Author Archives: Marce

Every mile we drive in Scotland cements its position on my list of Most Beautiful Places. For the better part of ten years we’ve enjoyed picture-postcard tropical views of turquoise waters, brilliant exotic flowers, and the unbroken horizon where the heavens meet the sea.

Now we are far from the equator in a place that rations the sunshine, compresses and mutes the color palette, and teases the horizon behind rolling carpets of heather and gorse. We’ve been lucky enough with the weather to photograph sweeping views under sunshine and blue skies, but even the gloomy days are beautiful, stark and moody. The contrast so well describes Scotland and its people, witty and brilliant but with the dark undercurrent of a violent history.

Still with no plan, and eschewing the tourist stops suggested in the guides to the North Coast 500, we spend our days tooling south more or less toward the Hebrides. I also keep my eye on the weather and my apps hoping for another shot at seeing the northern lights before we get out of range. The weather is the biggest barrier. Even on days when the sky is clear at four o’clock by dark the horizon is obscured by thick clouds.

There’s no shortage of free parkups in Scotland and we’re aware of how special this is. We’ve been warned that England is not so friendly to free camping and that will affect our route and budget when we get there.

We’ve seen a lot of unusual warning signs through the years but this migratory toad crossing is a first for us. I admit I didn’t know they migrate.

On the road one day I spied a castle ruin off in the distance. Had I been following a map or guide I’d have known it was there but it was a complete surprise to us.

We were well past it before we decided it was worth a stop, and by the time we got turned around, found a safe place to park, then took a wrong path and had to wade across a stream to get to it, we were both a little cranky. But it was a castle, Jack’s favorite thing to explore, and he took off, examining and photographing every detail.

This is Ardvreck Castle, built in the 15th century by the MacLeod clan, then captured by Clan Mackenzie in the 17th century along with the surrounding lands.

The MacKenzies built a more modern manor house across the loch in 1726 but ten years later it was destroyed by fire. You can see the ruin from the castle.

While Jack explored I was distracted by the approaching roar of a half dozen serious touring motorcycles. As the helmets came off I could see these were not young pups, but balding, slightly paunchy, leather-clad old road warriors out for some senior fun.

I asked if they were a club but no, just old friends on a weeklong trip from Ireland. The way they teased and cajoled each other made me smile and they obliged a request for a photo. How lucky they are to have long-time mates to share adventures with.

We continued south through more gorgeous scenery, stopping again to hike up to a waterfall. The waterfall was disappointing but the walk through the forest and the view were worth it.

It’s been a while since we’ve been stopped by large animals on the road. The last time it was elephants in Tanzania.

After a bit of flotzing and faffing we finally decided to forego the challenging mountain pass at Applecross and begin our Hebrides journey. Another couple of sunset parkups brought us to within sight of the bridge to Skye. That’ll be tomorrow.

It took a couple of days to recover from the Old Man hike. It wasn’t the distance or the time that did us in, but the long stretch of uneven rocky trail that stressed Jack’s deteriorating knee and my previously broken and frequently sprained ankle. We were glad to get back down without mishap, but we took full advantage of our beautiful parkup to rest before turning Escape Velocity towards the ferry.

We navigated toward Lyrawa Hill, missed the turnoff and had to double back, finally reaching the summit on a potholed track to the most expansive view over Scapa Flow to the Orkney mainland.

As we explored the hilltop we discovered we were back in the part of Hoy that still bears the scars of the infrastructure of war.

Lyrawa Hill was the site of a heavy anti-aircraft battery. There were four guns here of the 120 total installed by 1940 to protect the Royal Fleet anchorage.

When we came to Orkney we had no idea we would see so many remnants of war. The bunkers and batteries are everywhere and a reminder to us Americans, who haven’t fought a war on our own soil in 150 years, of the effort, the cost, the toll in lives and land, of war. Standing on this hill now with only the sea and the wind as soundtrack, I wish all peoples everywhere could know peace.

Much as we’d like to stay on that hill a little longer we have a ferry booked. On our way back down we passed a sheering operation. “Stop!” I yelled, and I jumped out of the van and ran back to the men, who may have been father and son. I asked if they minded if I took some photos.

