23/09/2023
When it comes to the best time to visit the remote Islands of Orkney off the north coast of Scotland, most people would probably pick summer with the long days and possibility of sunshine. They wouldn’t automatically think of late September edging into October, given Orkney’s propensity for wind and every conceivable form of rain.
However conventional thinking is not really the raison d'etre of the Taylor/Parry collective, so away we went from Denbigh in the early afternoon with a song in our hearts and a tank full of petrol. The roads out from Wales onto the M6 and up are straightforward when not clogged with traffic and painless to drive.
Of course it’s very easy for me to say that from the backseat, being expertly chauffeured north by Mr P but the miles passed swiftly accompanied by Mrs P’s choice of music. She appeared to have consciously or unconsciously selected a playlist exclusively populated with Murder Ballads. The songs can be split into four distinct categories
“Woman who’s been done wrong by her man”,
“Woman can’t leave her man”,
“Woman sharpens her best cleaver” and
“Yes Officer, I do have an alibi for when my husband was dismembered and the remains scattered in the lake. No fingerprints you say? How odd”.
The miles passed quickly in good company and we were soon over the border, pulling off the main road towards our stop for the night, The Farmer’s Inn in Clarenfield, Dumfries.
It’s located between the two big tourist draws of the area; the Savings Bank Museum and the Devils Porridge museum, (and they say Scottish attractions can’t compete with Disney World). It’s worth noting that the Devil’s Porridge refers to the creation of an explosive used in munitions during the War rather than a dangerous and possibly sacrilegious breakfast.
The Farmer’s Inn itself is part of a row of stone built buildings clearly quite old but well kept and with the bright whitewash typical of many structures in this area. The Rooms were more modern, in a motel style behind the pub proper.
The bar was a long single room but warm and welcoming with a real fire which is welcome even in the relative warmth of September. We had to do a double take when the landlord that greeted us warmly at the bar was the spitting image of the landlord of our local pub back home.
Deciding requesting a DNA test would be a touch forward we took our seat in the small bar that we rated 8/10 on the Bagpipe rating with empty bottles of gin and whisky on the surrounding shelves. It was pleasantly quiet with a few locals in and a couple of german bikers who we chatted briefly too. The food was good with all of us ordering Haggis in one form or another which was a fair indicator of our dietary choices for the week to follow.
The bar itself had an unusual brass tap on top of it which we were informed was for adding a drop of water to one’s whisky. It was sadly defunct now although we were drinking the German style lager brewed just up the road, which was highly pleasant but definitely did not need any watering down.
We did confer on its authenticity with the two german bikers at the next table but they were on pints of heavy that they were unable to get back in Germany.
A pleasant meal and and quiet pint in a nice bar was most welcome and as Mrs T famously that night, “I like a pub that leaves you the fuck alone.”
And with that we headed to bed.
24/09/2022
I woke early as I tend to on these holidays and being part man/part labrador I decided to take myself for a walk. The Lowlands of Scotland are well named even without considering its mountainous northerly counterpart. The sky (grey this morning) seems to stretch on forever but it was a sharp, rain-free early morning so knowing we’d be in the car for most of the day I appreciated the fresh air.
A fairly standard hearty Scottish breakfast ensued with Guten Morgan’s exchanged with our Teutonic neighbours before we piled back in the car and Mr P pointed it north. The route took us on the motorway up to Glasgow and then the A9 past the Cairngorms and Aviemore, (site of prior adventures) and then on to tonight’s destination of Inverness.
The AirBnb was a flat on the top floor of a colonial style house with views over the valley of Inverness. The stairway to the top floor wound through the middle of the building with the steps seriously worn in the middle by a great number of decades of use. The Stairway led to a scenic veranda that had great views of the city.
Carefully heading down the worn concrete steps we sauntered into town proper through a series of steep stairways descending into the heart of the city.
