Hermaness

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29 May 2017



There were no puffins, but we had a great day.



To start with we had a chat with a chap who was renovating the Viking house ready for a party the village was having later in the year.



Then it was a drive of the final few miles on the most northerly road in the U.K. to the Hermaness National Nature Reserve, famous for its 100,000 sea birds who nest there on the moors and cliffs at this time of the year. As we walked across the peaty ground on duckboards we saw several great skuas who are known to dive bomb humans to protect their nest sites, but fortunately they left us alone. When we reached the cliffs, we saw lots of different nesting birds, but were particularly impressed by the colonies of about 30,000 raucous and smelly gannets some of whom we saw diving for fish. What we didn’t see were the thousands of puffins, they were all in their burrows incubating their eggs.



Later, whilst we were stopped in the van for a coffee, an old man drove up in a car, walked behind a wall and came back with a bunch of wild rhubarb! So, I investigated and we had rhubarb for supper.



Our last stop on a busy day was the Keen of Hamar, a barren area of serpentine rocks which was probably how much of Northern Europe looked after the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. We spent a happy hour admiring the many miniature flowers that grow in the rocky soil.



For our night stop we found a superb spot by the ruined St Olaf’s Kirk overlooking the wonderful Lund beach.

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