WAY Back into the Past

2011: Orkney Odyssey
or WAY Back into the Past
via a short castle hunt in Scotland

Someone asked me how I ended up traveling to Orkney this year and I had to think about it to reconstruct the process. I wanted to visit some of the North Sea islands and began web-surfing for possibilities that did NOT involve a cruise, as I had discovered getting out into open ocean did not agree with my stomach. I found the Orkney Odyssey tour. THAT sounded like fun--even more and older history than usual, and with a guide I wasn't likely to stump with my questions. But groups always leave me behind regularly when I take fotos where others don't and pause to write down details. I could do this and be the whole group, though. OK, take shorter trip for the price of a longer one, then.

Since the only way to avoid changing airports as well as planes in London was to go via Copenhagen and a single familiar airport to Aberdeen, that part was easy. Pasting in a third flight to Orkney from Aberdeen was going to require an overnight somewhere. Copenhagen is always worth another visit, but I'd need another money change, and there are castles near Aberdeen, so I scheduled an extra day for a castle hunt in Scotland on my way. Wheee! I arranged for a driver/guide for the day in Scotland and checked out all the interesting castles in that part of Scotland on the web, finally coming up with a list of ruins I really wanted to see along with some "indoor" castles in case of excessive rain. It was too long for a single day, of course, but here are the ones I DID see when I got there. I'm not going to detail the trip over;I flew to Denmark, waited, flew to Aberdeen, got a good night's sleep, and was ready to hunt castles.

It doesn't LOOK that far from here, does it?.

I'm not going to offer lots of fotos and text about the castle hunt, because there are many pages about them on the Undiscovered Scotland website(click the castle names). I knew I wasn't going to see all the castles on my list, but Dunnottar was an absolute MUST. It was also going to be by far the most strenuous and an hour south of here while the others were all to the north, so it had to be first.

I will not detail the long walk, longer set of steps down followed by more steps up to the castle, all of which had to be reversed with many recovery pauses later. Anyway, well over two hours and 80 fotos after leaving my hotel, I collapsed into my guide's car in exhaustion. It was and remained a gorgeous warm sunny day, so all indoor castles were off the list and my next ruin of choice was, fortunately for my ancient body, over an hour away.

At Kildrummy I was able to buy a cup of coffee, which I immediately did, requesting a portable cup I could take along. After promptly burning my tongue, I perched it on a fence post a couple times to take approach shots until I finished it, crumpled it into my purse, and entered the wide open ruin. It's quite compact, as opposed to the spread-out Dunnottar ruins, and the approach was short and gentle, which I really appreciated at this point. There were no sea cliffs covered with waves crashing against them, but a gentle landscape with sheep and many lambs.

The next castle ruin on my list was Glenbuchet(aka Glenbucket). The nearest gate led into a field full of sheep, which my guide and I were dubious about disturbing, so we went looking for another entrance. We got close enough that I got some exterior shots, but there didn't seem to be a way to reach the gate visible on the far side, until a young couple who'd been at Kidwelly earlier came through it! Apparently the sheep pasture gate WAS the correct one, but the hill I had already come up by then was steep enough that I didn't want to climb back down to the car park and back up again, so off we headed for Balvenie.

The kiosk woman at Kidwelly had related the story of the burning of Auchindoun and asked whether I planned to visit that one, too. It was on the way to the next ruin on my list, and my guide pointed it out when we reached that point. It was visible on a steep hill I knew I did NOT want to climb, but I got a shot of it from the car. It was a poor one, but I also found it on my iPad's Maps app later and grabbed this shot of it. I also found a nice version of the ballad(Child ballad #138) on Youtube.

On the way through Dufftown, we stopped at a bakery, where my guide was hoping for soup, but it was gone, so we each had a "toasty" and coffee. It's a sandwich of toast and, in my case ham, in his ham and cheese.

Balvenie Castle was free this weekend because of a big whisky festival and had shortbread and whisky tasting. I was ready for my next ruin, and I finally remembered to ask him to take my foto in front of one! It's much more complete than Kildrummy, for example, and there's a lot upstairs--a number of rooms to explore, including the great hall. There were stairs to go further in a couple spots, but I didn't try them; I was really running out of steam by then despite food and coffee. I sampled and bought some shortbread, but didn't try the whisky.