“Most people don’t ask,” the older man said. “They just shoot and drive away.”

This was just a small number of the sheep getting a summer haircut today, he told me. They had already done dozens more and he pointed to nearby barns and enclosures. I marveled at the speed of the younger man with the clippers.

“He’s very fast,” agreed the older man.

I asked if the wool was processed here on Hoy, but no, they send it to a distributor on the mainland where it’s sold to various processors.

Our last stop in Hoy was the Scapa Flow Museum on the site of the original pump house that supplied fuel to the ships at anchor. The museum just opened in July and kept us occupied for hours. We learned so much about the history of Scapa Flow. We were too occupied with the interpretive galleries to take photos but the episode that most intrigued us was the scuttling of the German fleet at the end of World War I and the subsequent salvage operation. It’s an amazing story; you can read it here.

The pump house has been restored and we had to pull out the cameras for it since we both worked in industrial video and appreciate big machinery and greasy tools.

The museum doesn’t have an interpretive website yet, but you can watch a short video here of how the pump house and collection have been reenvisioned. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

And then it was time to board the ferry and say goodbye to Hoy. We considered staying longer but we only have about six weeks left on our UK visas. It’s time to move on.

We can’t believe the spacious car park at Rackwick allows 7 nights free for campers and caravans, and what’s more, that we never saw more than two others during our time there. There’s also a clean toilet block in an old stone building, not to mention the stunning view. What a perfect campsite!

The car park marks the starting point for the hike to the Old Man of Hoy with nearby Rackwick Beach a destination in itself. It’s a rugged expanse of boulders churned nearly round by the sea and tossed onto a swath of pinkish sand. Mainland Scotland is only about eighteen miles away, but I wouldn’t want to be out there on this choppy sea.

Do I need to mention the wind? We’re still debating whether we’re up to the hike to the Old Man, and this ferocious wind is one of the factors under consideration.

Just above the beach is a traditional bothy offered as free shelter to campers, no reservations required. You can stay inside or pitch a tent in the walled yard. There was no one there the day we visited but during our stay we saw a few cyclists and backpackers take refuge from the weather.

Every day four or five cars arrive at the car park from the morning ferry and we watch the occupants prep for the trek: hiking shoes, rain gear, woolen caps, daypacks, cameras, binoculars, water, trekking poles. We amuse ourselves by guessing the ages of the hikers and make note of the time they return and how knackered they are. On a particularly windy and rainy day a group of four very fit-looking men staggered back and collapsed on the gravel, then fired up a camp stove right in the car park for a warming cuppa. Right then we knew it was prudent to wait for better weather. A wet cliff hike in low visibility isn’t high on my to-do list.

While we monitor the weather we visited the Dwarfie Stane, a Neolithic chambered tomb carved from a massive block of sandstone. It’s thought to be the only one of its kind in Britain, hewn from stone rather than built from stone. The stone is a glacial erratic and measures about 28 feet by 14 feet.

It’s hard to imagine the time and effort required to chisel the entrance and chambers using only other stones.

There’s some 18th and 19th century graffiti. One is an inscription in Persian: “I have sat two nights and so learnt patience.”

Our patience with the weather was rewarded and we picked a good day for the assault on the Old Man. I had to move our ferry reservation back a few days. and when I called the office to change it the clerk assumed we wanted to leave sooner. She sighed and asked, “What time tomorrow do you want to leave?”

“No,” I said. “We want to stay longer.”

“Oh!” she brightened. I guess tourists don’t stay long in a place that has a tough time filling a top ten list of What To Do In Hoy. We love it though, and I think the fact that we’re in our own home wherever we go makes the difference between looking for something to do and just being able to appreciate the beautiful place we’re in.

Back in Kirkwall we made a beeline to the ferry office and booked our passage to Hoy. That settled, we loaded the Kirkwall app and set off to continue the guided walking tour we’d started weeks before but never finished. By this time we’ve seen most of the important sites. The tour ended at the cathedral and as we approached the street was uncharacteristically lined with people, with more coming.

We asked a man with a couple of cameras around his neck what was brewing. “They’re bringing some horses through; I’m not really sure.”

