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Tue, 22 Oct 2002

author Tim location Lyness, Hoy, Orkney, Scotland
posted 18:51 BST section Europe2002/Europe/UK/Scotland/Orkney Islands ( all photos )

Flooding ( 7 photos )
Well, we knew we were having lots of rain around the place, but have just heard that there has been huge flooding across Southern Scotland, and we're in for severe gale force winds up here tomorrow.
There's no ATM on this island, and we only have enough cash for tonight's accommodation, so here's hoping that we can get across!
Once we get back to the Orkney mainland, next task will be to get to Scotland proper - we heard that the ferry that does that had to be dirverted for the first time ever! What fun this journey could be!
Today we took in everything that Hoy could offer us, in the horrible weather it insisted on showing us. This included several memorials, a war museum, some defence towers and the town Rackwick. This is the start of the walk to the Old Man of Hoy. However, between the extreme winds, us not knowing where we were going, and the sign "There is no mountain rescue available here", we thought better of it.
We did wander in to The Dwarfie Stone, a 5000 year old tomb carved into a piece of solid rock. We climbed inside it, took some photos, and dribbled back into the car.
Just for the record, we are wearing on average a shirt, then windstopper vest, then a fleece (or two jumpers in Liz's case), followed by a huge waterproof warm coat (me) or a rain jacket (Liz). It is not warm, calm or dry here.
An interesting little island, this Hoy. Everything seems like decay has set in - lots of people have gone away for indeterminate periods of time, plenty of ruins all over the place, and there's almost nobody visible anywhere. It's certainly very different than what either of us thought it would be. It's supposed to be seal season, but even they seem to have deserted the place - we haven't seen any.
So we're aiming to get the ferry to the mainland proper tomorrow, weather permitting. As nice as this B&B is, spending half the day here has been long enough!

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author Tim location Lyness, Hoy, Orkney, Scotland
posted 08:58 BST section Europe2002/Europe/UK/Scotland/Orkney Islands ( all photos )

Hoy Ahoy! ( 7 photos )
Well, that's a pretty sad joke, but we're now on the island of Hoy. This is the second largest in Orkney, and lies to the south of the Orkney mainland.
We had our first taste of island life last night, when looking for dinner at 6pm, we drove all the way to the other end of the island, only to find that pub was "closed until further notice". Heading back towards the shop we had seen earlier, we found another Inn. No food there. Then to the shop across the road (the only one on the island). It was closed!
So dinner last night was improvised from rice crackers, cheese and chips (which are called crisps here). At least we had enough to improvise with. Lesson two - find food early.
Lesson one was find accommodation early. Out of the first four places we tried, two no longer offered accommodation, and two could not be found. We ended up at the St. John's Manse B&B, where the owner was shocked that we'd come to an island with no accommodation organised! That's how we've done our whole trip so far!!
On our way back from a failed attempt at one of the places, a lighthouse, we ran into some traffic on the road in the form of two cows. They had wandered out of their gate and up the road. Obviously, traffic here is very light. We managed to herd one of them into the gate, after they had waddled up the road as fast as they could away from Percy. The second missed its exit, and we had to drive along behind it until we got to a passing place, where the turbo pulled us past the poor thing as fast as it could!
Working further backwards in time, we got the ferry down here from Houton to Lyness, Hoy yesterday afternoon after being queue-jumped for the lunchtime ferry. A reasonably smooth ride, everyone stayed in the cars, which was a new experience. We were going to have a round-trip via the tiny island of Flotta, but the ferry terminal guy told us not to bother - it's just an oil refinery. Even the much bigger Hoy only has one road on it.
Before the ferry trip, we followed the advice of the Lonely Planet and went into a garage supposedly selling some funky hats, but it seemed that information was out of date :( We grabbed some non-perishable food supplies instead.
First off on Monday, we visited the Highland Park distillery, where the tour was the best so-far. The trip around the malting floor was great fun, we saw the barley actually sprouting. Our guide was great, and like so many people up here, really seemed to enjoy life.

Sunday we went around trying to find a few more places of interest - first stop was Mine Howe. This strange discovery is twenty-nine steps descending into the ground, with a few chambers scattered around for good measure. Theories on what it was range from a drowning place to a ceremonial ground-god contact point and lots of ideas in between. Unfortunately closed for the winter, we looked around the grounds instead, where various excavations had taken place.
We then stopped at Dingieshowe, a sandy isthmus built to join the mainland to Deerness. It has a great beach on one side, where we skimmed some rocks (Liz is getting better!) and walked amongst the weed.
Next we drove around the North-East part of the mainland. This area is all single-track road, and has a few interesting war memorials, burial sites, sheep and cows scattered around. We took a walk down to "The Gloup" - a blow-hole style thing created by the ocean eroding away a cave under the land, and some of the land eventually collapsing. We were quite high up as we walked around it, the constant wind reminding us to stay alert and away from the edge.
A drive around the point of Tankerness failed to find anything particularly interesting, so we headed back to Kirkwall. The relaxing afternoon was spent watching our black-and-white TV with dial-tuning (very retro), and making the decision that we aren't going to Shetland after all. Deciding factors included:


Today, we'd like to take a hike over to The Old Man of Hoy. It's a famous rock formation on a beach, around three hours round-trip from the nearest car park. However, the weather is pretty horrible, top of six degrees, windy and rainy, so we'll just see how it is around lunch time. There's quite a few other interesting things on Hoy, so we'll also take those in before our return ferry trip tomorrow lunch-time.
We're not decided whether we are going to take in another island, but at this stage we will probably head back to the real mainland (ie. the bit with London on it) and start making our way south, via the Isle of Skye.
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