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Published: October 19th 2010
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Our next adventure is Orkney. The Orkney Islands sit off the North coast of mainland Scotland, so we´re off at dawn on the train headed for Thurso. Its a beautiful journey passing more castles and lochs, seals lounging on beaches right next to the train, potential surf spots for Keith and finally the barren windswept plains of Northern Scotland.
Thurso is the end of the line, so we catch a bus the last few miles to Scrabster then its onto the ferry for the 1.5 hour trip to Orkney. From the boat we spot a range of sea birds including guillemots, skuas and gannets, as well as some porpoises and even a submarine cruising along on the surface. Now thats not something you see every day in New Zealand.
As we reach Orkney we pass by the island of Hoy, where we´re staying tonight. Greeting us is the Old Man of Hoy, Europe´s tallest sea stack (137m), standing off the tallest vertical sea cliff in Britain, St John´s Head (348m). The ferry docks at the quaint town of Stromness on Orkney Mainland, its port full of interesting fishing and dive charter boats. This is close to Scapa Flow, famous
The Bothy, Rackwick
Great free accommodation for its multitude of naval shipwrecks. Definately drysuit diving. But we have no time today to look around Stromness and the port, its a quick turnaround to leap on the next ferry to Hoy.
There´s no public transport on Hoy, so we´ve arranged to get to our accommodation by taxi. Our driver is a colourful local character in a gold BMW who tells us lots of stories of Hoy on the way. He points out a Bed and Breakfast at what looks like a tiny house on the opposite hillside. We would all be keen to stay there until he tells us a couple of local pranksters actually painted a door and windows on a large boulder and earlier had placed a B & B sign at the road. Lots of tourists had been sucked into walking through the quagmire only to find a painted rock!
We have the small hostel to ourselves at Rackwick, a tiny settlement with a beautiful beach and interesting houses. They are squat of solid stone construction, often with huge slabs of slate making up the roof and sometimes covered with sods of grass or heather. They blend well with the barren landscape.
One of these is a great wee free bothy on the beach. Next time we´ll pack sleeping bags. Another one near us on the hill is apparently the former home of a man who played a part in inventing women´s suspender belts. Its now a museum, set up inside as a historic house with old furniture, tools and implements which the early crofters used.
Our mission on Hoy is to walk to the Old Man. Its a pretty ´dreich´day (grey, windy, wet) when we set out, and it only gets worse. We follow the path at the top of impressive sea cliffs, but in the pea soup conditions we can only hear the presence of the sea below. Its bucketing down by the time the path narrows and we sense we´ve arrived in the right spot.
We creep tentatively towards the cliff edge as the mist clears slightly and we´re treated to our first close glimpse of the Old Man of Hoy. Although we´re soaked through, we all feel like these are the perfect viewing conditions. He´s very impressive looming out of the mist, even taller than our cliff top, with gannets, fulmars and guillemots circling around.
We can´t get much wetter so we also attempt a walk to Orkney´s last remaining ancient woodland. The track has turned into a stream and when we come to a real torrent of water that we´re not keen to cross we decide to settle for seeing the woodland in the distance.
We get a lift back to the wharf with our friendly taxi driver who explains a bit more about Orkney life and points out buoys marking a tidal power experiment. This could be big in the future for Orkney and could potentially provide a lot of employment in the area.
For a small island there are all sorts of things happening here and a lot of history. But today, we have to go. Its off on the ferry back to Orkney Mainland to dry out in Stromness.
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