Author Archives: Jack

So I said, ”Dear, what the hell is The Gloup?”

“It’s where we’re going to park-up tonight,” she cheerfully offered.

I thought it must be a theme park from Gwyneth Paltrow. Turns out that The Gloup has the Full Monty of attractions, a free overnight park-up, decent view, a reasonable hike to a massive geo which is a collapsed sea cave or blowhole, and Marce’s favorite, an honesty box right in the parking lot. I’m thinking of putting a warning sign on Escape Velocity that says “This van makes sudden stops for Honesty Boxes.”

On the way over to the sunny trailhead we stopped at an innocent-looking plaque that told a grossly different story. It seems that indeed the geo is no more than a mile away but the scenic rocky coastline goes on for miles. Out came the hiking boots and poles. We’ve seen at least a half dozen interesting geos, most of which are wonderful. However, to avoid another Rule #2 infraction (don’t get jaded) I quickly smiled and said, ”I’ll do it.”

Making our way along an undulating narrow path lined with sunny tall golden grass that snapped as you extricated your foot after every step, we approached the payoff. You see, that’s the thing about geos. There’s little to see at ground level.

You really can’t see much until you creep cautiously up to the edge of the geo and peer down into the cavernous, vertigo-inducing…hole. Still, it’s a fine hole and the best of them have a water feature of some sort. It’s really kind of magical.

It turns out that Marce, when confronted with dizzying heights, is afraid she’ll take that final step out into the ether. Yours Truly, on the other hand, instantly thinks of the first few pages of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in which he imagines, in a flight of fancy, the passengers blown out of flight AI 420 over London somersaulting through the stratosphere, some even recognizing their overhead luggage tumbling nearby. Same result. I say, ”To each their own.”

And so it was.

You see, the problem is that Yours Truly has a curiosity compulsion that I knew would inexorably suck us into, if that plaque is to be believed, a long and arduous tour of this rough and rocky Scottish coastline.

Turns out the best part of this day was the incredible Scottish coastal landscape. We trudged along with my throbbing knee becoming more insistent until a “Dangerous Conditions” sign blocked our path. The remnants of a wooden staircase still clung to the rock wall leading down to a private beach but that went with the same earthquake. Recognizing my opportunity I said, “Well, it must be time to turn back.”

I like to think of ourselves as observant intuitive people, open to new experiences. So when we found out that not one but two remarkable well preserved antiquities were hiding in Kirkwall, if I’m being honest, I was shocked. Turns out they were not hiding and not at all far from the St. Magnus Cathedral, which we see almost every day. In fact they are across the street from St. Magnus Cathedral.

I had seen a small sliver of the Bishop’s Tower many times but thought nothing much of it. The tower looked closed, which it was, but we were still flaunting Rule#2 in a clear violation. Don’t know why, just assumed there wasn’t much there there.

We’d gotten to calling friendly Kirkwall home and after walking up to the launderette to drop off some badly needed washing, we ambled over to the side street beside St. Magnus to the tower. Much cooler closer. We found that the tower was part of William the Old of the Norwegian Catholic Church’s Palace, built in the early 1100’s.

We skated on in, Scot-free as it were, due to our Historic Scotland pass thingie.

It’s basically two rectangles of two stories each, with a large hall on the second floor, divided by a second story entryway and the Bishop’s living quarters in the tower facing St. Magnus, which is ironic because it seems that Old William hated Magnus the man, considering that he was murdered in a dispute over money. In short the Bishop considered Magnus a charismatic fraud and poo-pooed the cult that sprung up among his followers who claimed he performed miraculous cures from the grave.

However, in desperation the bishop himself sought out Magnus’s grave in Birsay due to a spot of blindness, which miraculously disappeared after I would imagine some sincere prayer. The Bishop decided to bring some of the relics to Kirkwall to be interred in the cathedral, lending official recognition to St. Magnus’ Sainthood. You just can’t have too many magical miracle relics. I can’t vouch for any of this. You be the judge, but all I know is there is a well-used pilgrimage called the St. Magnus trail that traces the route they used to bring the relics from Birsay to Kirkwall.