It was obvious by his accent that he wasn’t a local but we staked out a spot on the wall in front of the cathedral fence to wait. We saw the local dignitaries in their finery, and tens of crowd control volunteers positioned along the street. Obviously something important was about to happen.

Soon the Kirkwall City Pipe Band assembled in front of the cathedral and spectators surged up the steps to watch. Jack held our prime spots on the wall while I muscled through the crowd to the band.

When the band finished, the safety volunteers patrolled the wall where we were sitting and instructed us all to go up the steps and behind the fence. We were expecting a parade and wondered why we should move so far away from the action. “You’ll want to be behind the fence,” they urged with a knowing look.

We found a spot behind the fence just in time to hear the mayor (we think) begin a very long welcome address with a bit of history of the pageant we were about to witness. We understood very little of it, of course, but with the help of our spectator neighbors and Professor Google we got the 411.

This is the Riding of the Marches, also called Common Riding. It’s a Scottish tradition dating from the 13th to 15th centuries when there were frequent raids on the towns along the Anglo-Scottish border. To protect the clan from reivers, the local lord appointed a townsperson to ride the borders, or marches.

Nowadays, many towns stage an annual ceremonial Riding of the Marches to celebrate their history. The most well known takes place in Edinburgh, but we could tell Kirkwall loves their tradition too. I think everyone in town came out for the festivities.

At the appointed time the lead riders arrived and lined up facing the dignitaries.

It was soon clear why we needed to move back. Some of the horses took issue with the length of the ceremony and we were glad we weren’t sitting eye to eye with an impatient 500kg beast eager to toss his rider and move on.

After much speechifying and presenting of the flag to the lead rider the procession began.

They would ride to the harbour, then follow a route that will take them along the border of Kirkwall, returning to the center of town in about two hours. We were home by then at one of our favorite waterfront parkups when Jack spied the horses approaching from the direction of the cruise ship dock.

We ran out to catch a few photos but the drizzle and early evening chill sent us right back home again for a quiet night and a warm dinner.

We keep reading reviews on various travel and hiking sites of the trek to the Old Man of Hoy. This is how indecisive we are. But when half of the reviews swear it’s a 30-minute heavy-breathing uphill followed by an easy overland romp, and the equally adamant other half report a challenging slog over rough terrain all the way, you can understand our reluctance to commit. And as far as we know, the Old Man is pretty much the only reason to make the journey to Hoy. In fact, we read there are people — and we question their sanity — who take the morning ferry, hike from the dock to the start of the trail, hike up the trail to the Old Man, then hoof it all the way back in time for the mid-afternoon ferry, a distance of about 14 miles and 2500 feet of elevation gain. AllTrails calls this “moderately challenging” and warns to stay well back from the cliff edges and not to attempt in wet weather, high winds, or low visibility. It’s Scotland. Rain, wind and fog are a given. But Jack’s remaining OEM knee is starting to complain about too much hiking, and I’m always mindful of what a misstep on a rocky path could do to my trick ankle. Old people problems, I know.

On the other hand, we’re so close and it calls to us. We know we’ll kick ourselves later if we don’t do it. We still regret not crossing the scary swing bridge to climb the wonky ladder and sit in a 600-year old kauri tree in New Zealand back in 2016. We both chickened out and we feel bad about it to this day.

While we play “will we or won’t we?” with the Hoy question we continue our drive around the East Mainland. There’s less focus on the Neolithic here and more on WWII. It’s also less populated, less developed, and certainly less touristed. We have the place largely to ourselves. Even the honesty boxes are mostly empty of homebakes and just stocked with convenience store snacks.

We had high hopes for the pretty village of St. Margaret’s Hope, but it didn’t satisfy our café craving.

After a couple of quiet nights in peaceful parkups we ran out of ideas for this side of Orkney and turned back to Kirkwall to see if we can book a ferry to Hoy. Yes! We’ve decided to go!

Hundreds of years after the architectural contributions of the brutal Black Earl et al, another team of forced laborers created a triumph of wartime shortages and homesickness on the tiny island of Lamb Holm on the eastern shore of Scapa Flow.

Scapa Flow is a wide body of water bordered by the Orkney mainland, Hoy, and the isles to the south and with a shallow sandy bottom. It’s one of the best natural harbors in the world, used at least as long ago as the Vikings as a safe and sheltered anchorage in the North Sea.

