Freyalyn's Thoughts

This is Mark and the pupz at Culloden.  We made excellent time going up on Friday, and stopped off at the battlesite before going on to find our B&B.  Fabulous weather for most of the drive North.  And the 'pub' we ended up eating at that night - the Kessock Hotel - was a three star hotel with excellent food.  Steak, as normal.


This was on the road north to Wick.  Again, sunshine and clear air and blue sea.  Except, by the time we'd driven up to Thurso for tea and buns at the surfers' cafe, it had closed in.  We visited Dunnett Head (because we hadn't before) and it was WINDY and wet. (There's a thriving surfing culture based around Thurso - who knew?)


I forgot to pack a hat.  Mark had luckily packed two, so I stole the doublemossa for the entire week, leaving him with this one (until the ferry home, by which time I'd spun and knitted one from dyed BFL).


Hoy in the distance.

On the Saturday night in Kirkwall, there was a miniature version of Up Helly Aa down Broadstreet.  Utterly amazing....

First we had the Kirkwall pipers marching - and with twenty bagpipes and lots of drums, the noise was incredible.  I was hopping up and down with excitment.  And although it sleeted horribly as we drove across the Barriers to Kirkwall, it was a clear evening by the time the Jarls (the Kol Kalison Squad 2008) and their longship came up the street.

Then the lights were switched off along all Broad Street (yes, the street lights!) and torches were lit.  (Health & Safety being banished for the night).  We followed the parade of pipers and vikings through the town, sparks flying into hair and eyes and clothes, along to Peedie Park and the ship burning.

I was particularly pleased with this shot.

Sunday was a quiet day, with lunch out at the Galley down in St Margaret's Hope.

Monday was an archaeological day - I'd booked us in at Maeshowe the week before, and we had an excellent 'tour' - it is locked and can only be visited on an official 'tour' with an Historic Scotland person.  She'd forgotten the key (a lovely lady called Linda who'd been at Durham just after me and knew lots of the same people) so we were given a free guidebook on getting back to the Tormiston Mill afterwards.  Great bookshop there, as as we decided to join Historic Scotland, we got 20% off everything there.  Books were bought.

We stopped at the Ring of Brodgar on the way to Skara Brae for lunch (excellent food there) and I took a duplicate of the photo I took there last time with Freya and Bil:

The wind was getting up by the time we got to Skara Brae.  The tide was in so we couldn't run on the sands with the pupz, so we just wandered along the stones and I collected a large, flat smooth one for wire work.
 
We then, rather madly given the wind, decided to climb up to the Kitchener memorial on the cliffs above Marwick Bay.  I didn't take the camera as it was so windy.  The dogs nearly took off like kites on their leads - there were rabbits and feral cats at the top, so they had to be leaded - it was so windy they couldn't hear us shouting at them.

I discovered later at Stromness Museum* why the loss of life had been so great in the wreck of the SS Hampshire, carrying Lord Kitchener and his entourage on a morale boosting visit to Russia during 1916.  She hit a  mine and sank rapidly, but the locals were not allowed to help with the rescue as it was believed that 'secret papers' might be discovered.  Nearly everyone died, and the wreck is an official war grave.

*Fantastic museum, very old fashioned with glass cases full of local memorabilia, remnants from wrecks, stuffed birds and animals.  Quite Edwardian in feel, and not all all 'relevant' or 'modern'. 

Despite the sleet on Thursday:
we drove up to visit the Italian Museum, which strangely we managed to miss last time.

Extremely moving.  Lots more photos on Flickr.  The inside is amazing.  I kept having to touch the walls to check what they were made of.


Stromness on Wednesday, I hadn't visited since I was a student and Mark had never been there.  We visited the Pier Arts centre which had a exhibition of drawings of standing stones.  Sadly I'd missed the workshop earlier in the week.  The Museum, as above, was fun. The fish and chips we had for lunch were the best we'd ever had - really.  And I resisted buying knitting yarn - I thought £8.95 for a 50g skein of hand-dyed North  Ronaldsay yarn was a bit much when I'd rather dye it myself.
 
Found a lovely little bookshop on the main street.

Wednesday we decided to spend in Kirkwall, and just managed to get a place on the 11am tour of the upper levels of St Magnus' Cathedral.  We'd planned to book for the 2pm, but it was cancelled due to the weather forecast, and we were lucky to be in time for the first.  Only five people allowed at once.  I was a bit squicky in a few places - I'm OK with heights as long as I have solidity beneath my feet, and in some places I knew damn well there was huge empty spaces beneath me.  In a few places Mark had trouble getting through, and had to turn sideways to get his shoulders through.  Excellent guide, a German girl called Marika.  Orkney really is one of the most cosmopolitan places...
We were right up at the top there....