They’re Baaack!

Our old friends Black Earl Robert Stewart and his fiesty son Patrick are at again, honing their skills at fraud, tyrannical oppression, carnal overindulgence, debauchery, and fathering some 19 children, some of whom were actually legitimate, and finally, magnificent architecture.

The Earl’s Palace is another kettle of fish. It was finished in 1607, built by forced labor and displaying all of his stylistic flourishes but done on an even more grand scale.

In a touch of irony, Patrick stole the property next to the Bishop’s residence by having the poor owner beheaded for theft. That being said, this is truly a magnificent ruin.

Feeling like farmers from Idaho we rolled into a concrete jungle called Stromness where we found ourselves on a concrete multi-lane road. We’d been starting and then stopping and waiting on Scotland’s beloved single-lane roads for so long that we were a little apprehensive about big city life and the demands of suicide traffic circles, not to mention tiny parking lots. I’ll admit that mistakes were made but after a few wrong turns we eventually found Escape Velocity in a large concrete car park featuring grossly optimistic white lines but close to a Co-op that’s a kind of largish convenience store.

We’d heard that there might be a cafe or two, maybe even an open restaurant in town. It was time for a nosey where we found the town a little nervous about a Covid resurgence that left most of it still closed down.

It’s funny but I’ve always felt that sidewalks were more accommodating at the side of the road.

Turns out the charming little town was captivating with orderly, just so, tidy stone buildings with quirky chamfered corners. After all, I think it’s on the whiskey trail and taking the sharp corners off a building for safety’s sake makes sound Scottish sense. I’ve sampled the product and couldn’t agree more.

All well and good but nobody expected to find a beautiful well appointed African Art emporium where we found a perfect table-clearing, gadget stash for EV to guard against the unlikely event that Yours Truly finds himself at an imprudent speed part way through a poorly designed corner, scattering everything on the table throughout the van.

Treasures in hand we headed out of town toward another of Marce’s special park-ups on the Stromness harbor channel, adjacent to a cemetery. We slowly crept down an impossibly narrow lane and after a modest amount of polite discussion, we were semi level and switched off.

We were left with nothing but ocean waves lazily rolling up the shore, the cry of gulls, and the always persistent wind. To the right a sign post pointed to Black Craig, whatever that is, and just across the channel was our first sight of the hulking, malevolent, mysterious presence of Hoy.

With binoculars we could only see evidence of one road on Hoy matching our map which showed maybe two roads total, and one wonders why you would take the ferry over to only drive on two roads. I mean do you have to walk everywhere on Hoy? Not my kind of island.

We’d heard of a seriously long hike over rough terrain to see the Old Man of Hoy but we had just seen two amazing sea stacks and well, you know, Rule #2 with a suspicion of a Rule #3 infraction. Hype is hype. Will we or won’t we?

Marce came up with an alternative solution. Two ferries service Hoy and another one plies the waters from Orkney to mainland Scotland and if the weather gods smile, when she sails close aboard Hoy you can see the monster from sea. What a relief. We’ll get to see the Old Man without putting paid to what’s left of my right knee. No, not a cop-out, but I still took a celebratory walk around the cemetery.

We climbed a sunny but circuitous single lane up to a cliff side concrete pad that sported one inch thick bolts hacked off just above the surface. Our park ups are usually isolated lonely outposts where it would be rare to see another campervan let alone a tourist bus. But here there are several fine examples parked alongside what turned out to be a WWII gun emplacement, sans weaponry. The tourists were a small price to pay for ocean views as magnificent as this and we get to watch our own sunset.

People started arriving early, hopping around on one foot while trying to change into hiking boots around back at the trunk or as they would say, the boot.

Many headed off up a gentle rise towards the Broch of Borwick which was rumored to be more ruin than broch.

