North to the Orkney Islands

Tuesday June 13 4th full day in Scotland!  

And they have been full days!  We got going early at 6:15 to drive 90 minutes to catch the passenger ferry to the Orkney Islands. We caught it at a town called John O Grotes.  Other than the ferry, a few shops, a couple of luxury homes, small campground and a cafe or 2, there is not much there in the way of people.  But you do have a fabulous view of the North Sea and I caught a glimpse of a seal swimming in the bay.

Ready to set sail

The red dot shows you where the Orkneys are - very north

The pictures above and below are of the ferry that we took.  

On the way over we were pretty cold, but we dressed for it! 

The seas were calm and we sat on the top deck of the ferry.  After arriving at the Orkney Islands, we boarded a tour bus (that Herb had arranged) for a full day of sightseeing.  There were 39 other people on the bus, but nothing ever seemed crowded.  The islands are very far north and very remote and only 18 of the 70 islands are inhabited with about 20,000 people.  It is where the North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean.  Orkney is as close to Norway as it is to the mainland of Scotland, and in fact they belonged to Norway until 1868.  It seems like the people there identify with both countries. The main industry in Orkney is cattle.  It rarely gets over 60 degrees, but it rarely gets under 40 degrees.  Mostly it is wet and very windy.  The weather was very unusual when we were there because it was 70 degrees, no wind and sunny.  

The main 4 islands, which we toured, are connected by causeways.  These were original made by scuttled boats in WWI in the 4 eastern most waterway entrances to stop enemy attacks.  In WWII Winston Churchill directed that they become permanent and causeways were built next to the scuttled boats.  There seemed to be a lot of activity in the islands during WWII and the Quonset huts that they left behind have all been utilized for farms, stables, storage and even one was transform to a beautiful church near the end of the war.   There were just a few of the rusted scuttled boats in sight, here is one of them.

Another fun fact is that for 2 months out of the summer it does not get dark in the Orkneys, and on the flip side, in the winter for 2 months it is only light for a few hours.  

The first town we stopped in, Kirkwall (which means church by the sea), was settled in 1035.  It is the capital of Orkney and has a population of  8500. It didn’t have a lot in it, but had a picturesque harbor and a beautiful church with a bible displayed that was written in Norwegian. 

We are smiling because we got to get our first coffee since  we started our trip at 6:15.  It was 10:30 by this time. 

These are the doors of St Magnus Cathedral.  It is the oldest cathedral in Scotland, and the most northerly cathedral in the United Kingdom

Built in 1137.  Below is a picture of the inside including the Norwegian bible on the table in the foreground. 

St Magnus graveyard

While Kirkwell was small, many of the homes had charming gardens.  

After seeing more of the countryside and stopping in a town called Stromness for lunch ……….

The picture above and the 2 below show some of the countryside in Orkney.

Stromness harbor tugboats.

Enjoying free time in Stromness 

……..We headed to the Neolithic village of Skara Brae. This was inhabited from 3100BC until approximately 2500BC.  It is one of the largest preserved Neolithic sites in Northern Europe.  

On the same property on a hill above the archaeological site is an estate called Skaill House that was built soon after 1620 and added onto for many years.  It was an interesting house to look through and learn about the family, but to me, the fact about the house that was the most interesting was that it was built on an ancient graveyard, from the time of the Picts (between 1450 and 1300 years ago).  They did not know if until restoration work started in 1991.  

This is a view of what they think was a temple.

Chatting up the site’s tour guide. 

In the picture above, the big piece in the middle would be their dresser. Off to the right side, you can see the frame of one of the beds. The fire would be in the middle. 

Here is a different home with the pen for the animals to the left side. 

Skaill house is in the background. 

I was excited to find out that we were going to see rings of standing stones. First we stopped at the Ring of Brodgar circa 2700BC.  There are no stone works anywhere nearby to know where it can from or why it was there.  While it is a preserved archaeological site now, during WWII, there are pictures of tanks practicing maneuvers through the stones.  We took at least a hundred pictures because it was so cool, but here are our best five. 

Just down the road were the Stones of Stenness, circa 3200BC.  This was a smaller ring with just some of the 12 stones still standing (a farmer blew some of them up when people started coming on his land to see them).  These Stenness stones may be the oldest stone henge in the British Isles. 

Just a little further down the road is a single standing stone pointing towards an old temple opening in a large mound.  We didn’t have time to stop at these, but if you looked back, both standing stone sites and the single stone and a newly discovered temple from the same Neolithic times are all lined up one after another, spreading out for a couple of miles up the hillside.  It couldn’t be caught in picture, but it was very impressive. 

We were actually allowed to go up and touch the Stenness Stones, but again like at Clava Cairns, no one disappeared. 

Last but not least, we stopped at a tiny Italian Catholic Church.  This church was built by Italian prisoners of war, (turned allies later in the war).  It was originally a Quonset Hut, and everything in it was made by the soldiers with what they had on hand.  There was even a chandelier made out of tin cans.  It was very impressive, and I just thought of all those young men, far from home, in the middle of a war, trying (and succeeding) to make something beautiful.  

Simply called the Italian Chapel 

Most of the decorations on the wall were painted on.  I couldn’t believe that they just let us go in and nothing was behind glass or ropes!  They did tell us not to touch the walls.  

In the picture above if you look closely at the ceiling you can see some light fixtures made out of tin cans. In the picture below, it shows one of the carved out of wood, stations of the cross. 

We got back to the ferry at 5:30 and headed back across the North Sea to journey back to Dornoch.  It was really great that Herb organized this day for us!  

Mary