The Forsyth’s on the move again, well 75% of them as Stuart had to stay at home to study (although we are still not too sure who he was studying), on an RLS tour starting with South Queensferry and the Hawes Inn – although I am absolutely sure that David Balfour’s travels did not involve a five mile tailback on the A9 (bank holidays are a perfect time to do roadworks). The Burry man was the high point of the South Queensferry museum – where they take an unsuspecting chap and cover him entirely with burrs and parade him down the high street and then cut the burr suit off (they didn’t go into how that was actually done). We wisely decided not to tarry around the high street and took refuge in the Hawes Inn.
We stopped off at the Bunney’s where for the second time this year where we planned to take people out for dinner and they held us hostage and plied us with fine food, wine and whisky.
The drive northward was uneventful, which was surprising with Alasdair navigating whilst trying to fix the in car power supply for Mike’s tablet to let him finish off ‘Robin Hood – Men in Tights’, whilst Kim did the chauffering bopping along to Nickleback. After relating the tale of the lesbian cyclist club from Nairn I see that there is a village called Dyke outside – coincidence or what?
We reached Thurso in plenty of time so took a side trip to Dounreay – the world’s first commercial nuclear power station, now being decommissioned over the next 40 to 60 years. Fast breeding jokes aside – the interesting thing for us pilots was that there was a decoy airfield there (typically the Germans ignored it during the war so it was in perfect condition) and we could get permission to land there before heading off to Orkney on a flight. The lady in the control tower apparently was taught geography by our microlight instructors first wife and came from Gorebridge – from one nuclear wasteland to another.
The ferry crossing was thankfully smooth and the fodder was acceptable fare with smoked salmon, wine and Orkney Icecream whilst pretending we were locals by reading the Orcadian, and we landed at Stromness without entirely filling the digital camera memory with images of the Old Man Of Hoy. Stromness was the fillup station for more Orkney Icecream (Apple Crumble to finish off Mike’s Apple Week) – birth place of John Rae who saved rugged men’s lives at Hudson Bay by giving them cranberries, and workplace of our Squirrel who used to serve men in the Stromness Hotel’s Flattie Bar.
The Six Shadowed Stones of Stenness were alliteravely joined by a sacrificial sheep – recumbent against what looked like altar stones, and the Ring of Brodgar would look great from the air like a lot of these neolithic sites which like ornamental gardens were probably designed from an overhead perspective on paper or sand, although the Broch of Gurness looks like the original model for the scotch pie from an aerial perspective.
Raced to the ferry to Shapinsay which we had to reverse onto before the tractor and decided to miss the wedding party that were celebrating at the next stop on the Kidnapped tour – Balfour Castle, which was named by David Balfour who went around naming everything after himself (people were surprised that the island of Shapinsay wasn’t renamed Balfour Island). We visited the Burroughston Broch which wasn’t a patch on Mousa Broch (but nothing is) and then headed back to the hotel in the knowledge that the owners would be wondering why their guests hadn’t caught the last ferry. The castle is a calendar house – 52 rooms, 365 panes of glass, 12 outside doors and 7 turrets and now 3 guests, we were the only ones in the castle other than the Polish family, with the son who played electric guitar, and the Orcadian cook/seamstress. There is an attractive tower called the Douche which has a salt water cold shower in it which we decided to pass in favour of a large warm bath.
We walked around the enormous kitchen gardens, which use Orcadian fiddle music CDs to frighten off the birds from the vegetables, which we then went on to devour later that evening after the unlikely combination of Mike Forsyth and an honesty bar in the library. The food was superb and the wine list was surprisingly well priced, although I suspect this was to ensure a degree of honesty with the bar. The rooms were splendid with a high brass bed which left us with our feet dangling off the side like children. We went ghost hunting but didn’t come across anything other than the secret passageway which we were tipped off to by the cook when Kim was inspecting her kitchen. Of course this involved a bit of a performance with Ali not keen to go exploring and Mike drunk enough to do anything – we reached the end to open onto what Mike thought was a secret room but was in fact the wedding room we had seen before (although now it is was in darkness so looked spookier). The cook really makes the place as she is very jolly and not Polish and sent us packing with a jar of her goosberry preserve. We also explored the landing opportunities on the lawn – which would be dodgy at best.
The first ferry back to Kirkwall and down to Mine Howe near Churchill barrier No 1 – this is a new excavation which involved the Time Team and was locked with a padlock which the local farmer managed to break apart with bolt cutters, allowing us to descend down the 29 steps to what may have been a drowning pool – I let Kim and Ali go first in case it was dangerous. Over the aforementioned barrier to the Italian Chapel where Kim launched into a rant about lazy italians spending the time playing games, making music and building chapels out of nissan huts whilst the locals built the barriers (a commercial contract with Balfour-Beatty who has now grown up after being Kidnapped).