We’d just seen a shiny pants broch or two and in a clear violation of Rule #2 (don’t get jaded) we gave it a pass. However what was not to be missed was a coastal romp with a Rule #3 grand payoff of twin sea stacks. The boots and hiking poles came out and in a flash, we Escapees were off. Soon we had those iPhones rearranging pixels in a most pleasing manor. Can’t lose, this is a handsome place.

By this point there weren’t many tourists left and the path was not at all clear but finally the tops of the amazing sea stacks hove into view.

These sea stacks defy logic as they precariously cling, off balance, like a high wire act milking applause from an appreciative audience while the sea continuously pounds, gnawing at their base.

Throughly engrossed, trying to capture this titanic improbable balancing act, we hadn’t noticed Scotland’s favorite trick: a sudden unexpected turn of weather. It began to rain. Not a mischievous mist but a fairly serious pelting. What would a proper Scotsman do at this turn of events? Probably turn his face up to the heavens and I suspect, ask for more. I’m German. Head down, muttering, I booked for Escape Velocity with a few soggy miles of wet grass to go.

An hour later, after drying off, the sun came out just to mock us for running home, but as if to apologize, we got another golden sunset.

We heard about a magnificent renaissance palace called the Earl’s Palace in Birsay. Being out this way we thought it might be worth a nosey and, located in a small village, it ought to be easy to find. I found a parking spot near by, we started to wander around the village and before long, down a tiny alley, there it was dwarfing the rest of the village.

Turns out our old friend Black Lord Robert Stewart built this palace in four years starting in 1569. Short reminder: this Earl Robert was the illegitimate son of King James V, much unloved and in fact reviled. He built this monument to his royal pretensions and the tyrannical oppression of his people.

The blackness of Lord Robert’s reputation faded into a paler shade of grey beside his son Patrick Stewart who soon officially took over as Earl around 1600. Patrick, if you remember, built that splendid castle in Scalloway and dear Escapees a magnificent palace in Kirkwall, on our agenda soon.

When you enjoy a reputation as bad as the Stewarts, whether you’re building a castle or a palace, you’d build in as many arrow ports and defensive devices as they did.

These were unsettled times, it seems, and bad karma eventually caught up with Patrick and his son Robert after an unpopular revolt against King James VI went pear-shaped. By 1614 the Palace was seized and so were their heads.

Ironic that Marce found an honesty box just across the alley from Black Lord Robert’s Palace. This one featured pickles and condiments in addition to the usual sweets and Marce bought several jars for the pantry.

Gun ports pointed right at her.

Feet up on the co-pilots seat, the campervan equivalent of a La-Z-Boy, sans TV but with a stunning azure ocean view under the ancient gaze of the Broch of Gurness, we sat slowly sipping a handmade cup of our new favorite LavAzza coffee, rated a 5 on the UK intensity scale. They rate nearly everything on a strength scale, even cheese. Well, around here it’s going to be cheddar. Nearly all cheese around here is going to be cheddar, and the best would be a mature cheddar, crumbly and as my dear wife calls it, rat cheese.

As it turns out, I would suggest a good idea might be to rate the payoff at the end of some of these brutally long slogs we’ve done. You’ll remember we agreed to call it Rule #3. No long hikes without a great payoff. Even better, a short hike with a great payoff. An example of a #2 on the intensity scale might be a nice, let’s say, waterfall, 15 minutes from a nice park-up. Not an Aussie 15 minutes which would be a more realistic half hour but close enough that you can hear the water splashing, and not some rock strewn Muckle Roe endless torture of a hike with a nice charming payoff. If I’m being honest, how does one apologize for leading people over that terrain just for “nice?”

So where was I? Oh yes, feet up with a mug of hot LavAzza contemplating an overall strategy for touring Orkney. After careful consideration we go for the tried and true, coddiwompling, and the west coast looks promising. First we find a righteous parkup because a great parkup is well over half the pleasure of this game.