Inverness is not a big city but it has a friendliness that’s common in the Highlands, it’s not especially touristy but it acknowledges that tourists are an essential part of its makeup. We wandered the street to get a lay of the land and headed into a place referred to as a temple to the written word, Leakey's bookshop. Located in an old chapel every nook and cranny of the old building is stuffed with “preloved” books on every topic one could imagine. The centre is a massive industrial looking fire which keeps the booksellers, book-lovers and books themselves toasty throughout the deep Scottish winter. The smell of warm fire and gently aged books is a delight to the senses, (well to mine at least) and I could happily spend days browsing their innumerable shelves with no particular requirement apart from the pleasure of old books.
The travel and the books had raised a powerful thirst within us and we headed to a place called MacGregors that had a massive sign outside proclaiming it to be the “Best Bar in Highlands”. It’s a bold claim for a place selling Carlsberg, and whilst perfectly pleasant I failed to see anything that made it stand apart from some very similar hostelries we’d frequented in the past. A central open modern bar was offset with a real fire and reclaimed wooden tables and chairs.
However we only stayed for one as we wanted to visit the Black Isle Brewery Bar in Inverness. We had visited the actual brewery many years ago as it’s one of Mrs P’s favourites and I think ranks highly with the rest of us.
As we approached, our hearts sank. Part of the bar’s charm is you can’t book tables but you’re rolling the dice as it is understandably popular. We elbowed our way in against the throng, more in hope than expectation and as if it were pre-ordained, a big group got up to leave just as we approached the crowded table like the Red Sea parting before Moses. I certainly hope it wasn’t a comment on my personal hygiene.
Table secured, we ordered some of the best beer and most fabulous pizzas I think I’ve ever had. There was one with Venison Salami and another with hot honey which matched the innovative and delicious beers perfectly. I’m sure the Inverness Town Council are, even as we speak, stripping that egregiously inaccurate sign from Macgregors and awarding it to the Black Isle Bar.
There was certainly a hipster element in there (plaid shirts, tiny hats, Denim that had never seen a days work) but with it also being the highlands there was plenty of technical Fleece, waterproofs and walking boots. It’s a good mix and everyone rubbed along amicably the atmosphere being a happy and energetic one.
A cocktail being the perfect aperitif to beer and pizza we left the actual best bar in the Highlands and headed down to the river to a bar called Johnny Foxes which served achingly average cocktails in a much less salubrious environment.
Not feeling the need to dally there, we took a pleasant walk along the river bank in the falling light and the ladies decided to head home.
Mr P and I headed to The Castle, A decent pub a little further along the bank where we watched an Ireland football game and met a couple of guys, one of whom was Canadian and trapped in the country due to COVID still being a factor in foreign travel.
After a round of whiskys we bid our new friends a good night and headed back to the AirBnb being very careful on the worn ancient steps of the city where I’m sure many a similarly refreshed traveller has come a cropper. .
25/09/2022
It was an early start from our eyrie on top of the hill overlooking Inverness, eager to be on our way we grabbed a breakfast from the BP garage and we were soon heading north, further North than Em and I had ever been before. Having traversed into the Highlands yesterday the scenery became more and more bleak and unlived the further north we travelled as if leaving civilization further and further behind with each passing mile. The Road is still the A9 and it travels within spitting distances of cliffs plunging into the North Sea with low dotted houses hugging the land as if trying not to be blown off.
We travelled past one farm with a chicken coop facing a cliffside plunge if one of the chickens stumbled or was caught by a gust of wind never to be seen again. We instantly started work on a musical “The Ballard of Ethel” for one such poor poultry caught by the winds and transported away from her chicken family and friends. The actual story is lost to the sands of time but her cry remains solid in our minds
“Remember me!” in a vaguely scots accent.
It was around here that Mr P got very excited by the prospect of bumping into (figuratively not literally with the car mind) a Cyclist called Mark Beaumont. He was attempting an insane cycling challenge called the north coast 500 which is a 516 mile route around the far north coast of scotland. A challenge to drive, let alone propel yourself along on a bike in one go! As we came down one hill travelling up the other side was a windswept and bedraggled gentleman with a full support crew climbing the hill at what must have been an impressive pace. He looked knackered when we saw him on his way to beating the record for the run by doing it in 28 hours and 35 insane minutes. And incredible feat, not to mention I think that might actually be my total lifetime number of hours on a bike.
