Another Perfect Day in Orkney on Thurs!

Wow! What a day! It drizzeled a bit during the evening and we woke up to clouds, but by 11:30 am, the clouds burned off and it was a Sunny, 17 deg C day again! Barely a breeze today and part of the lochs were glassy mirrors.

Into our groove, breakfast at 8:15 with Diane having heavy protein and Peter with granola and yogurt. Interesting conversations at the breakfast table with the other guests.

We had to spend some time this morning trying to finish our future reservations. We were trying to do too many things last eve and mussed up a few of them. I also had to try to figure out how to "top up" our cell phone since we had run through the 15 pounds we initially put on it. Thus, it was a delayed start to the morning.

Our first adventure was exploring the Cuween Hill cairn above Finstown [ http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/tombs/cuween/] . A couple of days ago, we had visited the cairn at Wideford and Cuween is the one on the western hill side that looks back at Wideford. Long, low, wet passage that dirtied our knees as we went into the interior of the cairn, but very interesting to compare/contrast with the other cairns we have seen. This one had several dog burials in it. We also explored some stacked rock pillars on the hillside above. Poorly constructed and certainly not neo-lithic. A gal came by walking two dogs and she thought it was a bunch of high school students that felt they needed to have a hand in leaving something behind.

From there we traveled South from the turn-off to Stones of Stennis to find a little place hidden in the woods that used to belong to Julie's Uncle called Happy Valley [ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Valley_(g…, . A small crofters cottage at a small stream that he modified to make a lush habitate for animals and birds.

By then, it was time to go to the Ring of Bordgar for the range talk. Elaine Clark did the presenation again today. We really enjoyed her talk on the ring and the surrounding environments. She is extremely knowedgable, witty and was evidently instrumental in helping to obtain World Heritage Site designation for this area. So many interesting tid-bits were shared during the 1.5 hr talk (she went more than her nominal hour since it was such a glorious day and we all were interested. More new tidbits will be revealed in the future as they are doing more investigations in the local area. Using magnetization studies, ground penetrating radar and even a yellow submarine in the loch just to the West where they think they may have found another hendge that was build with the lochs were much smaller as well as one or two mmore to the north.

One of the major items discussed is that originally, there was thought that the Ring of Brodgar had 60 standing stones (not all currently standing) all 6 deg apart and it was a huge astronomical observatory. Recently, with more modern round penetrating radar and closer examination of the types of rock used for the standing stones, this specualtion is no longer in favor. It turns out that each of the current standing stones are unique and from different quaries around the island and the stone is enplaced such that each top surface face of the stone faces the direction of the quary from which it was removed as if each group of peoples brought their own stone to make the ring.

After that, we went to the West coast to look out at Yesnaby [ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesnaby] , a former WWII gunnery site. From Yesnaby, we had a great view to the South out to a spit of land with an old stone brough and further down the coast he "old man of Hoy" pillar standing off from the cliff.

Oh, yea, one other tid-bit from Elaine is that Orkney has about 20K people. During WWII, 60K solders were garisoned here. We had seen signs of gunnery sites as we arrived on the ferry on many of the islands. One of the unit that was garisoned on the "mainland" of Orkney were located just near the Stones of Stennis and had small tanks that they used to manuever between the stones at the Ring of Bordgar and they also used to race around in the ditch surounding the stones! It's a wonder that they didn't do any significant damage!

The day was staying fabulous, but with a few high clouds now starting to appear. We decided to continue our drive on the West side and drove up to Birsay to get a view of the Brough of Birsay [ http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/westmainl…] , an older series of Pictish and Norse settlements that is only approachable at low tide.

From there, we debated continuing the drive or getting back to Kirkwall in time to tour the Cathedrial of St Magnus [ http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/stmagnus/magca…]. We opted for a quick visit to the Cathedral to add variety to our trip and becasue it was suppose to be really spectacular. And spectacular it was all made out of red sandstone with fantastice stainglassed windows. Peter lit a candel for his mother while we were there.

We finished the day with a trip to a "cash point" to have enough $$ to cover the B&B tomorrow and to top-up the cell phone. Then it was on to dinner, which tonight we took at the Kirkwall Hotel. Diane opted for the 1/2 fisherman's platter with 2 kinds of smoked salmon, pickled herring, smoked and peppered herring, a crab claw, tiny crawfish tails and small shrimp in a rose marie sauce while Peter had the sea bass.

I can hear the wind starting to pick up now as I work on the blog. We should have a little rain tonight but a few hours of sunshine as we ferry back across before another storm rolls in. What a beautiful time indeed we have had here on Orkney and we are sooooooo happpppppyyy that we decided to stay the extra day to savor this part of Scotland.Read more