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.
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.
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.
Spiral staircase leading up to the Earls bedroom
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.
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.
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.
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.
Free parkup at Tesco.
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.
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.
Hard to imagine
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.
We went back to Lerwick to spend a little more time in the charming Shetland capital and to cement our relationship with new friends Judy and Victor. Now that we found a safe and convenient place to park the camper, we were much more relaxed about staying overnight this time.
We did little more than eat, walk, swap life and boating stories, eat more. We were booked on the ferry to Orkney so these few days of getting to know like-minded people were precious to us. Jack and I both acknowledged how much we miss our cruising community. We have all lived a life that’s sometimes difficult for others to relate to or appreciate so spending time with other cruisers is almost like being able to speak your native tongue again after a period of struggling with the nuances of a foreign language.
Of course we sought out the location of BBC’s Shetland main character Jimmy Perez’s house along the waterfront and just generally enjoyed this charming, quirky town. We wished we’d discovered the parkup option earlier in our Shetland visit. We’d have enjoyed more time in Lerwick inbetween our journeys to more remote places.
And then it was time to go. We boarded the Northlink ferry for the five-and-a-half hour journey to Orkney. Per Escape Velocity protocol, we had no plan, no foreknowledge of our destination, no idea where we’d park up when we arrived — and we would arrive at 11:30pm — and believe it or not we hadn’t driven the campervan in the dark yet.
As soon as we got back online when the ferry docked we managed to navigate just a few miles to a harbor-front car park where we figured we could at least get some sleep and make better decisions in the morning. We parked, got the fridge turned back on, then took a long look out the front window. What a beautiful welcome to Orkney!
The morning coffee view was just as good, and even better when the Mrs. Chips food truck showed up offering egg and bacon sandwiches about 50 feet away. This is destined to be one of our favorite parkups in Orkney, one we’ll return to again and again.
The small town of Scalloway is the former capital of Shetland and we bypassed it a few times for the reason we wrote about before — lack of convenient or adequate parking. Jack was keen to see the castle so we squeezed ourselves into the compact museum car park and toured the museum, walked around the castle (closed, of course) and did a quick wander through the village.
The museum is mostly about Scalloway’s seafaring history with a particular emphasis on the World War II operation called the Shetland Bus which established a link between Shetland and German-occupied Norway to transport agents back and forth and supply the Norwegian resistance with weapons and supplies, using fishing boats at first, then later more purpose built boats.
Ever since the Viking times there’ve been close connections between Shetland and Norway and many of the tourists we encounter in Shetland are Norwegian.
Jack explored the perimeter of the castle, one of only two in Shetland. Both were designed and built in the late 16th century by Andrew Crawford with similar elements in the corner turrets. You might remember we stayed overnight in the shadow of the other one, Muness Castle, on the isle of Unst.
The rest of Scalloway was quiet and mostly devoid of the shops and cafes that keep us interested.
“GERMAN THEORIES CONTROVERTED. GERMANS Are Not The Favoured of Heaven.”
This, of course, sent me to Google. The plaque is about earth tides which I’d never heard of, and the plaque was created in 1910 by a stone mason and amateur scientist named William Johnson who apparently had a bone to pick.
If you want a quickie explanation try the link above. For a deep dive down the rabbit hole of William Johnson and his theories, this one is the way to go.
We already pushed back our Orkney ferry reservation once, and in retrospect probably should have again. As time grows short and we look at the map, we see how much we’ve missed in Shetland. It’s a small place, you’re thinking, but our mode of travel isn’t really touring in the traditional sense. We just like to be in a place, listen to the sounds, feel the rhythms of the days. If we don’t do anything special in a particular place it’s ok. It’s enough to observe the play of light on the hills, the behavior of the wildlife, the routines of the locals, and the bustling activity of holiday makers. We’ve slowed down quite a bit in our dotage, but our enjoyment of new places hasn’t waned in the least. Traveling in our home gives us the luxury of stopping to appreciate a place for as long as we like.
After the challenging hike in Muckle Roe we needed to recuperate. We drove south again toward Burra and Minn Beach.
Dedicated viewers of the BBC TV series “Shetland” will recognize Minn Beach as a dramatic location at the end of season 7.
This is an unusual tombolo because one side of it is rocky, the other sandy. I walked to the other end on legs still wobbly from Muckle Roe and thought with the color and clarity of the water it could be anywhere across the tropical Pacific Ocean….
….until you see the ubiquitous thistles and feel the 50°F/10°C air temperature.
We found ourselves near the churchyard where a ninth century Pictish stone was found in 1877. The original is in a museum in Edinburgh but this replica fascinated us. The style of the art is unique and we’re convinced the figures at the bottom were the inspiration for the Spy vs. Spy characters in Mad Magazine.
In a change from the many homebake honesty boxes we found a very well stocked free library on the road.
We spent a few days at a small marina where we could empty the tanks that needed emptying and fill the ones that needed filling. The boats were local workboats and one afternoon I watched a little drama in the harbor. A man was working on his boat while his dog sat on the dock. Every few minutes the boatman called to the dog, but the dog remained stubbornly glued to the dock.
I could see in the dog’s eyes he was never going to get on that boat. Eventually the man gave up with a shrug and walked the dog back along the length of the dock to his truck.
It was about this time I thought I’d take a walk and as I passed the truck the fisherman motored up to the pier and tied up.
The dog was sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, shamefaced. “He’s a wimp and he knows it,” says Jack.
I called out to the fisherman, “You’ve lost your crew!”
“Aw, he hates the boat,” he called back. “He never wants to come aboard.” At least I think that’s what he said. The Shetland accent is challenging.
He told me he was just prepping for the next day when he’d collect his catch and haul it off to market. He’d only be out for a short time and he assured me the dog will be fine waiting in the car. Most of the work will be done in the morning and when I asked what time he said, “Seven-thirty, maybe eight.”
“Oh,” I said, assuming all fishermen went out at dawn. “Not so early.”
He laughed. “I’m retired.” It sure looked like work to me.
The next morning as I drank my coffee I watched him sort, weigh, and pack crate after crate of fish. When he drove the boat around to the pier to load the truck I walked over for a chat. He told me about the fishing grounds and the new regulations from Brexit and how he catches the fish. I got maybe half of what he said, the Shetland accent being what it is.
He showed me his catch, and told me it was a good amount. I was happy to hear that, because so many areas of the world have suffered from overfishing.
While I was pestering the fisherman, Jack was watching the other side of the dock where a half dozen carloads of kayakers had shown up the night before and were now preparing to launch.
Kayaking is very popular here, and we’re amazed at all the specialty clothing and gear involved in outfitting and transporting a modern sea kayak. These are very different from our beloved rotomolded sit-upon kayaks on Escape Velocity that we could just untie from the lifelines and drop over the side deck to launch. It took well over an hour for this crowd to get ready, and even after the kayaks were in the water they were in and out of the boats several times making adjustments.
All that scurrying and tweaking was worth it as we watched them glide out the channel toward the sea leaving barely a ripple behind.
With the fishermen gone, and the kayakers gone, it was just the two of us again, enjoying another beautiful Shetland day. How will we be able to tear ourselves away?