Eventually after much more wildness of the far north we arrived on the north coast of Scotland and headed east to John O’Groats. Many many years ago Mrs T and I had travelled in Cornwall and visited Land’s End which we found to be pretty but touristy. John O’Groats is just simply pretty touristy. I do it a disservice of course but the difference between a tourist attraction on the Sun drenched south coast of Cornwall and the windswept furthest northern reaches of mainland Scotland is a cliche for a reason.
Both spots however do a good line in tourist tat based around the signposts so after a trawl through the shops ( John O’Groats mugs, John O’Groats signs, John O’Groats fudge etc etc) we stopped for a bite of lunch before heading over to the ferry at Gills Bay. We ordered the Cullen Skink from the cafe overlooking the John O’Groats bay and it was by some measure the best Cullen Skink I had ever had. The fact I think it was the only Cullen Skink I had ever had at that point is by the by. It was a delicious Fish and Potato soup perfectly seasoned and just Cullen-y and Skink-y enough so as not to smell out the entire dining area.
After a really solid lunch we headed to the small ferry at Gills bay a few miles up the road. A Short queue led us into the bowels of the ship where we walked up some stairs and managed to get a seat on a quiet small-ish ferry for a relatively short and quiet journey over what I am told are some very rough seas. More on that later…
As we departed at a tiny port called St Margarets Hope, as if on queue, the rain started. Perhaps the Hope of the aforementioned St Margaret was to stay dry for five minutes. It’s at the bottom of the island chain leading to Kirkwall and then Stromness where we were staying but it was a good chance to see the islands and the linkage between them called the Churchill barriers.
These causeways were created between four of the islands to stop U-Boats sneaking into the calm natural harbour in the middle of the Orkney islands and causing havoc. A lot of the work on these was done by Italian prisoners of war interned on the islands. I have no idea what they must of thought of being trapped thousands of miles from home in what can only be described as a “different” climate to what they may have been used to in Naples or Sicily. This homesickness spurred them to create a real work of beauty in an Italian Chapel created entirely within a Nissen Hut.
This structure on a small island called Lambholm is incredibly moving considering the conditions at the time creating the altar and stations of the cross from scrap wood and paint.
After spending a while there and the rain continuing we headed along the winding roads skirting the larger town of Kirkwall to our final destination Stromness. The landscape is so dramatic wherever you look and the history is laid down like Mulch on the ground to raise up the new stories and lives. The house where we stayed was on the harbour front so we could see the ferry terminal that we were going to be travelling back on. The house itself was very comfortable with a large lounge and bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen and garage on the lower floor.
We settled in and then headed to the Ferry Pub for dinner, which the Parrys declared a significant improvement on 2009. The food was decent and they were serving the local beers from the Swanage and Orkney Breweries ( about which more later) which were all delicious and well deserved after a long day of travel.
We were sat next to a couple of climbers that had just scaled the Old Man of Hoy. A lifetime (and several Kilograms) ago I was into rock climbing and the first scaling of the Old Man was a real news event, one of the first to be recorded live back in the sixties and the documentary was fascinating. Anyway they were two really nice guys that were stuck on the island as the ferries out had been cancelled due to the poor weather. They had been accompanied by their long suffering partners who no doubt had sensibly found a cocktail bar to hole up in while their blokes embarked on some foolish outdoors endeavour.
Or am I putting too much of myself and Mr P in that?
The pub was close to the house and closer to the ferry terminal, one would have to be careful not to drink too much, trip over the step and accidentally board the boat to find yourself back in scotland proper.
We took a walk out after dinner, the streets of Stromness being narrow and clustered together to shelter against the weather which soon hit us with full force.
