Thursday

It's mid May and we (Mrs Bilbo and I) plan to have a few days in Orkney to show the place to my NZ niece (called hereafter NZN). The islands (some 70 of them) sit on the tip of the north east of Scotland. These islands have been inhabited for over 5000 years and are made up mainly of people from mainland UK, Iceland and Scandinavia. While historically relatively poor the island has developed some fine arts and jewellery industry, beef, a substantial oil pumping industry and a growing sustainable energy industry (i.e. tidal, wave and wind based). You are likely to visit the islands if you take a cruise into the north east Atlantic, want to see some of the bird or marine mammal colonies or some very fine ancient monuments. Neolithic Orkney was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in December 1999. The local language is English with a soft Scottish accent.

We (just Mrs B and I) flew from Leeds Bradford to Glasgow and then an hour later to Kirkwall in Orkney. The NZN will fly up tomorrow. The small turboprop made an “interesting” landing in the strong wind, but the little airport makes a great showing of all the goods for sale on the island and all the staff are very friendly. We picked up our rental car from the airport and WR Tullock a 4th generation rental company and drive to the Shore a “restaurant with rooms”.

The Shore is on the docks and has a restaurant with bar downstairs and then rooms above. Ours is two floors up and very quiet. The day is so bright and blue (and Britain has been so cold and dull for 5 months) we just have to get out and enjoy the fabulous weather.

So we buzz off to some of the finest ancient sites on the island, many of which are contemporary with Egypt's great Pyramids. The Ring of Brodgar, The Standing stones of Stennes and the fantastic Barnhouse Neolithic village (all of which are free) shows the sorts of houses people were living in 2500BC. So plenty of chances to photograph the heather, the rocks and the eider duck. We drove slowly back along the A694 which gave us the chance to see some beautiful vistas in some very fine weather, the Saga centre and the remains of the circular church. It turns out that Viking Earls did an awful amount of killing and trickery in the 1000AD to 1200AD period and then had it written up in the Sagas (history belongs to the victors).

We ate supper in the Kirkwall Hotel Bar “Skippers” paying £22 for home made steak pie, haddock with vegetables, a pint of bitter and a fizzy water. Despite the fine weather the evening turned cold. Tomorrow the weather is forecast as going to turn bad, lets hope not too bad.

Some useful links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Brodgar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standin...es_of_Stenness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnhouse_Settlement

Friday

First of all Mrs Bilbo had her haircut, while I visited the small harbour at Kirkwall before going to the airport to pick up my NZN (New Zealand Niece) at midday. We drove over to Stromness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromness which is the second town of the island and historically it has been seen a dispiriting place to visit. Well we looked in on some weavers and the Pier Centre http://www.pierartscentre.com/ which is a very fine arts centre with a few Barbera Hepworth's, some Ben Nicholson's, Alfred Wallis etc. so a classy place at the end of the world.

Lunch at Julie's Café covered the vegetarian options (also watched small child with a massive piece of carrot cake try to eat the thing). We then followed the craft trail to the silver workshops of the Orkneyinga Silversmiths followed by Fluke Jewellery both good examples of very skilled English silversmiths working in smallholdings. Both of these workshops are at the ends of gravel roads what look like falling down bungalows with fine views of the sea, chalk boards show what sea mammals and large shark they have seen from their windows that day.

Finally we visited the Woolshed offering fine wool and wool based clothing of the North Ronaldsay (seaweed fed sheep) which proved a fantastic visit and I bought a jumper's worth of wool for Mrs Bilbo to knit up. This craft centre is run by an Englishwoman who really knew her wool and she and Mrs Bilbo bonded for a while.

Www.orkneyinga.co.uk
www.flukejewellery.com
www.woolshed-orkney.co.uk

On the way back we took a detour to try and find a final Brough but were distracted by a car on fire by the side of the road. Naturally we stopped and looked after the German couple who were staying in a cottage on the other side of the island and whose car had been set on fire by a nest in engine compartment bursting into flames. It seems that during nesting periods the local birds like to nest in any warm protected area. The result is damaged cars.

We hand them onto other locals but later meet up and discover that Alamo (the car hire company) firstly didn't know where Orkney was, then never came out to look at the car and then expected the German couple to travel to Inverness to pick up a new car a journey of half a day. Cross Alamo off you list now.

With more sunshine breaking through we went back to Kirkwall to let NZN check into our family room and have a break before trying to find supper which proved hard as so many places were booked but we found some local beer and an Indian meal at “Dil Se” which proved pleasant enough.

Orkney is high on my wish list - looking forward to more!

Another for whom Orkney is a want to see. Please continue!

Mine too! Question: is a car absolutely necessary? Is there any bus service on Orkney or can you rent bicycles and tour around that way?