There’s some history to catch up with, so bear with me. At the beginning of the 20th century, Britain thought they might want to relocate some of their naval fleet to better defend against the buildup of the German navy on the North Sea. After a few false starts at other locations, Scapa Flow became the main base of the British Grand Fleet. To protect against attacks by German U-boats, the channels between the small islands to the south were fortified with mines and blocked with sub nets, booms and eventually block ships.

These efforts were largely successful with only a few failures but by the beginning of World War II the block ships had collapsed and the previous defenses proved inadequate. In October 1939 a German U-boat breached the perimeter and sunk the battleship HMS Royal Oak causing the loss of over half the 1400-man crew. Three days later Scapa Flow came under attack by Luftwaffe bombers.

In response, more blockships were sunk, more booms and mines were deployed, and anti-aircraft batteries were installed to defend the fleet. Winston Churchill ordered the construction of causeways linking the small islands to the southeast, essentially blocking the entrance to Scapa Flow from that direction. The causeways are now called the Churchill Barriers.

By that time there were hundreds of Italian prisoners of war encamped in Orkney and they were set to work constructing the barriers. At first the prisoners went on strike, claiming the Geneva Conventions prohibited prisoners of war from being forced to support the war effort. In response, the Brits claimed the barriers were only meant to improve communication between the small southern islands and mainland Orkney. You be the judge. In any case, the Italians ended up working on the barrier project.

Far from home and missing their culture, a small group of Italian POWs petitioned their captors for permission to build a chapel. They were given two Nissen huts which they connected end to end, then lined the inside with plasterboard, scrounged for scrap materials, bartered for paint, and set to work.

The result is a masterpiece of ingenuity, talent, faith and dedication, and the best example of trompe l’œil either Jack or I have ever seen.

A sign at the entrance asks visitors to refrain from touching the walls, but of course the first thing Jack did was reach out to feel the smooth surface of the plasterboard, that’s how good the illusion of 3D is.

The base of the holy water stoup is a giant spring covered in concrete. Visitors are advised not to lean on it.

There’s so much to know about every detail of this beautiful little chapel and the men who created it. You can read more here.

And feel free to go down the rabbit hole about Scapa Flow on your own time. Here’s a good place to start. We came to Orkney for the Neolithic sites but ended up fascinated by the dramatic history of Scapa Flow. I’ve only touched on a few high points.

After a remarkable run of fine weather I saw a nasty storm on the way. Bad weather is definitely easier to deal with in a campervan than on a boat at anchor but we still have considerations. There’s always the option of rolling into a campground and forking over a fee to plug into shore power, crank up the heat, take long hot showers and settle in for the duration.

Our preference, as you can imagine, is to find a parkup that’s sheltered or at the very least, where we can orient ourselves facing directly into the tempest to be reasonably comfortable even in high winds.

We weren’t ready to leave the Stromness area so we opted for a tiny car park that’s only accessible by driving through a golf course and along very narrow lanes squeezed around stone buildings. Google maps directed us to turn into a lane marked “Private” but we scofflaws went anyway, only to find the road lined with cars and crowded with people. We hadn’t seen this many people in one place for months. It was raining, not that it bothered anyone. Jack maneuvered Escape Velocity around the bend past the jumble of oddly parked vehicles without making contact, and onto an impossibly narrow lane past what looked like the back nine of a golf course. Aha! That was the golf club, and a very busy Saturday morning it was.

We followed the road to the end and as the wind picked up we did our usual animated parkup dance and got situated behind the ruin of an old guardhouse with a magnificent view of the channel and Hoy in the distance. That is, if we could see anything in the bluster.

Within minutes the full brunt of the storm moved in and we expected two days of reading, writing, eating, sleeping. The Scots, we learn again and again, are made of stronger stuff. They are undaunted. Foul weather only affects their clothing choices and often not even that. A car pulled in beside us and out popped a man fully kitted with a hi-viz vest, a spotting scope, camera, and binoculars. He positioned himself directly in front of our van.

Curiosity got the best of me and I suited up and went outside to talk to him. He’s a volunteer with an organization that monitors the populations of whales and dolphins along Scotland’s Coast.