The rain decided that now it had warmed itself up with a few gradual showers throughout the day it could put a proper effort in bucketing down as we navigated the slate grey streets in the rising gloom. Given that our ‘walk’ had turned into more of a ‘swim’ we gave it up as a bad job and stopped off in the other pub in town, the Royal Bar which was a pretty plain local bar attached to the hotel. Panelled walls, tired nautical theme, okay beers but a roaring fire which was most welcome in our semi-aquatic state. It wasn’t as warm a welcome as the Ferry but perfectly adequate for our needs, namely, beers and being out of the rain!
After drying our outsides and quenching our insides we headed back to the house.
26/09/2022
I think at this point me saying “Another windy rainy day” is sort of redundant, imagine then that unless otherwise mentioned it’s always raining with heavy gusts, or as the locals call it “T Shirt weather”.
However this day the winds were a little stronger ( “Light shirt weather”) although Stromness is on a natural sheltered harbour which keeps the worst of the weather outside the bay, the weather outside of this little Orkney bubble were getting quite harsh and so there were no Ferries running today. The Climbers we met last night plus girlfriends would have to stay for at least another twelve hours.
As well as the ferry back to Scotland there are a number of smaller ferries serving the small islands that are inaccessible by Road. These tiny boats would just get tossed around in heavy seas and so many times the service is suspended. When you come to such a remote part of the UK you realise how much you take for granted, like supermarkets always being stocked with fresh produce. I think in Orkney there’s always a mentality of self reliance as much as possible as you can’t always rely on the Ferry from the Mainland.
A note on “mainland” in Orkney they use the term mainland to refer to the largest clustered isles that we’re on. Scotland is referred to as Scotland almost like a separate country which in many ways it was for years.
Walked out to the bakery to gather pastry treats which being made on the islands weren’t reliant on coming over on the ferry. We had spotted a poster for a band called FARA last night and noticed that the gig was tonight in town. From a quick spotify search they appeared to play traditional Scottish music and had just released an album called Energy Island. Feeling serendipitous we picked up the tickets for later on that evening.
Over coffee and pastries we considered our options for the rest of the day given the lack of ferries. Deciding to leave the car at the house we took the first bus to Kirkwall which is the largest habitation in the isles. It was about half an hour through the remote landscape with clusters of houses on occasion dotted amongst the green.
Kirkwall is by Orkney standards a large town having a number of shopping streets and the rather magnificent Red stone St Magnus Cathedral. I lit a candle for Mum, Gran and the Great Aunts, and I could imagine their conversation in their usual Taylor-stage whisper voices about Vikings, Scots and the rather awe inspiring Cathedral.
“Well, it’s impressive but it’s not what I’d call traditional.”
“Not traditional? It’s from the 12th Century!”
“Well you know what I think about Modern Architecture.”
I left the imagined whispered discussion about which century the Papal Palace was built and we grabbed a hot chocolate in the cafe to warm us up.
With the storm worsening (“Maybe take a coat dearie”) we decided it was high time for a beer.
The first we came across was a bar in the Kirkwall Hotel called Skippers that sits on the dockside. It had an aggressively cheery nautical theme full of sandy beach pictures and light yachts being captained by sunbaked smiling models in a comically tragic contrast to the haggard incumbents of the bar sipping their cans of Tennants whilst studiously ignoring the weather continuing outside.
I was examining the beer taps (Nothing special) when a young lad appeared like the shopkeeper from Mr Ben behind the bar as if he’d just teleported there! Turns out the cellar was directly below the bar so a series of steep steps brought him from the underworld right in front of my nose. He was by far the cheeriest person in the place so we ordered some pretty decent burgers and beers which prove that you should take any old port in a storm. Some of the ports might have nice haggis burgers.
We made the bus back to Stromness in time to head out into the night to watch FARA at the townhall. They play mostly traditional Fiddle and piano music and three of them are from the Orkneys and it may just be the hearing music there but the energy infused into the performance felt like a home-coming gig.
