April 30: Goodbye Orkney!
We are currently on the Viking Ferry,
headed back to Scrabster from Orkney.
For the first couple of days on Orkney, we thought we’d overbooked
ourselves somewhat and allowed too much time on the islands, but probably
could’ve done with a little more. Once
you’re off the mainland, there’s so much to explore and if you’re into
archaeology and prehistory, or if you like birds, you’re pretty spoilt for
choice.
Today was our last day on the islands
which, when the sun is shining, look deceptively tropical, especially from the
warmth of the car. On more than one
occasion the white sands and pale water tricked me into thinking we were on Fraser
Island or something and I could go for a dip, and it was only when I opened the
door and felt a very cold gust of wind that I decided against it. We woke up with the sun and decided to head
to the Tomb of the Eagles, a chambered cairn similar to Maeshowe, but wasn’t
looted by Vikings before modern archaeologists had a look. They found something like 30 skulls in there
and heaps of Eagle talons. This sounded
appealing, and it was down on the very peak of South Ronaldsay, so we drove
down there, over the Churchill Bridges.
They treat you very well at the Tomb of the
Eagles and have lots of artifacts you can touch and bracelets made of bones and
real human skulls and all kinds of fun things.
They also have lots of strange carved objects that archaeologists can’t
really explain, so they just call them ‘ceremonial objects’ and leave it at
that.
Nearby the Tomb, there’s an Iron Age
structure that’s just as confusing, with a pit that holds something like 1000L
of water. There’s over 1000 of the same
structure throughout Ireland and Irish archaeologists think it was used to brew
ale. This sounds reasonable and quite
Scottish, so that’s what I’m going to assume it was for.
The Iron Age brewery
This is beside the Iron Age brewery...
What a life.
The Tomb was quite similar to the others we
had visited, except that the entrance is so low that you slide in on a little
trolley. An American couple was in the
tomb with us, also taking pictures. The
man came over to look at the pictures I was taking of a small chamber in the
tomb because he had taken some similar.
He showed me his on his Nikon DSLR.
“Just looks like a pile of rocks,” he
said. God bless America.
The walk to the tomb - watch out for cliff-dwelling rabbits!
Nicholas is a bit too tall for the Tomb of the Eagles
Off he goes, sliding through the entrance!
Nicholas pretending to be zombie coming out one of the tomb chambers
Looking for ghosts in the tomb
And sliding out on the trolley...
By the time we left the Tomb of the Eagles
and had sufficiently brushed up on our Orcadian history and Mesolithic history
(did you know that Orkney was gifted to Scotland as part of a princess’
dowry?), we decided to head to the Broch of Gurness. I think a broch is a fort. They didn’t go into too much detail over in
Gurness, but it looked pretty exciting. I just asked Nicholas what a broch was and he
said, “an Iron Age dry stone wall hill fort”. I don’t know if I mentioned this
after we visited Skara Brae, but they really knew how to do storage in
Neolithic structures. There’s a little
village surrounding the broch, and they’ve all got little shelves and storage
holes built into the walls. What are
they storing? Probably pottery.
At the broch itself they had a little
section out the front for the guard dogs to sit at. There were three dogs who
belonged to a pair of ladies walking along the beach and they were just itching
to come over either to a) see us or b) be reunited with their ancestors and
stand guard over the broch. Either way,
they weren’t allowed to and were berated for trying.
I wandered around the site munching on
oatcakes and trying to stay out of the wind while Nicholas jumped all over everything. Unlike Skara Brae where you could only look
for a distance, you could jump over and look at everything at the broch. Some sections had been mortared together
(probably to suit Historic Scotland’s safety requirements), but it made me
wonder how well it would stand up over time.
Skara Brae used to be open to the public, but they found it was
degrading far too quickly and now it can’t be accessed almost at all.
The Broch
Orkney, like most of Scotland, is killing
it with renewable energy. Lots of
farmers have their own residential windmills (some of them have miniature wind
farms with three or four small windmills) and there are huge government owned
wind farms all over the place. After
we’d sufficiently explored the broch, I’d finished my oatcakes and given myself
more than one bruise trying to clamour over the structure, we head up Burgar
Hill where several large wind turbines were spinning serenely in the vicious
wind. While all the little residential
windmills were spinning frantically, these windmills were huge and calmly
rotating, taking a full two seconds to do 360 degrees. Watching them and listening to the
aeroplane-like sweeping of the blades became something of a meditation.
Talking animatedly about Australia’s
crappy, non-committal stance on renewables, we drove past the Orcadian farmland
to the ferry port, checked the car in and boarded the ferry. Because we’d missed the Old Man of Hoy twice
(first on the ferry journey to Orkney, then when we actually visited Hoy) we
made sure we were seated to see him this time.
I wasn’t feeling very well, so Nicholas jumped out onto the sun deck to
get some pictures. The way the light hit
the Old Man made him look like the man on the Golden Globe statue.
Orkney's large windmills
I slept most of the journey on the ferry,
and we drove from Scrabster to Tongue, stopping several times to absorb the
beauty of the amazing mountain ranges and islands in front of us. The sun was beginning to sit too low and we
were completely exhausted so – as was becoming typical – we forewent pitching
the tent and sought shelter in the car, parking halfway along the bridge that
crosses the Kyle of Tongue. A sign
advised us to keep watch for otters and sea eagles, which we did, until it got
too dark. The moon came out, probably a
day or two from full moon and lit up the Kyle in front of us. Tomorrow night we’re staying at a lovely
Grand Designs-style B&B in Clashnessie with a pair of vegetarian artists. This is great, but anywhere with running hot
water would do at this point, because we’re beyond desperate to wash our hair.
The drive to Tongue
We would drive 500 miles... and we would drive 500 more... and 500 more... and 500 more.
The almost-full moon over the loch, minutes before we fell asleep.
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