A windy but sunny day on Wed

The day started out with the wind howling, which continued all day. A pretty good towel drying day according to our hostess, Julie, who hangs out all towels to be sure they are fresh enough. They were standing out horizonally all day! Winday it was, but sunny as well. Beautiful day with temps up to about 17 deg C. Just the wind had a bit of a nip to it.

First on the list was a rangert talk at the Stones of Stennis. Elaine Clark gave the talk, whch was as whitty as it was informative. Provided information not only on the stones, but also about the barn house village that is located a short walk away. Barnyard is a reconstruction not on the original site based upon nearby ground penetationg radar information. Very interesting to have her walk us through differnt features each of the differnt structures. The siting stones at the Stones of Stennis that I have mentioned previously is a much later addition to the ring and is a dolman like we saw in Ireland. It is a curiosity since there are not really dolman's anywhere else on Orkney.

After the talk, with the sun so gloriously shining, we opted to go back to the Ring of Brodgar for sunny pictures since the previous ones were done in the wanng grey daylight. Before we walked up to the ring, we bumped into a gentleman who we had seen at the Standing Stones of Stennis who was carrying a long pole. We wneded up standig and chatting to him a length. Turns out he was using the pole to get better areal views of the ruins and is working on solar and lunar alighments, gathering photos today and tomorrow since it is equinox. He has published a few papers that Diane will try to find to read. He pointed out that what is known as the "comet" stone that stands off from the Ring of Brodgar a bit does have two lower compantions and they have lunar/solar alighments.

Now it was 2pm so we traveled to the far southeast to go to the Tomb of the Eagles [ http://www.tomboftheeagles.co.uk, http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/isbister/excav…] , The Tomb of the Eagles is a private museum and burial cairn located on an old farm. Several sea eagle carcuses were found inside in addition to several burials. Since it is family run, they are no bashful to pull out the skulls from the show case to let you see the quality of the teath, etc.

No getting dirty getting into this cairn. Yes, the passage is narrow and low, but ther is a wheeled trolley like mechanics would use to slide under vehicles that visitors can use for entrance.

They also found nearby a pile of burnt rock/ash and a neolithic hut work area with a large stone-lined trough inside with a supply of water that could be used to fill the trough for what is still an unknown purpose. It is possible to heat stones and throw them into the trough of water and eventually cook food in this manner, but as mentioned, it took 9 hours to cood a 30 pound leg of lamb, so not very cost effective laborwise. They are finding more and more of these types of structures all over the UK, so perhaps eventually, they will be better understood.

Dinner in town again, this time at St Ola's. Diane's haddock risolto was very good while pete's steak & ale pipe was okay.

Tomorrow is our last booking before we go back to glasgow, so we spent most of the evening working lodging details for the rest of the trip now that we have confirmed that we are staying the extra day on Orkney. In trying to arrange bookings for 3-4 places simultaneously asfter such an energt sapping windy day, we confused a couple of bookings that we will have to try to straighten out. We might end up paying for a room we can't use, but it could be worse.Read more