It’s a familiar and comforting yet still exciting sound in the middle of a hall that felt like a church except that it was well attended. We sat on the back row behind the mixing desk which gave us quite a view of the show . I remember them all being funny and warm and really enjoying the experience. From there we headed back to the Ferry for a Pint and a whisky.
We’d gone to the Highland Park shop in Kirkwall before being a whisky I’m quite fond of. I decided to try the 18 year old at the pub (no sniggering please) given that it was £80 for a bottle I figured a dram of the stuff was a good investment in case it didn’t live up to the hype. I shouldn’t have worried. It was absolutely delicious, warming with a hint of smoke and a deep sweet richness I wasn’t used to. Fabulous way to round off a full day.
27/09/2022
The seas had clearly improved to the point that when we woke up they were loading the Ferry to Scotland with all the traffic and people that were not only going today but had not been able to go yesterday. It still looked pretty swelly though so we wished them well as we walked on the solid ground into town in search of breakfast.
There’s a very small hamlet on the Islands that’s barely a cluster of four or so houses that would normally pass beneath notice but is remarkable for bearing the unfortunate name Twatt. As you can imagine they have all manner of tourist tat with this hilarious slogan on the one could legitimately purchase purely as a memento of the trip. We bought four fridge magnets. Purely to remember the trip you understand.
We grabbed a pretty decent coffee in a cafe on the sea-front although technically out of season you could tell things were still winding down after the height of the summer tourist season.
We took the car out and arrived at the Maes Howe visitors centre just as the bus was about to leave for the guided tour. It’s such an important part of History and so rare you can’t just wander around willy nilly. We glommed on to the group and got the full tour of this incredible structure.
Maes Howe is a burial mound that rises like a lump in the landscape with a lawn of grass over it, like a badly hidden ball under a carpet.
You duck down a tunnel and emerge in a large cairn with different chambers and the feeling of the weight of ages on you. It’s incredible and then the guide turns on a light that shows the runic viking script of Raiders from thousand years ago that clearly took shelter here from the weather.
We often venerate our ancestors and attribute honourable intentions to them with little or no evidence. Let’s just say the magic of the mysterious runic symbols carved nearly a thousand years ago is ruined somewhat when you find the meanings are pretty much “Loki was here” and “Ingrid is fit”. Although the guys that carved “This is high up” about ten foot up the wall was clearly the Viking Michale MacIntyre.
From there we took a drive to the Houton Ferry and grabbed a sandwich in Kirkwall before heading on to the Scapa distillery where we needed virtually no pressure to buy a couple of good bottles or expressions only available at the distillery. However having tasted a few of them I do wonder if the ones only available at the distillery is because you’d have a bugger of a time selling them anywhere else.
We had dinner at our usual table in the Ferry back in Stromness before heading out to an event called Peatfire Tales of Orkney.
We were expecting some sort of specialised performance space maybe upstairs at a pub or something but it turned out this lady doing the tales basically converted the lower half of her house into a performance space to tell tales the way they used to be told. I suppose there is a link to the past there, families and clans sitting around a fire telling tall tales instead of being on their phones.
The room was warm and painted in reds and yellow to emulate a big fire and full of old items from the islands and fisherman that would have used them and sat around fires like this mending nets.
The fire definitely had that acrid stinging peat smell that I expect from cheap fires and expensive whisky.
The lady started her tale of Vikings and the Fin-men who lived in a palace under the sea and the Selkies that would take off their furs to pass amongst men and a clever man who tricked a Selkie into marrying him by hiding her fur so she couldn’t return to her people.
Whilst I was wondering if the Vikings had a phrase for Domestic Abuse the narrator started getting animated and chucked a Wellington boot at Mr P’s head.
Now, I have to say Mr P had done absolutely nothing to deserve being a target for a inter-continental ballistic Welly and it turned out this was a tactic to keep people involved in the story that storytellers used to use. She would also repeat certain phrases over and over “and the Sun rose and the Sun set” whilst performing a certain rotating action with her hands. I would find out later that this repetition was deliberate and didn't come from a paucity of imagination but instead was the equivalent of a chorus in a song providing structure to the tale.