After the usual stop and go single lane shuffle we pulled into a paved hilltop lot crowded with lots of families in all kinds of vehicles. It was far from ideal. Now is when we apply Escape Velocity’s most winning strategy. We wait until they all go away, which usually works rather well. This is far from our usual choice of parkup which is normally remote with no lines painted on asphalt. But this is still a unique site.

At first glance you notice a nasty rip tide current boiling between where we are, high above the channel, and several hundred meters across is Birsay, a nondescript grass covered lump of a currently uninhabited island with some old stone ruins, circa 1,000AD with a lighthouse on top, circa 1925. It is high tide and the current is racing through. On closer inspection, shimmering below the surface you can barely make out a slightly paler zig zag pattern two meters wide stretching all the way to Birsay.

Obviously this would go better at low tide. Now we wait in ernest.

As the tide drops lower, a few thrill seekers tentatively test the waters and wisely give up. This is Scotland, there are no railings, you are expected to assess the situation for yourself.

By late afternoon the seas had parted, exposing the walkway and people had begun to go forth, including Marce who decided to tour the whole island while I reviewed Rule #3.

I eventually succumbed to peer pressure and crossed over the walkway and found it kind of creepy but fun. Greeted by many orderly piles of stones delineating the approximate size and shape of the extensive buildings that were once here, we wandered around until it was obvious that the incoming tide would soon put an end to our self-guided tour.

There were plaques with the phone number of the coastguard in case you’ve lost track of the time and didn’t make it across before the rising tide made it impossible to cross. Not that they were planning to do anything about it.

By evening the lot was nearly empty and we had a quiet, peaceful and very dark night.

The next day dawned sunny but windy so that makes two sunny days in a row, most unusual. Planned was a hike through the geo riddled coast,

past a small fishing village where they hauled their boats up the cliffs, nesting them in depressions.

We hiked all the way out to the famous whale bone.

And that dear Escapees is a full lid.

We are drawn to parkups on a cliff overlooking a fine sea view. Preferably free. Marce sussed one out near some ruins that wasn’t too far away and had no problem with overnight parking. I slipped Escape Velocity into first gear and we were off even though both parkups in Kirkwall sported good views and are an easy walk into a charming village shopping district.

We were met with the usual single lane stop-and-go madness that we’ve become so accustomed to. Pulling into the gravel parking lot we quickly realized that no serious attempt had been made to level the place so we immediately commenced doing the Marce shuffle. What is the Marce Shuffle you ask? First practiced while dropping EV’s anchor in any harbor only to be assured that 25’ over to the right would be much better. Repeat several times until tempers fray. Usually mine.

Repeatedly leveling a three and a half ton camper van with two little plastic ramps is as crude a way to adjust the attitude of your home as you’ll ever find. Turns out we’re pretty good at it but the real trick is to read the lay of land, or parking lot, aye and there’s the rub. Much discussion ensues. Twentyfive feet over there would’ve been perfect, can’t you see how it levels off over there?

The view is beautiful but the ruins are hidden behind a wall and they want to be payed to be seen.

And while embarrassingly, rule #2 definitely applies, we had seen some magnificent sites recently and from the looks of the ruins beyond the wall it seemed well, just your average orderly pile of stones.

The following morning during breakfast Marce looked up and said, “Hey, aren’t we members in good standing of that Historic Scotland thing?” Step right up the ticket lady said, “No payment required for you.”

Let this be a lesson for all you thrillseekers. Rule #2 is insidious, and it’s so easy to fall prey. Turns out the Iron Age village of Broch of Gurness is very interesting, quite well preserved, and beautifully sited at the end of a grassy peninsula.

This is thought to be the first use of built in furniture and dressers with shelves, kind of like Barney Rubble meets Frank Lloyd Wright.

You’d have to call this a short drop

As it turns out the Gurness Village was a fascinating ruin and was similar to several brochs on either side of the Eynhallow sound. It’s certainly more domestic than defensive.