I never expected to visit all the castles I had researched, my guide had another job coming up in the evening, and the one that most interested me of those left on the list was much too far off. However, Huntly Castle was on the way back and I could get some fotos from outside with a quick jump out of the car, so that's what we did. He had mentioned a big mound next to it that was certainly something to do with Huntly's history. The moment I saw it I realized it was the motte from an early motte and bailey castle, and took a foto of that, too.

It was well over an hour's drive back to the hotel, where I was met by a Scottish wedding reception with many men in full dress kilt and including live bagpipe music!! My guide said this was traditional at Scottish weddings. I walked into the lobby on a red carpet to ask what time the restaurant opened for dinner. Not for quite a while, so I headed for my room, only to discover I couldn't even get into the building it was in with the useless key card despite multiple tries. Back to lobby. Learned new thing: don't carry it in same pocket with credit card; they can leach the life out of them. Perhaps that's also why my credit card didn't want to work at first when I paid my guide's bill? Still digesting my key card's lifeblood? Anyway, they gave it a transfusion at the desk, I got into the building and my room and ate some of my shortbread, drank a couple cups of tea, and did assorted things with Paddy until it was late enough to have dinner, which was one of my favorites in the UK: fish and chips. One taste of the mushy peas that came with them was more than enough, however; how do they get all the pea flavor out?

Sunday was mostly a day of rest. I tried to sleep late to make up for Saturday's exertions and getting to bed rather late, but I did wake up with a cramping calf at one point; I pay for my castle hunts 8-) Since I had w-fi while I was in the hotel, I made use of it for a while, then took the last hotel-provided van of the morning to the airport. This hotel was "closest to the airport", as advertised, but on the wrong side of the runways, so it was not a cheap taxi ride, as I had discovered on Friday.
After checking in, I settled down near the departure list, following instructions: "wait in lounge". After seeing the gate change from that to 5 and back a couple times, when it changed to 10 I was waiting a while for it to change to "boarding" as it had for other flights, decided to visit a bathroom that held still before trying to find Gate 10, when suddenly over the loudspeaker came "last call for boarding" for my flight. I walked as fast as I could from where I was near Gate 3 toward higher numbers and discovered an arrow heading up stairs, had to go around corners through a couple sets of doors, then down a long hallway, finally reaching some stairs down to where they were expecting four missing passengers. OK, then outdoors and up a stepladder with railings(well, that's what it felt like) only to discover I had reserved the only seat with a blank wall where there was supposed to be a window! There were multiple empty ones, however, so I could move. There was, however, a propellor just outside my window. I could look, but taking fotos was a problem.

The woman at the information desk called a taxi for me and soon I was delivered to the Lynnfield Hotel, where I was going to be staying for the next week. It's a VERY nice hotel indeed. I was shown how to operate the big flat-screen TV, but it was easier to get my news from BBC Scotland on my iPad while I was doing other things just then. (After breakfast I found BBC news on the TV.) My tour didn't begin until morning, so I had the rest of the day to unpack and relax. When I went down for dinner, I found a lovely cat to pet and people to visit with until my table was ready. The parking lot was just outside, but the view was nice beyond it.

I've linked many of the sites I visited to the Orkneyar website because I think it has better descriptions than Undiscovered Scotland, but the latter has more fotos, more links, and a simpler index, and has pages on most of the same sites.

I went downstairs, met my private archaeologist guide, Caz Mamwell, and we set off on my Orkney Odyssey. First stop: the Orphir Round Kirk, Scotland's only surviving round medieval church. All but the nave was torn down to build a later, no longer surviving church. Some excavation had been done nearby, but it wasn't the Earl's hall, which was probably under some of the modern buildings.
It was overcast, but not raining, and really windy near the coast. She loaned me a rain jacket to put over my fleece one, which wasn't windproof enough. After that, I remembered to bring mine.

Skaill House in background

Our next stop was one of the Orkney headliners, Skara Brae. Years before I ever thought of going there, I had read about Skara Brae. In front of this Neolithic village there was much more land than we see now, with a sand bar out where two points set off the bay now. They took some large fish, for which they had to go far out in boats--probably skin on frames, like the Irish coracles. They even probably deliberately stranded whales, not just depending on accidents. They ate seals, too, as well as many kinds of fish and seafood.