She gave a talk after the tale and she said that she’d come to the islands when she was younger and stayed and part of her role was to talk to old Orcadians and try and record some of the oral history that they heard when they were growing up. Stories that possibly had never been written down but handed down from generation purely through their oral telling.
I found it fascinating but I also understand how people might have come away from it thinking “What on earth was that wellie chucking madwoman on about?”
28/09/2022
I thought I must have still been dreaming when I woke to bright sunshine. After the dismal downpours of the last few days this was just so welcome and unexpected. I mean, I knew it wasn’t likely to last but it made a nice contrast, and the islands looked very different with the sunlight beaming down instead of biblical torrents of water.
So after breakfast we headed out for a day of some of the groups favourite interests, archeology and brewing. First on the agenda was the Brock of Gurness which was a cluster of Pictish houses nestled on the coast with a round tower structure that collapsed countless years ago. A lot of the stones are still piled as they would have been giving you the outline of the village as it would have been. At least according to the Archaeologists and Historians that seem to make huge leaps of imagination on relatively little evidence.
“Here would be where they would clean the lobsters.”
“Here is where they would sing songs together.”
“Here is where they would use the loo.”
Actually, they’ve probably got some evidence on that last one, evidence I have no wish to investigate further.
From there we went onto the Ring of Brogar which is a Henge of flat old stones in a circular shape that was used for some mysterious ceremonies. Thirty six of the original sixty survive to today and have been held in place by modern fixings braced like a mouth of old broken teeth instead of the Hollywood smile of yesteryear. We completed a lap of the stones feeling the history beneath our feet as we looked out to the sea. Another stone age settlement next to the coast, but I suppose you’d have to work pretty hard on these islands not to be at least near to the sea.
We drove on to Skara Brae where an entire stone age village was lost to time until a particularly heavy storm uncovered them in 1850. The preservation was amazing considering how old they are, like a peaty Pompi of the western isles. The Houses were clustered together but it was very different to The Brock of Gurness which felt more like a fort, this felt like a village like a place you could imagine families being. It was incredible to be there walking on the same soil as people thousands of years ago.
I suppose the remoteness of the Orkneys has meant that a lot of this type of history has been preserved where in a more populous area it would have been destroyed and built over a hundred times. How many archaeological treasures have been lost over the years to unscrupulous builders?
With the archaeology portion of the day well and truly resolved it was time for the beer.
There are two breweries on Orkney and I’m happy to say we completed 100% of them. First up the smaller of the two, the Swannay brewery which had a nice little shop but wasn’t really set up as a tourist destination. We purchased a few bits and headed onto the larger, imaginatively titled Orkney Brewery.
Now I remember Mrs P sharing her love of their beers, particularly the Northern Light, many many years ago so it was kind of fitting to end up there. They’ve converted an old school into a brewery and tourist centre with brewery tours and a really nice restaurant. Over the years I think between the four of us we’ve done many many brewery tours we could probably be employed as guides so we skipped straight to the Beers and Burgers portion of the trip.
In the main school hall they had a restaurant with a roaring fire and these school desk style things as tables which I can’t imagine are too authentic as they fitted my oversize frame rather than a scrawny school age child but it was kind of a fun touch.
The Haggis burgers and various ales from their selection went down a treat and after spending more in their shop we left the car at the brewery and headed back to Stromness via taxi.
The guys headed home and I walked up Brinkie Brae which is the mountain (hill) that overlooks the Stromness bay and was such an inspiration to the Poet George Mackay Brown that lived in the town. The view is majestic especially on a day like this and inspired Hamnavoe (the Viking name for Stromness) his most famous poem.
29/09/2022
The only problem with leaving a car at the brewery was that it had to be collected in a world where public transport isn’t the most extensive. Mr P got up early to catch a bus that literally dropped him in the middle of nowhere. The bus pulled off and there wasn’t a person or house in sight as he started walking towards what the maps told him would lead to where we left the car.
