Escape Velocity

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.