Tuesday June 19th

Today we went to Hoy, drove to the north side of the island and did a walk to see the “Old Man of Hoy” which is a stack off the coast.  First thing this morning we had RAIN – the most we have had so far on this holiday!  The sky seemed quite bright though, and we knew that any of the islands of Orkney probably have their own micro-climates.  On the ferry we boarded, and it was so windy and rainy that we decided to sit in the car for the duration.  We had gone outside to take a look around, but we discovered that the passenger lounge was downstairs, below deck and there were no windows at all.  We could have sat on deck but we would have been the only ones...!

An hour later we arrived at Lyness on the south end of Hoy and drove straight to the north side of Hoy which took around half an hour.  The landscape is quite unusual here, there are at least two mountains on Hoy, I'm not sure if the third “hill” is large enough to be classified at a mountain.  It basically looked like someone plucked out a piece of the Lake District and planted it on this island.  The rest of the land was rolling, the road bumpy and well used.  The land here is very peaty – so much so in fact, there were plenty of areas where we saw evidence of peat cutting in progress.  There are lots of wetland flora which grow here too, so I imagine its also pretty boggy here at times – lots of cotton grass grows here along with heather, making it look like a huge moor.

When we arrived at Lyness the cloud was on top of the mountains, but by the time we got to Rackwick which was basically right next to them, the cloud had lifted and the rain was easing off.  Off we set on our walk, which took us initially through some fields where sheep were grazing, which meant there was a lot of poop  on the path – the sheep seem to know exactly where we're going to walk!  The short grass and gravel must attract them or something...!

Further on up, the grassy track turned into a gravelly, sandy and stony one, with little breaks which look.ed like small drains created especially for water to run off down the hills.  I assume this is why they are there, I'm just guessing, especially as the ground on Hoy seems naturally wet and boggy.  Further on up still and towards the top of the hill half way through the walk, our path turned to what Mathew called a “mountain path”.  Well, he would know as he has climbed a few, but apparently mountain paths are tracks full of rocks here there and everywhere, so you do have to look where you're going otherwise you could twist an ankle.  Or I could anyway...!

As our pathway levelled out, we were approaching the Old Man stack on the coast which we saw on the ferry over to Orkney.  By the time we arrived here, the cloud had lifted even more, rain had moved on elsewhere and the sun was now shining on us.  The cliffs here are quite vertigo-inducing but I never like to go too near the edge, I always hate it when Mathew does, he gets too close for my liking!!  Many birds were nesting and sheltering in the nooks and crannies in the cliffs, AND in the Old Man stack, which we looked at through binoculars.  We had heard that Puffins were around here so we looked out for them and found a couple on the side, and then we found a handful of them on the very top of the stack.  I would have liked to have seen them a little closer, close enough to see their colourful beaks at least!  There was no mistaking the shape of their beaks though, and we could see their black and white colour and their funny little way of walking.  They're so cute!  But we still have time to potentially see more of these little birds later on!

We left the Old Man stack behind as more people were approaching it after their long slog up the hill, which turned out to be a 5 and a half mile round trip.  On the way down we saw a mystery bird which we haven't managed to identify yet – from a distance it looked like an eagle with a huge wing span, the underside of which was dark with a white stripe towards the tips, and they were nesting in the heather in the open.  Very exposed, but through binoculars they were quite dark and mottled brown in colour and their faces looked more like sea birds like gulls more than a bird of prey.  We'll have to look out for these later on, hopefully we'll find out what they are.  We think they could be Skuas but we're not sure yet!

Back at the car the sky had clouded over again and the sun was playing games with us.  However it was still bright and we took our time going back to Lyness for our ferry which was due at 15:20.  On the way, we stopped off to explore the Dwarfie Stane which is the only rock-cut tomb in Britain, according to Sir Walter Scott it was a “Trolld”, a legendary Norse dwarf.

We had lunch overlooking a beach before continuing on to our ferry back to the mainland where we went into Orphir and visited the Orkneyinga Saga Centre which had a display of the Orkney Island Sagas and a video explaining just a few of them, although it was difficult to follow a story about 2 or 3 people called Sven…!

Back to the cottage, we had dinner and prepared ourselves for tomorrow - we visit Westray and we have to get up even earlier for this one – 5:30am!!  Eeep!