed or did not believe.

The cairn was closed up and the Norse broke into the roof when they arrived. There are interesting Norse runes on the walls, the guide went into a long dissertation about the runes, yada, yada.

The construction of the cairn is quite something, very fine builders worked on this cairn, the dry stacked walls were built with very large stones at the lower level, they were levelled with shims so that they are actually tilted slightly out, so no water seeps in and the chamber remains dry and the corners are square. The stone slabs are very long and fit so perfectly together that one would think they had used diamond saws on them.

Sheep with a guest on board

The North Atlantic and The Iron Age

It was a wonderfully sunny day for a time, we realized we could see the Ring of Brodgar from our accommodation window, previously it had been shrouded in mist. We headed out to Marwick Head on the North Atlantic coast for a walk to Kitchener’s Memorial. The BEF in WWI was often called Kitchener’s Army because he was instrumental in recruiting the volunteer force. In 1916 he was aboard the HMS Hampshire when it struck a mine off Marwick Head, Kitchener, the officers and nearly the entire crew were lost.

This is one beautiful place, farms dot the rolling landscape and yet there are areas on the sea that are wild, treacherous and simply stunning.









The Earl’s Palace, Birsay Built between 1569 and 1579



The Broch Of Gurness

A broch is an iron age circular two-story dry stone structure, they are common in north and western Scotland. The broch has double walls with a narrow passageway in between. At certain points the walls are joined by stone slabs, this allowed the builders to gain greater wall height than with single stone walls.

Most broches were fortified dwellings, Gurness was likely built between 200 - 100 BC. There is a main chamber and several other smaller dwellings nearby.





Today we were reunited with our friends from Belgium, we looked very forward to seeing them and now they are here. They had a very long day of flying so we cooked them dinner and we have a full day planned tomorrow visiting ancient sites on Orkney.

Neolithc Orkney

Orkney is a fascinating place, you will soon see why that is. The ancient people raised huge flagstone slabs, some stones stand alone, others are in a ring. There is no way we can know what the stones meant to the ancient people, but they must certainly have represented something in their culture.

It was a pretty awful day weather-wise with strong winds and rain but we could not wait to visit the stones. We parked at the site of an old mill and went on foot to see the stones in the landscape and to see them slowly appear in the distance, the mist certainly helped with that. Normally you can see the stones for quite some distance as they are in an area surrounded by low hills. The sheer size and the force needed to erect these huge monoliths is mind boggling. It does not matter that we don’t know what they mean, that they are still here after thousands of years is enough. Carbon dating of The Stones of Stenness suggests the stones have been there since 3,100 BC. The stones...

The Barnhouse Stone



This is the first stone we saw when walking along the side of the road, it is just there, alone. However, the Barnhouse Stone is aligned with the centre axis of the inner entrance passage of Maeshowe Chambered Cairn. At midwinter solstice, when the final rays of the sun shine down the passage of Maeshowe, the sun shines directly overtop Barnhouse Stone.

The Standing Stones of Stenness





These stones are huge, it is difficult to demonstrate their size in photos, the largest is 19 feet high. It is written that there were originally 12 stones, but archeological investigation suggests the ring was never completed, now 4 stones remain. They were erected in the shape of an ellipse with a stone hearth in the centre.

The Watchstone



This is an imposing stone standing a short distance away from the Stones of Stenness, to the NW. It stands where the Stenness and Harray lochs meet, in between the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar.

Stone Farm Building



Carrying on down the road, there are two small standing stones in the yard of a home. Further on is an interesting farm yard with stone buildings with slab stone roofing.

Comet Stone



This stone stands on an oval platform to the SE of the Ring of Brodgar, we passed by this stone while walking across country to the Ring of Brodgar. It is an excellent vantage point with which to view the Ring of Brodgar.

Ring of Brodgar







This stone circle is a true circle and is incredible to experience. It is thought that there were once 60 stones in this ring, 27 remain, two were felled by lightening strikes since 1906. The stone circle is enclosed by a huge rock cut ditch, the ditch was originally 9.8 feet deep, it is estimated that 11,000 tonnes of rock had to be quarried to build the ditch.

There are two avenues to gain access to the stone circle, interestingly, everybody there, including us, walked the circle in a counter clockwise direction. The inside of the circle is covered in heather and you are not allowed to cut through, you are not supposed to cut through the ditch either but we did so before seeing the sign as we came in from across the field rather than from the parking lot across the road.

Knowe of Onston






(John, coerced to write a blog entry, writes about construction)
The location of this site was weird as the road leads right into someone’s yard, at first you think, “This is the wrong road, someone lives here.” However, once you round the corner and see the entrance, it’s fine. These structures really stand out on the landscape, as they are huge distinctive mounds. After entering the low passageway (in a low crouching position) we marvelled at the precision of the stone placement and how the walls perfectly curve inward to the ceiling. The construction techniques are sound as even the entry passage has a header stone. The inside is divided into five sections, with several side chambers.

Cuween Chambered Cairn







This cairn is on top of a high hill, and the winds were amazingly strong, to the point that we were weaving in the wind on top of the hill. The whole countryside is loaded with sheep and cattle - thus the structures are usually fenced off. The remarkable entry to this site is a double staircase up and over the fence. With our headlamps turned on, we crawled (yes, on our hands and knees) into the cairn and observed the structure. Here again we marvelled at how well the stones were placed - no gaps and no mortar, just precisely placed stones. The ceiling is made of large stones that had water droplets on them (the white dots in the picture).

Smart cattle hiding behind a rock wall out of the blast of the wind