“This is my spot,” he told me, and he pointed to the impression in the ground right in front of our bumper, where he planted the monopod supporting his spotting scope. I didn’t ask if he wanted us to move. I’m sure he did, but when you get a motorhome level and it’s pissing down rain, all bets are off. Besides, we really weren’t interfering with his work, which was to spend an hour every day scanning the water for marine life. He didn’t see any that day but told me he’d seen a few harbor porpoises yesterday.

I wished him well and retreated to the shelter of the van.

“Did you see this?” Jack asked incredulously, and he pointed out the back. In winds of 25-30 kts and driving rain, the golf course was full of intrepid players. You’re kidding, I thought. How can you even predict where the ball will go in these gusts? Who are these people?!

This required a little googling and it only took a minute or two to learn this is an annual open tournament, men today, women and kids tomorrow. I guess having spent the money to enter, no one was going to miss it. Or, more likely, it didn’t bother the players. From our dry and cozy shelter it sure looked like they were playing at a normal pace. There was no sheltering under umbrellas, no shoulders hunched against the downpour. I couldn’t imagine enjoying hitting a wet ball over soggy terrain with chapped hands, but I guess the Scottish part of my DNA doesn’t included the “impervious to fierce weather” gene.

There are no further photos of the day, or most of the next day because neither one of us wanted to get chilled to the bone for the sake of the blog. Sorry, folks.

By dusk on Sunday the storm had pretty much blown itself out and we could once again see the silhouette of the beautiful island of Hoy across the channel, looming like Bali Hai. The sight made us question our decision to pass on a trip over. Should we? Yes? No? When we feel energetic the answer is yes. Other times, no way. The discussion continues.

With dry weather predicted again we drove back toward Kirkwall to reprovision and plan our exploration of Orkney’s East Mainland. On the way we stopped at Maeshowe, the final element of the UNESCO Heart of Neolithic Orkney Site. We’d already visited the other sites, Skara Brae, the Ring of Brodgar, and the Stones of Stenness.

We breezed into the visitors center unticketed and lucked into the next guided tour, starting in five minutes. This involved a small bus to the actual site, a magnificent chambered cairn and tomb. Even with the bus ride, there was still a bit of a walk out to the site, which looks on the approach like a great big mound.

To enter you have to crouch very low and duckwalk through a long tunnel.

Once inside, the main chamber is about 12 feet high. There are no photos allowed in the cairn, and very few that I could find on the internet. Here’s the Wikipedia entry.

It’s an amazing structure, estimated to be about 5000 years old, the same as the other significant Neolithic sites in Orkney. Our guide was knowledgeable and enthusiastic and our fellow tourists interested and inquisitive. We stayed inside for quite a while as the guide recounted the history and significance of the structure and answered all our questions. He also translated the more recent Viking graffiti, carved in Old Norse, most of which was the Nordic equivalent of “Kilroy was here.”

Then it was back to Kirkwall and our favorite harborfront parkup for some city time.

Another day, another coastal walk as we make our way slowly south along the west coast of mainland Orkney. There’s so much to see, so many breathtaking seaside parkups, that if we go ten miles in a day it’s a lot.

We had a choice between an uphill hike to the Kitchener Memorial or a level amble to some stone fishermen’s huts. Our knees made the choice. Level.

The huts are over 100 years old, built of stone with driftwood beams supporting the doorways. They provided shelter and housed fishing equipment. You can also see the carved indentations called nousts that cradled the boats during the winter months.

We wished we’d brought a picnic because it was beautiful to sit in a doorway overlooking the sea on another gift of a sunny day.

A few more miles down the road and we staged ourselves at another perfect parkup within sight of our next day’s destination, the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Skara Brae.

Skara Brae might be the only thing many people know about Orkney. Certainly I’ve known about it forever, but after visiting Jarlshof in Shetland and Broch of Gurness a few days ago I wasn’t expecting much. Add to that a sudden turn of the weather with strong winds and a drop in temperature and my enthusiasm for poking around another pile of rocks on a windy coastline had waned considerably. Still, it’s a near complete Neolithic settlement, older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza, so we can’t skip it.

In the event it turned out to be an informative visit. Between the visitors center and the archaeological site they’ve built a replica house to give you an idea of what life was like in Orkney 5000 years ago.