The next stop was a leap almost to the present! Kirbuster Farm was occupied until 1961, when the two bachelor brothers living there died. The house has very different sections: the one where most daily activities apparently took place, which includes this "modern" stove in the former fireplace, is what the visitor sees first. The middle section is the really interesting one, because it's Scotland's last extant example of the "firehoose", against which a peat fire burns on one side, traditionally the "family" side, fish or other meat is dried/smoked over it, and the smoke exits through a hole in the ceiling. The other side was usually occupied by animals in the winter in this kind of home. Here that side was a working area with a wall bed and a peat storage area, among other things. Next there was a more "modern" box bed and then a formal parlor that even includes a pump organ.

The day wasn't over yet; our next stop was a place I'd found when I was riding around Orkney with the google car via iPad before the trip: the Earl's Palace in Birsay. He was NOT at all a nice Earl of Orkney; Orkney did not have very good experiences with his family! I was limping yet from my overexertion on Saturday's castle hunt, but I managed to take quite a few fotos here. Caz had arranged the first day's visit so I didn't need to climb any steps 8-)

I have to add one more foto from Kirbuster farm here: at one time South Ronaldsay famers were forbidden to keep their native sheep on good pasture--the Laird had other priorities--so they fenced them away from all but the beaches, and the ones that learned to eat kelp survived. They're small, as you can see. They also taste good; I had South Ronaldsay mutton with parsnip crisps(fried strips like strips of potato chip) that evening and both were delicious. And I bought a bottle of a really good Grüner Veltliner to also have with dinner the next three evenings rather than buying a glass at a time of lesser wine 8-)

Tuesday began in Kirkwall with St Magnus' Cathedral, sandstone Romanesque with some later stained glass. There was an organist practicing, which was neat. The market cross in front of the cathedral is the starting point for the Ba', a traditional Christmas sporting battle between the two sides of the town that makes rugby seem tame in comparison! Across the way from the cathedral are the ruins of the Bishop's Palace and Earl's Palace. This is a later and even more rapacious Earl of Orkney than the builder of the palace in Birsay, who came to a well-deserved bad end.

In the nearby Orkney Museum I was particularly interested in the "Orkney and the Sea" exhibit and discovered I could get them to send me a book on the subject. Next we headed down across the Churchill Barriers past some of the ships sunk to block German access to Scapa Flow during WWII for lunch,, then back up to visit the Italian Chapel. It was made by Italian POWs of Quonset huts, cement and painted drywall that really looks like carvings and tile inside.

From there we went up to a nature reserve on the far side of Deerness, which looks as if it should be a separate island, but it is connected to Mainland, where I took a bunch of fotos of the Gloup, a caved-in sea cave with a dramatic ravine, and started up the hill to see the Brough of Deerness, but my legs were not happy about the distance even without the prospect of some climbing at the end as well and turned back. It was just as well; the next morning we were taking the ferry to Rousay and what turned out to be the most exhausting morning yet! It was also the most gorgeous morning to visit my first broch and two ancient cairns. Since it was so lovely, I made my way up to the open deck and took fotos, of course. Some were of the vanishing island, Eynhallow, which I've added to the google map that leaves it out. Another was, although I didn't realize it until later, of Trumland House, which is connected to the discovery of one of the cairns I was going to visit later.

As I looked down the hill from where we parked at the huge shed covering Midhowe Cairn , I knew getting back up this hill was going to be a killer and started carefully working my way down. A web page claims it's about a hundred yards. It felt like a lot more even going downhill. It's several thousand years earlier than the nearby broch and an example of conspicuous consumption: it was built on good farmland, unlike most cairns, which tend to be on maginal land. Furthermore, earlier archaeologists dug rght through the remains of a later building on top of it; remains of an oval foundation on top can be seen in the shot below, third from the left. It was originally intended to be seen from outside, not buried, as herringbone stonework on the outside shows. It might have been roofed with turf, however. A short passage(same foto) gave passage to the interior.
Between the cairn and the later Midhowe Broch is another collapsed sea cave, but this one isn't a gloup like the one in Deerness, but a "stench na geo" for the stench from decaying seaweed.

This broch is actually the middle one of three; North Howe to the north and South Howe to, naturally, the south. This was originally one large room on the first floor, but later divided in two. It would have been two or three times this height. Another later development was the addition of more buildings in part of the earlier defensive trench(right-hand foto below).