Scapa Flow and scuttled ships and a runway for us to explore South Ronaldsay on our next trip and then down to the John o’Groats ferry port just to remind me of the last time I reached there on bike. Northward to the Tomb of the Eagles – which is a brilliant family run exhibition. The farmer found the site but wasn’t helped by the state to excavate it so organised students to do it and uncovered a marvellous tomb of early orcadaians who practiced excoriation – leaving bodies out for eagles to pick the flesh off them before separating skull and bones into different parts of the tomb. One of his daughters runs a continuous lecture where we get to hold one of the skulls (alas poor Yorick) and various stone age tools whilst the other rescued our shoelaces from the family puppy. The farmer who must be late iron age himself gives a jolly tour of the bronze age site. To get into the iron age tomb of the eagles requires lying on a large skateboard and pulling yourself through a narrow tunnel which is a wheeze in itself, ended by a clifftop walk to see the primroses.
Maes Howe has no skateboard and requires you to bend down, which is more slipping the disc than gleaming the cube. The guide also spends quite a bit of time explaining it was found by a cow who fell in through the roof which was then replaced in victorian times with a totally unsuitable structure which is damaging the walls. They have a lot of technology monitoring how much damage is done before they have to spend a LOT of money on a new roof . Similar to the devestation of Skara Brae which may well be destroyed if they don’t put blocks similar to the churchill barriers in front of it to prevent tidal erosion, the costs are so high that they will leave it to the last minute. I have to say that all the additional stuff around skara brae tends to detract from it when I cycled there years ago – it had an air of mystery and isolation then – now you get your skara brae burger, don’t know if that has improved things really.
Earls Palace – if only those earls had watched Changing Rooms instead of letting their homes go to rack and ruin and not even taking a Journey with a Donkey to the Brough of Birsay B&Q – or perhaps the causeway was under water as it was when we went there.
An evening in Kirkwall started with booking into the Orkney Hotel with the strains of drunken carousel emanating from the public bar where all the staff appeared to be hiding too. The room was very Travellodge but the restaurant was slightly more cheerier with an American waitress and a Taste of Scotland menu and a wine list with Cissac upon it (albeit at an unattainable price – well Kim wouldn’t let me attain it). The food was good and exotic leading my suspicions that the chef was not a local – well presented salmon goujons wrapped in coconut with exotic trimmings did not lend one to suspect a caucasian chef, certainly not one sodden in Highland Park, and my suspicions were confirmed by a flash of nigger skin through the kitchen doors and the stalling tactics of the waitress when asked ‘is your chef from Orkney’ – ‘he has been here 12 years though so he almost a local’. The waitress then made the mistake of mentioning in passing the seaweed eating sheep of North Ronaldsay – Mike then entered into a monumental stutter (plainly excited by the vision of seaweed eating sheep) and launched into a quick story about Soay sheep ending with what was plainly taken as an insult – ’so we are breeding seaweed sheep for our table so we won’t have to come back to this place’. Kim watching this dissolved into hysterics which didn’t really help the situation. We saw the waitress next day at breakfast when she walked into the dining room and greeted us with a hysterical good morning followed by a nervous laugh.
Not a lot to do with Kidnapping in Kirkwall so it was time to get the ferry back – not so smooth this time and my suspicions were raised when I saw the sick bag dispensers were empty together with a large population of people lying on the ground clutching their stomachs (mainly their own stomachs). Ali and I retired outside to see people vomiting over the side and watched the horizon trampolining around. We took the chance to visit the true North of Scotland – Dunnet Head , as well as the tourist north, John O’Groats, and the Duncansby Stacks before heading southward to Wick. There was the mecca of bizarre museums in the Wick Heritage Centre, it even says on a sign outside ‘This is a big museum’, cos it certainly looks small, but tardis like the small front shop envelops a 26 room serendipitous collection of Wick ephemera – from a dead schoolboys satchel to bits of lighthouse and some of the herring fleet with its herring. The volunteer guide thought we hadn’t had enough so let us clamber up the hill outside to get a view of the wind turbines lying comotose on Wick harbour side.
We decided that sitting in a queue at the A9 roadworks once a year was enough, and that the Aberdeen road would necessitate a visit to Mike’s mother – so we took the scenic Loch Ness route. Dropping into the Loch Ness centre at Drumnadrochit – to realise that paying 15 quid to go in to see an exhibition about a mythical creature is probably not cost effective nor interesting in the least (even though I had my Fortean Times T-Shirt on) and disappeared faster than Nessie in the direction of Glen Coe. From there south to Perth for dindins at Pacos after having failed to get a table in an indian restaurant in Crieff and home in time for bed and too tired to get up for swimming the next day.
So that was the ground reconnaissance done – just need to fly over the place now – when weather improves.
