Pictures from this part of the trip can be found in the Orkneys gallery.
Monday morning, we had breakfast at the hotel, then checked out and drove a few minutes back down to Gill's Bay to pick up the Pentland Ferry to St. Margaret Hope in the Orkneys. The ferry was scheduled to leave Gill's Bay at 9:30am. Perhaps because it was a Monday, the terminal was already crowded with a line of cars and trucks when we arrived at 8:45am. As it turned out, by the time we got done loading, the ferry was almost full.
During the hour-long crossing, Julie sat in the passenger compartment of the ferry — drinking tea, nursing her sore throat, and reviewing the guidebooks to plan our travels during the next few days. Ken went up on the cold and windy deck for most of the passage. Despite the signs warning people to disable alarms, half the cars on board started beeping and honking as soon as the ferry left the dock. Some people turned their alarms off at that point, and staff chocked the tires of others, but alarms on some cars (mostly Audi and Mercedes-Benz) continued to go off for the remainder of the trip every time the ferry changed direction or hit a swell. It would have been funny if it wasn't so loud.
Once arriving in St. Margaret Hope, our first stop was the Italian Chapel, which was built from two Nissen huts by Italian prisoners of war during WWII. After that, we headed to the city of Kirkwall, where we stopped at a Tesco grocery store and bought lunch and cold medicine for Julie.
After eating our lunch in the car in the Tesco parking lot, we headed toward the town of Stromness. On the way, we stopped at the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, two neolithic monuments built between 4000 and 5000 years ago.
We were really excited to see these. The chance to see such old neolithic sites was one of the main reasons we decided to go to the Orkneys in the first place, after reading a big article in the August 2014 issue of National Geographic. When we were in Turkey in 2013, we saw Hattusa, which is a settlement of similar age, although from a bronze age culture rather than a neolithic culture. We did not realize there were ruins of that age this far north. Orkney ruins pre-date sites such as Stonehenge or the Great Pyramids in Egypt.
In Stromness, a cute town with very narrow roads, we eventually found some parking and walked along the waterfront to the Stromness Museum. There was a lot to see in the museum, most of it maritime-related. We also learned that there are strong cultural ties between the Orkneys and Canada, where a lot of Orcadians settled in the past few hundred years.
After finishing up at the museum, we headed back to Kirkwall and found our hotel, The Shore, which was right along the waterfront. Amazingly, we got a parking space right in front of the door. This was an odd little hotel, and the hallway up to our room was a bit of a maze. Once we got settled in, Julie took a nap, while Ken headed out to find a music bar recommended by the folk singers we met at Culloden. Unfortunately, there was no music on Monday or Tuesday.
After Julie woke up from her nap, we wandered around Kirkwall's downtown and eventually picked an Italian restaurant for dinner. We were intially optimistic because the wine selection was good, but when tomatoes are served with caprese, it's better if they're actually red and ripe. Oh, well, more mediocre food in Scotland. Once we were done with dinner, we wandered around some more and looked at the harbor before heading back to the hotel.
Tuesday, our main goal was to see more major archaeological sites. The Orkneys have been inhabited for a long time, and they have as much in common with Norse culture as they do with Scottish culture. Besides the older neolithic settlements, there are also remains of iron age settlements and more modern Viking and Pict settlements.
Our first stop was our 10:00am tour at Maeshowe, a neolithic mound or "chambered cairn". The cairn is almost 5000 years old and is remarkably well-preserved. It is open to visitors only as part of a guided tour, and no pictures are allowed inside. Among other interesting things, the cairn is fully lit by sunlight shining through the entrance just as the sun sets on the Winter Solstice in December. The inside of the cairn is also covered in relatively modern Viking "graffiti", scratched into the stone (the Vikings got stuck in a winter storm and broke into the cairn for shelter). The Maeshow visitor center is itself a historic old mill, so we also spent some time looking at that.
Next, we headed to Skara Brae, another neolithic settlement. Skara Brae is remarkably well-preserved. It was discovered when a strong storm destroyed a sand dune and exposed some of the ruins. The local Laird (of nearby Skaill House, which we also visited) preserved the site, and it has been studied extensively in the meantime. There's a little visitor center which introduces the archaeology of the area, and then you can wander around in the actual village. There's even a reconstructed house that you can go inside.
After getting lunch at the Skara Brae cafe, we headed out on single-tracks to find a few other things on our list. Unfortunately, we never found any of the viewpoints that Julie was aiming for, and another mill we wanted to visit was closed due to a funeral. So, we headed for the Brough of Birsay, an island that is accessible only at low tide by walking over the tidal flats.
The lower part of the island contains the remains of a settlement used by both Vikings and Picts, part of which has been washed into the sea by tidal erosion over time. The top part of the island has a modern solar-powered lighthouse and some spectacular views. And, of course, most of the island is a sheep farm. Julie also enjoyed watching the seagulls soar on the wind from the top of the island.
Our final archaeological stop was the Broch of Gurness, an iron-age settlement built around a large central tower. There are similar settlements on the mainland near Caithness.
Back in Kirkwall, we spent a little time exploring the Orkney Museum in the few minutes before it closed for the day, and then went to the St. Magnus Cathedral across the street.
For dinner, we decided to try an Indian restaurant that was just around the corner from the hotel. There were pictures of Chef Gordon Ramsey on the front with the owner of the place, so we figured it couldn't be entirely awful. In the end, it was probably our best restaurant meal in Scotland up until that point, with good curry and fresh naan (but the naan was surprising sweet, like nothing we've ever had before).
After dinner, we walked to the Tesco to pick up more cold medicine for Julie and some breakfast supplies for the next morning, since we had to leave early to catch the ferry back to the mainland.