Skara Brae was like the Levittown of the Stone Age. Each house was nearly identical, with a central entrance, wife’s bed on the left, husband’s on the right, dresser on the back wall, fire pit in the middle. It was cozy in the replica, out of the wind, and you can imagine it being warm and dry with a fire going. Except for the lack of indoor plumbing and a strong cell signal it didn’t seem a bad way to live.

Out on the site the wind was blowing a hoolie.

There’s no free audio tour like the one that so enhanced Jarlshof, but there are several docents stationed around the very compact site to answer any questions, and after a walk around the perimeter I had a list.

While Jack meandered back and forth taking photographs I cornered one of the guides and peppered him with questions.

What were the roofs made of? We don’t know.

Why did they leave? We don’t know.

Did they burn peat? No, there wasn’t peat that far back. We suspect dried seaweed and animal dung.

How many people lived here? We think about 40.

Were the people under threat of attack from outsiders? No, these settlements have no defensive structures and we believe there was commerce or communications among the settlements.

I continued to ask questions until I noticed a few other visitors waiting patiently for their own quality time with the docent and I thanked him and went searching for Jack, who never seems to tire of photographing rocks, especially by the seaside.

Eventually the wind and the chill sent us scurrying back to Escape Velocity.

Skara Brae is different from the other Neolithic sites we’ve visited in that it was built and occupied in the one Stone Age period. Jarlshof and Broch of Gurness had successive occupations during the Iron Age, then by the Picts, the Vikings, and so on. Skara Brae is a valuable resource for archaeologists but I’m still saddened by how much knowledge gets lost over the millennia.

After a couple of days of human history and archaeology we’re looking forward to some natural history for a change. Tomorrow.

After visiting the Ring of Brodgar we realized our No-Plan Plan would not serve us well in a place we knew very little about. We drove the 20 minutes back to Kirkwall — this is a small island — to visit the tourist office and get some guidance. I listened intently to the data dump from the guy at the desk but I could see Jack glaze over around the start of the paragraph two. I gathered up the pile of brochures, maps, ferry schedules and facilities lists and we went back to the van to assess and regroup.

We found a free parkup right in the center of town. Oddly enough it’s equivalent to a Walmart parking lot, but if you play your cards right and get there early you get the spot on the end adjacent to a lake. Even with a couple of motorhomes parked on the other side, it’s absolutely quiet overnight and easy to forget you’re within a 3-minute walk of a Tesco, a Lidl and a Co-op.

We also learned of a campground around the corner where we can either stay overnight or just pay a small fee to use the facilities. Now we have three legal places to stay in town, two of them free, and we embraced this opportunity to get to know a town. We’ve missed that.

First we needed to check out all the various food and specialty shops, then find a cafe to call home. The cafe was easy. How can you pass up The Archive, housed in the former town library? You can’t. And lucky for us, the food is great. I can’t count the number of times we ate there. Jack ordered the same thing every time (Eggs Benedict) but I tried every vegetarian item on the menu.

Next we followed a self guided walking tour that took us to to St. Magnus Cathedral and along some interesting streets and alleyways until we got distracted by local shops offering Fair Isle knitwear (we admired but didn’t buy) and anything you can imagine with a puffin on it.

We found a laundry to wash and dry our bundle in a couple of hours for a reasonable fee. Jack bought a long-searched-for coffee scoop that judging from the price is apparently museum quality. I found a shop with locally grown organic produce whose owner swapped us a better shower head out of his own motorhome.

One Saturday we stepped into a doorway to make way for traffic. A delivery van stopped next to us and our shopkeeper friend rolled down the window.

“The sourdough’s in the back,” he told us. We followed the van to the store and bought enough still-warm baked goods for a family of eight.

We found the zero meridian that 18th century cartographer Murdoch MacKenzie established before there was any national reference point for navigational charts. One hundred and one years later the UK decided the prime meridian should be at the Royal Onservatory in Greenwich and of course the rest of the world accepted that standard. MacKenzie’s original point now lies at about 3°W longitude.

We explored the harbor, the distillery, and just about every street in town during our many visits back to the place. Kirkwall became our Orkney home.