View from the tower, which we were only allowed out quickly upon, as the wind was about borderline before it became too strong to open the doors.  The windows have been known to blow out if the doors are opened in too strong a wind.
 
The Rose window, originally 15th C, and the new West Window, put in recently to celebrate the 850th anniversary of the founding of the cathedral by Earl Rognvald, the murdered Magnus' nephew.  Rognvald was later sainted himself, probably for building the cathedral, as really he was as bad a murdering Viking as any.
 
The dove at the top seems to be threatened by an axe behind it.

St Magnus probably shared some of the same master masons as Durham in its early stages; the later stages, some 300 years later, are distinctly Gothic.


There is a collection of things in some of the upper galleries in the cathedral.  This is the gallows ladder from Kirkwall, last used in 1722.  Thirteen rungs; two go up, only one comes down.  And the 15thC curfew bell.


This sign was on the road next to Tesco's and the Co-op.  Didn't see one though.

Our guide in the Cathedral was wearing red ones of these, which I admired greatly but didn't actually covet because, well, they were red.  But then I found these green ones in Judith Glue's.  Whoops....

Friday morning we went down to the Wright Sands on South Ronaldsay, and I forgot the camera.  There were stranded jellyfish in various sizes on the beach, looking just like jewels.  A dead seal high up on the rocks was the nearest we got to one.  There has apparently been a great dearth of seals in Orkney in the last couple of years, possibly connected to the increasing frequency of orca sightings in the surrounding waters.  This one didn't seem to be wounded, though.  We actually got Lunil swimming in the sea in the sheltered bay on the other side of the dunes.  She is distinctly wary of moving water, and won't go in if the waves are more than ripples.  Unlike Bil, who charges in regardless, breasting large waves like a seal himself, and snorkelling quite happily for stones.

We took the car to the end of the road at Hoxa Head, where there's a lovely walk around the cliffs and gun emplacement ruins, but decided it was too windy.  The sun was shining, nearly dimming the Flotta flare, and I rang Ma quickly (no phone reception in the cottage).  Later that afternoon the weather closed in and it was vile.

We popped in to see Liz Lovick in her lovely nearly finished house in St Margaret's Hope.  Great to see her and catch up.  I hadn't managed to spin up the red and gold top I brought up this week, so on our way out to dinner at the Galley again I dropped those off with her.  It would be a pity to take them home....

We ate out that night at the Galley again, and were warned that the ferry wasn't likely to sail in the morning.  We were at the terminal by 7.30 though, and it went.  Pentland Ferries will go when most of the others won't, as it's a purely private enterprize and gets no government grants.  It made one trip that day, mainly to get the supply lorries back to the islands.  So it was a somewhat 'frisky' crossing. 

The weather started closing in around Wick.

Remember the photo in the same place going up?  At Inverness it was really raining, and it got worse all the way down.  Round Stirling and Glasgow there were sheets of water across the motorway, which was terrifying.  Strong head or side winds all the way, which greatly added to diesel consumption.  Over the CAithness Firth I genuinely thought we were about to be blown off the causeway.  And just short of Kirby Lonsdale there was a deep flood across the road, which I don't think anything other than a decent 4x4 would have got through.  But we were home before 9 than evening.


I spun and knitted this just in time for the ferry trip home, so Mark could have the warm hat.  It's actually double, and I ran out of the BFL handspun before finishing the top of the inner layer so that's in sock yarn.  But  I may rip and re-knit - it's not quite long enough over the ears.


I finished and gave Mark his socks, and finished the pair in front for me.  And the boring blue shawl grew lots, especially on the journey home.

I had a horrible migraine yesterday, and lost all of yesterday's lovely sunny afternoon to sickness and ick.  So I was a bit disorientated when Mark came home from work this morning just before I left.  Poor baby, it's his Fortieth birthday today and I forgot to wish him happy birthday.  Oh dear.  But he got the socks last week, plus I bought him a silver pendant of the Maeshow dragon/wolf, and there's a book on megaliths under my bed, and I'm planning to get him a kilt.  He has the legs for a kilt.  I shall knit kilt-hose....

This is where we stayed.  All the Orkney photos are here...