Saturday

We get up at 8:30 to find an alternative breakfast in town, my plan to eat at Zio's failed as they were not open but the great Italian Restaurant Lucano offered fresh pastries and scrambled egg/salmon for a very good price. What a great start to the day, walking back down Victoria Street and Broad Street we popped into the Cathedral (warm and pleasant) and then we visited all the posh shops down this main street including the spectacular www.sheilafleet.com . Once our seriously good shopping was done we then drove into the East Mainland as the weather just got better and better, so lots of walking to see tombs, empty beaches, otters, voles, puffins, and other sea birds. Places where we stopped include:

1) Mull Head, with the Gloop calm.
2) A Totem Pole at the start to the Churchill barriers
3) The Italian Chapel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Chapel
4) St Margaret's Hope has a coop www.workshopandloftgallery.co.uk offering some fine clothes and a backpackers restaurant for lunch.
5) The Eagles nest for a 2 hour visit at what could be a bronze age sauna and was certainly a neolithic tomb, all the result of a farmer developing his own historical centre with very little help from the state. Probably the high point of the day.
6) We visited a tapestry makers at Hoxa who is world class but with world class prices £5k to £45k www.hoxatapestrygallery.co.uk
7) We ended up with a walk along the cliff at Hoxa Harbour with blue sky all around us.

Tired out we then drove back to Kirkwall and after cocktails in the Shore, supper at Lucano's with some very fresh local fish.

Buses

http://www.stagecoachbus.com/timetab...l&to=stromness

There are some and some can be called on the phone but we didn't

There is one bike route and there were plenty of people on bikes
http://www.cycleorkney.com/
http://www.visitorkney.com/cycling.asp

thanks so much for posting this. There's not much info on Orkney, and its high on my list too. Especially as I'm very interested in the neolithic sites.

hi bilbo,

personally i couldn't care less about neolithic sites but a good read nonetheless!

Many of the neolithic sites are up to one foot deep, but there are tombs etc a whole floor deep, which is pretty unusual for the UK. Still the wildlife is fun, loads of sea birds nesting all over.

now the birds, that's something else!

soe great birds here in Cornwall too - we were sitting outside at the Minack theatre the other night and a pair of gannets flew right past - lovely.

Bilbo, great report - thanks for sharing.

Sunday,

After a slightly disappointing continental breakfast (I guess they were more used to offering the “full scottish” bacon, tomato, egg, blood pudding, sausage etc) at the Shore, we then tried to fill in the gaps for our NZN in the centre of the Mainland. So we took to the hills to visit an Earth House (a neolithic food store discovered when a threshing machine fell through a barn floor) and then to the Wideford Cairn (a tomb) on the side of Wideford Hill, which required a mile and a quarter yomp over mud and tussocks but ended up with fine views of all the islands in the group from the top of the hill. Below us we could see many of the islands and two archaeological digs just starting. We were told that each year they could only afford to carry out 6 weeks digging and that requires 30 weeks conservation and analysis, so when you see Time Team it is not just the digging that has to be done.

A quick drive to Maese Howe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeshowe visitor centre (no coffee shop but clean loos) and the chance to go into another tumulai for too many pounds left us cold so we carried on to the various Rings of Brodgar and the Stones of Stennes while the midges drove us back from the village of Barnhouse (imagine a sudden fog of small black insects surrounding you as the wind stops) and then we ended with lunch at the Appie's café/tea room which proved okay, though I suspect their cake is better than their savouries.

Back in Kirkwall, Mrs Bilbo had to do some work and I went round the Highland Park distillery with NZN and an Ozzie guide. I guess the Marketing department had been working on the visit but even so not a bad way to discover you either do or do not like whisky (I don't). That night we ate at Helgie's on the dock front which seemed to have the full range of local beers (very nice) and some local dishes and vegetarian stalwarts for the NZN.

http://www.sinclairbreweries.co.uk/index.php
http://www.helgis.co.uk/food

Another night of heavy rain but again in the morning it is bright and sunny, after another disappointing continental breakfast we had a couple of hours to visit the local shops for the odd gift and then to the airport (reported a slight scratch to the car) and home via Glasgow and Leeds airports.

Key points,

there are very few trees on the islands so you can see a long way in all directions

tourist information is very good and you will need west and east mainland maps (one of each) to get around, there is also a single map for the island which also has town maps, all free from TI

outside of the two towns the place is empty (excluding birds and sheep)

the smaller islands send their children to board on at Kirkwall all week long, so the smaller islands are empty of teenagers all week long though it was noticeable that the bars on Friday and Saturday night had a whole bunch of very short drinkers

while the islanders are very friendly they don't suffer from much customer service training, so it is worth checking restaurants are open and you are booked in before you head off in the rain or to the other end of the island,

the weather makes the island. We monitored http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/os/ everyday to know what is happening with the next storm