The trip over to Orkney was supposed to take 40 minutes, but took about an hour. Visbility sucked:
Visibility was no better on the island, and I was back to trying to take pictures from the bus. Worked as well as always. The Scapa Flow (the sea between the islands) was flat as a tack. It was like a mirror. The tour guide said he’d never seen it like that before:
Orkney doesn’t have many trees, because of the high winds. There’s a lot of agriculture – mainly cattle, though there are sheep too:
Our first proper stop was at Stromness. This town had a hour, little cobbled streets and quaint houses, including the house of Elizabeth Fraser after whom Fraser Island was named:
After Stromness, where we should have had lunch, but I was too busy taking photos and we weren’t hungry, we got back on the bus and headed off to the pre-historic part of the day.
We happened by Rambo, the Jacob Sheep – they have two sets of horns – some on top of their head pointing upwards, and some pointing downwards – they look like ears but they’re actually hors pointing down – sideways in this picture:
The first stop was Skara Brae. This site is thought to be about 5000 years old. Older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza and the Great Wall of China. It’s thought to be a farming community settlement. It’s pretty amazing to see the houses still standing after all this time. Some of them have sunk into the sea in the past, but there’s still a few left. The cost of admission was not included in the tour, and cost us 6.80 GBP (not even a student discount!):
Next was Skaill House. This was actually the house of the fellow who discovered Skara Brae 150 years ago, after it was uncovered by a hefty storm. The house was just 100m from the discovery. It’s quite nice. Just a middle-class house, built in the 1600’s:
Then it was back on the bus to the standing stones at the Ring of Brogdar. It’s quite big and has a lot of stones, all 6 degrees apart and adding up to 360 degrees. Some of them have fallen down over time and one is known to have been struck by lightning and split in half (with half lying down). The Ring is thought to represent the seasons etc and was based on the sun. Except for the first picture below, the photos are only of part of the ring:
We only passed by the Ring of Stenness. This one only had 12 stones originally and there’s only 6 left standing. These are thought to represent the phases of the moon:
Next up was passing by Maes Howe’s tomb. This can only be visited by smaller groups up to a maximum of 15 people at a time, unfortunately. But we got a glimpse as we drove past:
Next was Kirkwall. I completely forgot about wanting to see the Bishop’s and Earl’s palace, next to the cathedral, and it’s not visible from the front of the church so I didn’t see it until I was looking at my phone’s map of places I wanted to see and was reminded. We only had an hour in total and had just ordered and paid for lunch, so we had to eat that and then we hurried over to take photos of the outside. It cost money to go inside, and since they’re both ruins, we decided not to bother with the 25 minutes we had left. I just photographed the outsides:
And the Cathedral itself:
Next and final stop on the tour was the Italian Chapel. This was built by Italian prisoners-of-war during WWII. They were given a couple of those half-drum-shaped buildings and very little else. They painted all sorts of stucco and marble and bricks on the inside for the illusion of bricks and mortar and beautiful sculptures etc:
Before heading back to the boat, we stopped to take a picture of one of the barriers. These were built by the Italian prisoners and had to be 60-70m deep in some places!:
Then it was back to the harbour. Our tour guide and driver, Stuart, was very amusing and yet educational. He also seemed to be the one organising everything. There were four buses waiting there and he was the one talking to the crew of the boat and then advising us that we had to wait for an extra hour, almost, for the boat to come. It had had difficulties getting on its way to pick us up because the tide was so low, apparently:
Then it was onto the boat for the trip back to John O’Groats, with a beautiful sunset en-route:
We just drove back to the B&B and dropped off stuff and then walked down to the pub for dinner. Lucky I had my torch, because it was quite dark on the way back!