Yours Truly has been known to reconnoiter in order to find one’s bearing’s before heading out on a expedition but there will be no lollygagging this morning, not even a leisurely cup of coffee. We’re hunting Orkney’s UNESCO World Heritage site and it’s not far. It’s called the Ring of Brodgar and it’s what to do when in Orkney.

The Ring is roughly some five thousand years old, older than the great pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge, and it’s one of the largest stone circles in Great Britain. Before crossing a short causeway to the Ring you’re confronted with a massive standing stone called the Watchstone, just…well, standing there watching, stoically.

Back in Escape Velocity we quickly found the proper car park and started the hike up a gentle slope to the stones. Ok, let’s agree to call it the Ring.

The stones get larger and larger as you walk up and not quite as regular as you might expect.

Staff remarks that it doesn’t line up with anything at the solstice or equinox or any other time of year for that matter. Turns out the Ring and grounds were used as a tank practice course during World War II and that may account for some wonky alinement.

It’s thought that some 60 standing stones were originally erected but today there are only 36, and of those 21 are still standing. Thirteen were re-erected in 1906.

The stones are buried surprisingly shallow with little more than 18cm under ground.

Four large mounds at 90 degrees to each other surround the ring.

Apparently not having had enough, we shuffled a mile down the road to the Stones of Stenness, four massively tall standing stones, even older than the Ring of Brodgar. Can we even say it’s a ring or circle with only four standing stones? Let’s call them the Stenness Group.

Once again no one has any idea of why, or how, or what was the purpose of this ring of standing stones, leaving us clouded in befuddled mystery. No human remains or evidence of human activity, have ever been found inside the rings.

So in conclusion I’d like to suggest for the future that we humans always, without fail, LEAVE INSTRUCTIONS.

I believe we’ve already discussed in a previous work my disdain for long hikes without a decent payoff. Marce assures me that at a certain point the path on Muckle Roe bifurcates making one loop shorter than the other and if we begin to flag we’ll take the low road. After all, it’s a tour of Muckle Roe Island, not a hike to anything specific. I think something about cliffs was mentioned. Now I’m nervous. I think, dear Escapees, we can all agree to call this rule #3. The hiking poles don’t come out until the payoff is identified. It’s a distance to payoff ratio thing.

Marce packed sandwiches, a banana, and water for lunch, something we’ve hardly ever done before. I said, “Surely we’ll be back before lunch.” She just smiled.

Scotland has a “trespass if you like” rule. I wonder what number that rule is? They find posting a sign redundant and they damn well aren’t going to tell you where to start. We wandered around a field, really somebody’s back yard but with sheep dung, until we found a likely looking track. It began with a steeply pitched slog up a hill paved with ballast rocks.

Heart dancing a quick tattoo, we climbed with hiking poles skidding off the rocks. Bleak desolation has a peculiar beauty and Muckle Roe has it in spades. We began to feel like we were the only two people alive in the world, an “On the Beach” moment.

A thought crossed my mind that it’s a very good thing there are no predators in Scotland because we’d be easy pickings out here. The quiet is deafening. Summiting the first major, let’s call it a mountain, we saw something awesome but terribly disappointing. The path continued to stretch out before us as far as the eye could see.

So far we couldn’t even see how far “far” was. Up and down we plodded. At every summit we faced the same awesome but spirit-crushing scene.

The path wound beautifully through the hills around little lakes and streams until bottoming out, and we trudged up again until it crested, offering another stab of disappointment.

Finally we found two large but pointy rocks to rest our shattered bodies on. It was about this time we heard something strange. Voices. A dozen or so people cheerfully gabbing while overtaking us at a relentless pace. I’m not ashamed to say we stared at them coming over the hill like they were the Wild Bunch. Turns out they were on a week-long guided tour, a kind of Holiday Walking Group. The guide stopped long enough to tell us some history of the village in this valley and admonished us that we really should have a map. We do. We also have lunch.