The climb back up that hill was even worse than I had feared, but eventually, with my cane in one hand, Caz as portable railing on the other, and multiple pauses, I made it. I really earned my Scampi tails and chips for lunch! After copious infusions of tea, I also got in some pet therapy with a friendly dog. I was ready to continue. Taversoe Tuick is a two-story cairn up a much shorter slope, with the uphill part first. Once inside the upper level, there was a modern ladder to go down to the lower one I did not choose to attempt. I took a foto of the original entrance to that level from outside, too. It was still quite a while until time for the ferry(foto on right below) to take us back, so I had a ride around the island and Caz told me which other islands I could see in the distance. Although I didn't actually set foot on many of them, I have fotos of many of them off in the distance 8-) And that evening for dinner I tried one of the more unusual-looking entries on the menu: Monkfish tail wrapped in bacon. It was different and good.

Thursday began gray, but the overcast thinned now and then. There was a very strong cold wind all day and I really needed my rain jacket on top of the fleece to break that wind. The first visit of the day was the Rennibister earth house It's on a farmer's land; it was discovered one day when a new threshing machine fell into it. I actually climbed down a ladder to get into it and forgot to take a foto of that! As the web page also points out, we don't know exactly what these were for, but it would have been too damp for storage, and looks more like some of the tombs inside, what with these recesses in the walls. The last foto is the entrance passage we did not use.

The next three stops were in the Heart of Neolithic Orkney, beginning with the oldest standing stones, the Stones of Stenness. They're also tall, but there are not many left. The nearby Odinstone with a hole in it where oaths were sworn and handfast marriages made that were considered legal was blown apart by a non-native (from Caithness) tenant farmer one Christmas Day when he figured he could get away with it, after which he started on the Stenness ring, but someone got word to the sheriff and got a writ to stop him from going further. He was not only quickly brought to trial, but afterwards things kept happening to his farm and livestock until he gave up and moved away.

The Ring of Brodgar is a lot more impressive, if somewhat "younger". Again, many are missing, but many are still there, and to get all in one shot you have to either be far away or up in the air. There may have been 60 at one time, and the ditch all around them except for a single entrance was cut out of solid rock.
The third member of this trio of famous monuments is Maeshowe, which had been worrying me because the entrance way is long and low, and I didn't know whether I'd be able to navigate it. Caz saved the day by borrowing a wheelchair and wheeling me in! I wasn't going to be allowed to take fotos inside, nor could I ask her questions while there because there was an official guide provided. I had already learned enough in previous days that I spotted one bit of out of date or inaccurate information, and afterwards Caz told me about something else. The guide was, however, not an archaeologist, after all. (And of course I had to take a foto of it with its natural lawn tenders all over it!)

Lunch and warm-up time was a ham and pineapple panini and a really great salad partly from the Birsay Bay Tearoom's greenhouse, lots of tea, and a piece of their very good carrot cake. I was about to walk to an island, the Brough of Birsay, with no shelter from the wind. At low tide(fotos of "low" tide) beach on both sides and a causeway in the middle are uncovered. Google's map shows open ocean out there, but it's visible on the satellite view. It's also very important historically, as Orkney was once ruled from here, possibly in Pictish and certainly in Viking times. Getting out there and back is the hard part. The causeway is only clear at low tide, but the what's really hard is making one's way across the rocky part of the sometime beach. Caz acted as moveable railing for me again, as I had to watch where my feet were going rather than where I was headed. The fotos below were taken as I paused along the way. In Thursday's high wind, hearing her up on top as we walked around the building foundations was a challenge as well.

Kitchener Memorial on Marwick Head

It rained much of the night, but just seemed a bit foggy Friday morning--with more rain on the way according to my iPad. Those who like their vacations hot and sunny(as on boring Caribbean cruising city-ships) would look out the window in horror on such a morning, but I'd had a huge breakfast and 3 cups of excellent coffee(they grind beans for each cup here, I discovered), so I was braced for the trip to Hoy, Orkney's second-largest island. Unlike the ferry to Rousay, which backed in at both ends to let vehicles on and off, the ferry to Hoy lifted up part of its bow to join a sort of gangplank that came out from the pier at the Hoy end. It was raining when we started out for the ferry and got in line behind the big truck, which had to travel in the middle. Other vehicles were in two lines. It started late because it had to fuel up. I stayed in the van in because of the weather. The indoor passenger space was below anyway.

