The very north of Scotland

It was cloudy for our trip up to the north - not surprising really since we climbed to the foot of Ben Nevis (well the sign said that is where we were) and then gently down to the moors and the coast at Thurso. Very pretty countryside and unexpectantly flat as we headed north to our 5 star accommodation on the sea shore in Thurso.

Windy weather forced us to reorganise our days at the top and instead of taking an all day boat and coach trip to the Orkneys (just a tad too bumpy for the little boat) we settled on a shorter, rather rushed trip on the second day to see the island on a car ferry. So, we did the touristy bits on the mainland first, discovering fairly quickly that Thurso the birth place of the founder of the Boys Brigade William Smith didn't offer much to the tourist except a rugged coastline (not that I am complaining cos on a windy day you can't really beat the sea breeze ruining your hairstyle). On our non-Orkney day we visited Castle of Mey, The Queen Mothers home away from home. It is quite a sad, happy type of story really - back in 1952 she was visiting friends after the death of her husband King George VI. She was feeling down (not surprising really) and they drove past Barrogill Castle which was abandoned. Liking the look of it (and it did have a charm about it as it overlooked the fields and cliffs) she decided to buy it, renovate it, and make it her own. Her summer holiday home. A photo of the Queen's mum cos she reminds me of my Mum.

Not far away from the castle is a Crofters home. Mary Anns cottage is close to Dunnet Head (the northern most tip of the British Isles mainland). It was built around the 1850's and this is where Mary-Ann Calder lived until not long ago when she died at the age of 89 - long life may have been attributed to the cooking on peat over the open range fire but somehow I doubt it. So, we learnt a bit about crofting which is still a life style up here in the Highlands. Many crofters live in modern houses today rather than the quaint old croft houses like Mary Anns. Crofting is a social system in which small-scale food production plays an important role in the community. Crofting is a working community where people manage and work little farmlets. The townships generally manage a good horticultural area and then a poorer land used for grazing for cattle and sheep. Because the land isn't that fertile, and weather a little bit extreme most crofters also have other work to support them and their families. Not sure of the latest statistics but about 10 years ago 30,000 people lived in crofting households. We read also that when an ancestors house can no longer be lived in, the family builds their house alongside the ancestors sharing a wall and we saw quite a lot of evidence of a new stone house standing beside a derelict one.

Whaligoe steps is just one of those places. We went up and down the road trying to find it, and eventually followed a car down a dirt road in the hope that no signpost might mean we were there. And two Germans who had taken 3 days to find the place we had found in 30 minutes confirmed that it was indeed our destination. Later on I found this comment on the web "Though a popular attraction today, they are notoriously difficult to find as the steps are not signposted on the main road so you'll have to do your research beforehand for directions on how to locate them. (Here's a hint: they are located near the village of Ulbster ...)". The steps are man made, one for every day of the year, they float down a cliff to a little harbour of sorts for herring boats that floated about in the sea in the 17th century. The steps came a bit later probably when the captain realised that there was shelter here for the boat but no way to get to the top for the pint and to hand over the fish to the lucky ladies whose job it was to gut them. We were glad we found them.

We just had to visit John o' Groats - just one of those things - but we were a bit disappointed with it and it wasn't the weather. Although not the northernest most point it is the longest distance between two points on the British mainland. This long distance of a few hundred miles is often the one used to raise money for a charity, by biking, walking, running, scootering and sailing (only kidding). The town (not sure if you can call a derelict hotel, museum, a couple of gift shops, and a tourist sales shop a town but who am I to argue with the description of the place) is named after Jan de Groot, a Dutchman who once ran a ferry service to and from here to Orkney in the late 1400's. Unfortunately, we couldn't take our photo by the sign to sit beside the one from Land's End in our photo album. The signpost is owned by a photography company and we would have had to pay a fee for the privilege - but there was no sign of a camera let alone the photographer (to the dismay of two cyclists who were celebrating their long ride from the bottom of the island against the prevailing wind). If we had known we could have made our own and shared it with the cyclists.

After that disappointment we headed off to Dunnet Head for a wintry walk around the lighthouse and up to the viewing platform. The lighthouse was built by Robert Stevenson, grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson who incidentally wrote Treasure Island not far from Balmoral (it would take quite an imagination to write about an island in the South Pacific in the climes of northern Scotland).

For some reason the Orkney Islands has a fascination. Whether it is the bleakness of the island with no trees, the history, or simply the boat trip to somewhere closer to the arctic who knows - probably everyone has their own story. While sitting waiting for the boat to take us over I grabbed a copy of the Islander and discovered that there is a very talented woman who creates her own designer jewellery (would have bought some for Christmas presents but sorry everyone misses out cos we would have missed the boat), there are sheep that eat seaweed for 9 months of the year and are only fed grass during the lambing season (apparently there meat is well sought after and I guess it would have rather a salty taste) and a few other interesting things to see and do while on the island including Scapa Flow, the Italian church and Skara Brae. Scapa Flow is a natural harbour used for centuries where captains sheltered from the inclement weather and during the world wars from enemy boats. During the first world war the British Grand Fleet used the harbour as a base. A German U-Boat managed to enter the Flow during the early months of the war. Merchant ships were used as blockships in strategic places and anti-submarine nets were also put in place. From this base, vessels from the fleet made sweeps in search of the enemy. During 1916, the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet fought in the Battle of Jutland and both sides thought they had won (h

owever, after the battle, the Kaiser's fleet never went to sea again so you sort of know who came first). That year Lord Kitchener, the Minister of War, arrived in Scapa Flow to visit Admiral Jellicoe and to chat about the Battle and on the west coast of Orkney the ship hit a mine and killed over 650 men. 3 years later as the war came to an end the harbour was used to scuttle German boats and we saw a few still in the harbour (hint: take the photos at low tide, rather than on the return trip when the tide is higher).  The second world war came along and Churchill recommended that the stone barriers were built to protect ships in the inner harbour.  These barriers were built by Italian prisoners of wars and are now the roadways between the little islands - much easier for the tourist to get around. We went into the little Italian Chapel which was also built during the war by the prisoners who needed a place to worship. Imagine how these sun loving people must have felt in the long cold winter months. Anyway after the war the chapel was going to be demolished but those tasked with taking it down refused to - and it is now listed as a historical building with beautiful decorations inside by one of the prisoners Chiocchetti.

In 1850 a great storm blew across the Orkneys - the locals probably thought 'not another one', but after the winds had passed and they tentatively opened their doors and ventured outside they would have stood on the cliffs not looking at the fallen trees (as there are no trees) but at Skara Brae - a Neolithic stone village that had been uncovered by the storm. Who knows why the inhabitants left their home over 5000 years ago but it had been covered with sand and then grass for all those years. Excavators came and thankfully with respect, uncovered what must be one of the greatest finds in archaelogical history. They uncovered four houses, one of them almost intact together with the stone furniture, jewellery, cooking pans. The houses were connected by underground tunnels, each one having an element of privacy with a stone door but all connected to a communal workplace. In all, there are 8 houses - but they have built a reconstruction of one of them and covered the original back up as it was being destroyed by the heat created by a plastic roof.  All we could do was wander around take photos and say WOW.

And to finish off this blog - some food for thought from George Mackay Brown, from his book Portraits of Orkney, 1981.

"Every community on earth is being deprived of an ancient necessary nourishment.  We can not live fully without the treasury our ancestors have left us.  without the story - in which everyone living, unborn, and dead, participates - men (and women I add) are no more than 'bits of paper blown on the cold wind...'"