All photos for this trip can be found in our
2017 Scotland/Paris Photo Album
Look for the "Week 2" tag for photos added this week.
2017 Scotland/Paris Photo Album
Look for the "Week 2" tag for photos added this week.
Our general travel route to get to the Orkneys...
Friday morning we were up and away from the hotel early as we had to be at the ferry terminal for check-in prior to 6:00am. We arrived at the CalMac terminal just before 6:00 and were very glad we had made a reservation as this sailing turned out to be be totally full. We managed to grab a front row lounge seat but that didn't turn out to be all that good. The voyage was rocking and rolling, up and down and side to side, and we were overlooking the front of the car deck. One car right below us had it's security alarm go off every time the boat listed from one side or the other. That sound got a bit tiresome so we ended up moving. Moving around on the boat was like being a drunken sailor! A lot of off balance moves so hold on!
Anyway, we arrived in Ullapool and found the visitor's information centre where a fellow assured us that the road up the west coast is perfectly drivable although some of it is single track. The drive turned out to be easy, albeit somewhat slow. We had a little over six hours to get to Gills Bay to catch the evening ferry to the Orkney mainland and the estimated drive time was a little over 4 hours with about 30-40 miles of single track highway. We were a bit lucky that there was not that much traffic on the single track parts so not as many stop and wait occurrences, for on comers to pass by, as there could have been. With a stop for lunch, one museum stop and a petrol stop we arrived at the Pentland ferry terminal, at Gills Bay, with a little under an hour to spare.
We also found out that this route is part of the North Coast 500, Scotland's version of the USA's Route 66. The scenery along the coast is first class although being quite cloudy and foggy, there were not many photo ops on this day...
We stopped at a little craft area, just outside of Durness, for a look around and some coffee and light lunch then in Bettyhill we stopped at the Strathnaver Museum. The museum is in an old church in the centre of a cemetery, with some interesting carved stones...
The museum tells many stories of the vicious "Highland Clearances" when many, many crofters (farmers) were evicted from generations old homes by land owners. The crofters were left with virtually nothing and many did not survive the desperate journey to North America, with some going through the Hudson's Bay to settle in Manitoba, Canada in search of a better life.
While in the museum we noticed an artifact that looked familiar. Kris has a little metal gadget that we always wondered what it was. Well, it turns out, what Kris has, is a stand for a goffering iron. The stand is the gadget on the right in the second pic below...
... a little mystery solved. That was pretty cool!
After that it was a stop in John O Groats for some petrol then off to the ferry terminal. It was fun watching the ferry loading. This ferry loads and unloads from one end only. So they maneuver smaller cars around the outside in a U-shaped pattern. The cars in the U-shape are packed in so close together that passengers have to get out before the car is put in it's designated spot and a car in the right lane has to stop and let the driver of a car in the left lane out before pulling ahead. They then load some of the centre with small cars that can join the U-shaped queue on departure then they back in all the other larger vehicles so they can drive straight off when unloading. In this pic you can see part of the bottom of the "u" as well as some cars pointed in and some cars pointed out (specifically the light grey and maroon cars back to back to each other). It does all seem to work rather well though...
Since the crossing is expected to be a bit rough they ask all drivers to leave their vehicles unlocked so the alarms don't go off. Clearly numerous people are not jiggy with the idea and lock their vehicle. As a result we were treated to a chorus of alarms going off all the way across.
We arrived in St Margaret's Hope just before dark and found our way to our hotel, the Murray Arms Hotel where we had a nice dinner (Haddock and salad for Kris; crab hot pot for Brian) and spent a bit of time in the bar where we chatted with one of several young Irish men who are here working on a new hospital over in Kirkwall.
After a very blustery night, the rain stopped and the clouds cleared nicely Saturday morning. Here's what a nice blue Orkney sky looks like ...
After the usual good breakfast at the hotel we drove up the street to Robertson's coffee shop and information centre, on Church Road, where we had a couple of lattes and got some excellent tourist info. Then we headed off to Kirkwall to see the St Magnus Cathedral (although today it is technically not a cathedral; it is a parish church of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland)...
Leaving Kirkwall, we drove through the centre of the island to see the Standing Stones of Stenness...
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| Gives you an idea of how big these stones are! |
... and, of course, Skara Brae...
... all three of them are so interesting.
By then it was late afternoon. We drove to the nearby town of Dounby, visited a couple of artisan shops but their one restaurant was closed already for the day. So we drove back to Kirkwall, wondered around the nice central shopping area (Broad Street), stopped for lattes and scones then headed back to St Margaret's Hope for some dinner (Scallops for Kris; Haddock for Brian), some bar drinks and to call it a day. A very good day actually!
Sunday was a very lazy day with most, things being closed. After breakfast we drove around to the north part of the main island, past Kirkwall to the Broch of Gurness, another iron age village...
... quite stunning actually!
Then we continued around the island to the Brough of Birsay, but the walk across the rocks (which you can do at low tide) was too much for our sore knees so we had to give that one a miss.
Leaving the Birsay area, we came to the village of Twatt. We had hoped to get a pic of the "famous and apparently one of the most photographed directional place signs in Scotland" but we could not find it. Maybe someone stole it. Instead we settled for a picture outside the church...
Quite a little industry has formed around the fame of the name. In Kirkwall, and other places, we came across stores that sold a whole whack of "twatt" paraphernalia such as t-shirts, place mats, coasters, and pretty well anything else you could think of putting a name on :-)
We then stopped in the small seaside town of Stromness for a break and some lunch. Really good soup, lattes and cake do the trick. Then it was back to St Margaret's Hope for some late afternoon rest before dinner and packing for our morning ferry trip tomorrow morning.
Overall, a great few days on the Orkneys, although as with the Outer Hebrides, we just stayed on the main island, or mainland as they are referred to. End of the first week on the road in Scotland and it has been very enjoyable.
| Back to Week 2a | On to Week 3 |
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