By the time we were off the ferry and had driven some distance up the island to reach the Dwarfie Stone's valley it had stopped. It was a bit of a trek out to it, partly on a wooden causeway and partly through heather over stones and pebbles, but not steep. The weather began to improve, though the top of Hoy's highest hill behind us still had its cloud hat. The second highest one, behind me in the foto, wasn't quite that tall. The foto shows the 3-foot square hole cut into the side. Inside that are two cells hollowed out, one on each side. The stone lying in front once blocked the entrance. The web page explains the folklore and the name, among other things. It was obviously moved there by a glacier; there's another further across the valley at the foot of the hill in the background. On the far end there's an odd bit of graffiti: a man translated his name into Latin, carved it into the stone backwards, and then added an inscription in Persion.

As we headed back to Lyness for lunch at the Naval Museum, the sun was peeking out, and as we headed down to Hackness for the Martello Tower a little later, it was positively nice out. As much as I've looked at maps of the area, I hadn't realized South Walls wasn't an island on its own, but is connected to Hoy. It's a pretty narrow connection, but between them they can protect Longhope Bay.
After that we went back up to Lyness and the Naval Museum with enough time for me to watch an interesting movie about the WWII history of the area in a theater in what was once an oil storage tank on the hill above.

view of battery from top of tower

Friday had started out unpleasantly and turned into a lovely sunny day, but even so, when I woke up to rain again on Saturday, the last day of my Orkney Odyssey, it was not a great moment, though it was getting a little brighter by 9:00, and the usual great breakfast and coffee had cheered me up. The Broch of Gurness was not going to be up or down a great hill, but non-rain for the visit would be nice. And then Caz wasn't ready because I went downstairs too early, so I had time for some pet therapy with Inge, who has a lovely purr. to improve my mood even more.

It stopped raining while we were on our way to the Broch, so I got lots of fotos, starting with the Pictish house that had been built on top of it later, which had been rescued and reconstructed outside the main site. The ditch around around the Broch is double part of the way, then becomes single and more or less peters out. The settlement grew with time, because one section is built out into the ditch area, as happened at Midhowe Broch as well.

Then we visited the Barony Mill, the only remaining water-powered flour mill in the islands and I started it up! It's not grinding wheat, oats. or bere barley just now because it's annual cleaning time, but a single wooden lever opens the sluice to start the wheel and the gears engage and start the grinding stones. Note lever sticking out of wall in first foto. Second one is the sluice. This is where the bere for the really dark little bere bannocks I've had with my breakfast most mornings is ground. It's the ONLY place where it's ground; Shetland farmers who grow it have to bring it here to be ground. I picked up a folder with some recipes, but have no idea what I'd substitute for the bere barley, which I very much doubt I could find around here.

We went down to Stromness for lunch, where I had fish and chips again 8-), I looked briefly at an art gallery(all boring 20th century stuff), took some fotos of the sea-going ferry that comes over from Scrabster in Scotland(That's it in the background), of sea-facing houses from the days when that was important here, the Hudson Bay recruiting station, etc. I asked whether the smaller boats I saw there were fishing boats and learned they were mostly dive boats. Divers come up here to dive the wrecks in the area.
The next stop was the Corrigall Farm Museum, This farm is a later version of the one from earlier in the week.

The owners had built a wall where the back of the dividing fireback was and divided the animal space and the family space.(note stalls) There were two good-sized box beds, one with sliding doors, about the size of a double bed at most. More than two people slept in one; in one case a family of eight!

Then Caz took me into Kirkwall to a bookstore where they'd mail books home for me. I picked some out and paid for them and the postage and then it was time to head back to the Lynnfield and say good-bye.
Not only did it rain again during the night, it tricked me by stopping until my taxi arrived to take me to the airport to start up again. Since Orkney was crying as I left, I didn't get to see the islands I might actually have recognized on the way back to Aberdeen.

Scotland was doing the same, and then Monday morning it was indeed sunny. I was expecting to climb ladders into and out of the little Flybe plane, but I didn't get an indoor walk-on gate for the smaller SAS plane to Copenhagen, either. We had to take the usual crammed bus to the terminal there, too.

Something extremely unusual happened in Copenhagen: normally I have to race off to the far end of the terminal when I finally find out what gate my next flight is leaving from, but my departure gate this time was right across from the table where I had settled on arrival to read a book on my iPad!
It's really nice having a whole library on one device smaller than a short hardcover book! Needless to say, I read much of the trip back; I have enough trouble trying to sleep on a plane when it's dark outside and late at night. And naturally once my daughter and son-in-law retrieved me from the airport and took me back to their house, I had to enthuse over my trip for some time even though my body kept telling me it was hours past bedtime. It was truly a wonderful trip and I was so spoiled by having my own private expert guide that I may never be able to join a group tour again!

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