Not long after we did in fact miss a turn but it serendipitously led to a magnificent payoff and a sit down lunch.

With no idea which way to go, after lunch we promptly headed off in the wrong direction, due to our previously mentioned questionable turn, which took a while to correct. All we had to do now was repeat our day long slog in reverse.

You know how things look different going in the opposite direction? We knew we were close to the field where we started, but we realized we didn’t know which fork in the path to take to get back to Escape Velocity. Not being in the mood to wander aimlessly we were glad to see two young girls coming up the hill. They thought it was amusing that we could get lost so close to the car park and they got us turned around.

Boots off, feet up. Home never felt so good.

We decided long ago that Rule #1 is “we don’t go back.” There are so many amazing things in this world to see and so little time or energy to experience them that going back to someplace we’ve already been to doesn’t make sense. For example, we skipped the Bahamas when we first started sailing because we thought it’s too easy, too expensive, too many islands, just too too. We’ll catch it on the way back. Turns out we never had the chance to enjoy the Bahamas on the way back in. The system isn’t perfect.

Lighthouses were the first to break Rule #2. I remember we used to seek them out, drive for miles, hike the inevitable hill up to the site and breathlessly climb the spiral stairs to the top. Yep, look at that view from up here! We’d take the shot then discuss on the drive home whether the one before was better.

Rule #2 has always been some version of “don’t become jaded or blasé.” It goes something like “I don’t know which waterfall was better and why hike up to another if it’s not supposed to be as beautiful as the last one?” We try not to do that.

Now, dear Escapees, we’ll move along to the point of this missive. While we were pondering, mouth agape, at the amazing Jarlshof Neolithic site we couldn’t help but notice, high above us, at the end of an endless peninsula, a lighthouse perched at cliff’s edge.

Very picturesque. But there’s a long and winding single lane road up to a parking lot in the sky and without passing areas on the way up, what does one do if one meets someone coming down while you’re trying to go up? Besides, we were tired and we still had to negotiate crossing the airport runway again, if you remember, and after all it’s just a lighthouse. A nice one maybe, but still just a lighthouse. At this point Dear Reader, and I’m not proud of it, you may want to refer back to Rule #2.

Weeks later Marce discovered that you’re allowed to park overnight in that car park in the sky, which changed the equation for us. While technically not an infraction of Rule #1, it’s close. On the other hand, there were rumors of puffins up there. After successfully crossing the airport runway again and winding our way up the one lane access road without once tumbling over the steep cliff (Marce’s greatest fear) we found ourselves trying to get EV level in the not-so-level paved parkup. Not a puffin in sight but there were new rumors of a nice cafe beside the lighthouse. While I wouldn’t even consider hiking up that mountain to climb those inevitable spiral stairs for a lighthouse, I would for a nice toasty cafe.

The hike up the mountain was quite relentless and I thought to distract Marce while grabbing a little breather by pointing out thousands of guillemots nesting on the cliffs below.

We were too far away to see the little tumblers though, and of course no puffins. When we finally got to the cafe it looked like a wildlife photographer convention with lots of camo and massive telephoto lenses. Those guys know a good feed when they see it. The wind was tossing gulls about as they tried to see what we were eating, many just hanging on the updrafts.

When we left the cafe I saw a raised wooden platform and imagined there must be a great view. We scrambled up the stairs and found puffins. Lots of puffins, just a few feet from us.

They seemed completely at ease with us in their midst, which may explain their dwindling numbers.

What a lucky find!

The trip down the hill strained the knees but as we approached EV we noticed our neighbor and fellow Adria owner Colin crouched up at the edge of the cliff with some serious gear. It turns out he’s a wildlife photographer and he was waiting for a baby puffin to come out of its burrow. Apparently he’d been waiting for quite some time. There are lots of ways to do this and we sat with him for an hour or so, just watching and talking, the puffins undisturbed by our presence. His wife Maureen joined us and we sat for awhile longer, enjoying the place and the company and the puffins until it was time for dinner.