Must have been an eerie sight just walking in the middle of this landscape with no fixed point of reference for the end of the journey. However he found and returned the car. From there we split the party with Mr P heading off for a biking trip via small ferry out to Hoy and the rest of us deciding on a quiet day mooching around Kirkwall again.
The Bus drivers ticket machine didn’t work and in a manner familiar to small communities he didn’t really care and let us ride for free.
It was a calm quiet day, totally different to the Squall we’d experienced earlier in the week. We felt more comfortable exploring little alleyways and odd roads given we weren’t being blasted with wind and rain. I went back to the Ardbeg shop to find they had sold out of the delicious 18 that I’d tried a dram of in the pub previously. I decided I wasn’t going to risk an even more serious amount of money on an older (even more expensive) bottle that I hadn’t tried so came away empty handed.
We’d heard about a Gin specialist that did tastings and had a good food menu in town but it was completely shut up, either for the winter or permanently we couldn’t decide. Either way we couldn’t drink/ eat there so we decided to have a bit of lunch at a place I’d seen online called Helgis which was ostensibly a Viking themed bar.
We got there and instead of the flagons of ale, massive roast meat and bearded fierce looking men and women (the fierceness not the beards) we found a decent little bar. Actually there were flagons of ale ( Tennants and Northern Light) roast meats (Burgers and fish soup) but instead of the fierce vikings we found apathetic teenage staff who could barely look up from their phones to take an order.
In their defence it was pretty quiet and every preceding generation is inherently boring or embarrassing to the next (or cringe in today's youth speak). We’re even more embarrassing when we’re explaining youth slang and getting it wrong. Thank god I don’t have kids as I would go out of my way to embarrass them in front of their mates.
Anyhow the food and place were fine, and some brass toilets made a strange contrast but we finished our repast and headed back to meet Mr P back at the house and finished the day with a meal in the Ferry and a short walk as the wind and rain returned.
30/09/2022
We were due to take the 6:30 AM Ferry to return home that night but our constant companion, the weather, clearly didn’t wish to see us go so soon. The sideways winds and rain meant that we had to go on Standby for the PM ferry. If we missed that we’d have to stay another night on the islands.
We got in the queue and secured a standby place and then sat in the house and prayed to the weather god to let us leave. I can imagine why Orkney was such a spiritual place when the weather is so fickle you must imagine that it’s the gods messing with you.
At the appointed time we sat in the car and they started letting on the people and vehicles until we were the last car sat on the dock facing the by now very full ferry. Luckily there was just enough room for our car but very little remaining space that would barely have accepted even the most discerning credit card.
However, considering the Deck was full the passenger compartment wasn’t too busy, but the Rough seas did make for some uncomfortable moments. We came back on the Stromness to Scrabster Ferry which was a bit quicker I think but spectacular. We passed the old man of Hoy that Mr P had visited and the climbers had submitted which was an incredible achievement. The deep reds and browns of the rock against the sea was amazing to see, even if because of the waves the view was a little more ‘dynamic’ that I would have preferred.
As we arrived I had a real Proustian rush of hotels in the nineties. I don’t know if they used the same carpet cleaner or something but it smelt and felt like when I worked at the Talardy Hotel in St Asaph in that period.
This wasn’t helped by the clean but tired rooms featuring a radio built into the wall and the bar that stocked the mixers in ambient temperature on a wooden shelf. However it was clean and we were knackered having waited to travel and travelling all day.
We decided on a final holiday drink in the bar, walking in the four of us together chatting clearly in a group, but obviously not clearly enough for the young lady behind the bar. We ordered one drink and she asked if there was anything else. So we ordered the second drink and she asked if there was anything else… I looked at the four of us all crowding the mostly empty bar and ordered two drinks together to save her expending any more effort.
We sat at a plain chipboard table with conference chairs and toasted to a truly memorable holiday experience.
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