Scotland 2007, Day 9, Thurso

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Saturday, August 4th - Thurso:

I go down to breakfast a little later than mom and John and sit at a table with David and George. After about 15 minutes, I give up on ever getting a waiter to take our order, so I finish my cereal and take off for the room.

Went to the Orkney Islands, the most northern point in Scotland. We took a 40 minute ferry ride from John O’Groats (Dunnet Head) to South Ronaldsay where we met up with our local driver/tour guide for the day. I’m horrible, I can’t remember his name, but I do remember his accent (in my humble opinion) was impossible to understand. Very Nordic sounding, but with a lot of Scottish too. Mom asked him, at one point, if they did the Highland games up here and he replied, I’ll sum it up: NO. Got the impression that the Orkney Islands wish they were part of Scandinavia still and not Scotland (I can’t remember the story- but basically they were handed over to the UK for some reason some years ago).

The islands are connected by bridges (so no need to continue with a boat ride) and during WWII, boats were sunk in the harbor in order to keep the German boats out (they’d try to get in and they’d hit a sunken boat and sink themselves). It was odd to see the tops/bottoms/sides of rusted old boats sitting in the water. Eerie would be another word. I believe this was a successful ploy, until a German submarine managed its way in and did a good amount of damage. As usual, my brain kind of wandered during the history portions, but I’m pretty sure I got it right. If not, oh well- go look it up on Google.

So, we drove to the Italian Chapel which was“built by prisoners of war in 1943 from scrap metal, concrete, and other materials”. They turned a basic tin shed, into a piece of art. Everything inside is painted, there aren’t tiles, it’s just very 3D. After that, we went to see the Ring of Brodgar, “the Orkney’s Stonehenge”. To quote Izzard, “no one knows what the fuck a henge is.” It was very interesting to see- you have to wonder if it had some cosmic meaning when they were building it, or if they had a Andy Warhol of their own who decided to plant a bunch of slabs of rocks. Hey, we had the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, anything is possible.

We then went to Skara Brae where we saw the remains of a “5000-year-old Neolithic village”. In 1850, this was all buried under sand. But a huge storm blew in and between the high tide and the winds, the sand was blown off the beach and this was revealed. I was surprised by how organized the dwellings were- I picture more caveman dwellings I guess. You can also tour the house of William Watt, who was the laird of the land in 1850 and started the excavations. However, mom and I took one look at the hoard of people trying to get thru the house and decided that we didn’t need to see the inside, we just wandered around outside.

Other than that, at some point we stopped at Kirkwall and attempted to do some shopping (I struck out, life is hard.) Mom found a gorgeous ring though- I plan on stealing it and resizing it next time I’m in Rochester.

We said goodbye to the Vikings and arrived back at our hotel (the Royal Hotel ) on the mainland around 6:30pm. Dinner was at the hotel at 7:30pm but we never made it. Instead we hung outside with Burt, Nancy, Joe and Bob and watched a parade! We arrived in Thurso in time for the “Thurso Gala Week” and this was the night that they crowned the Gala Queen. After that, decorated floats went along the street and collected money that goes towards various local groups (I believe this years funds went to town renovations). The floats were hilarious: Smurfs, Cats (the musical), Cowboys and Indians, Shrek, etc. Plus, there were many “characters” walking around collection donations. Mom insulted an adorable (and tall!) Scottish Indian (ha!) by saying she didn’t have any money to give him. So, she went and got some coins and we hunted him down. Her reward, a picture with one of the many men she and I would have taken home but who we quickly lost in a crowd. Personally there was a piper I was planning on kidnapping (along with Aladdin). My favorite part of the parade was the very beginning when the piper band (if that’s what you call them) started marching down the street and Burt decided to join them. I love Burt. A little while later we met up with Burt again and the four of us went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant called “Charlie Chan’s”. Great food- and a lot of it, I was in heaven. I also enjoyed the fact that while sitting at the table eating, the parade circled the main square two times and eventually the floats were abandoned in the streets. Everyone, and I do mean everyone- teens too, was either walking around drinking or holed up in a pub. After dinner, we didn’t really have the energy to continue partying so we just went up to our room. John said that he woke up at one point during the night to hear a very drunken Scotsman (oxy moron?) attempting to sing “Doe, a deer” from Sound of Music. John said that he did surprisingly well considering the state he was in.

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