Arrived in John o'Groats at 12:30 and took compulsory photograph. There isn't much to this place apart from a campsite and a few houses plus a cafe. You can take a passenger ferry from here but we drove on a few miles to Gills Bay and luckily found a place on the catamaran. We were only given a place at the last moment and were last to board.
Arrived an hour later in strong wind but plenty of sunshine. On the journey I spotted at least six Great Skua plus plenty of auks and gannets. We stopped at the ferry office in St Margaret's and booked our Saturday morning sailing. Took a peek at another CL site and then drove on to the amazing little Italian Church built by Italian prisoners or war in the forties. The church in a converted Nissen hut is filled with frescoes and tromp d'oeils. Well worth a visit as the Italians made a miniature piece of Italy in this remote outpost. The Italians were brought to Orkney from El Alamein in Africa to build sea defenses at Scapa Flow which is a deep sheltered bay in the south of the group of islands. Churchill ordered sea barriers to be made to protect the harbour.
These defenses are now part of a road system joining together a group of islands. We landed on south ronaldsay, drove onto Burray en route to Main Land where we are now.
St Magnus cathedral was built in the early 1100's when these islands were ruled by Norway. It is rather magnificent. Then we walked through part of the old town of Kirkwall which is full of little narrow passageways from one road to the next just like Wexford in Ireland. Our next stop was ..... Lidl. Yes, and Tesco is here too.
Now we are camped at a place called Evie on a hillside overlooking Rousay island.
Jim, the campsite owner is a farmer with 450 acres and 150 head of cattle. The spring has been so poor that he hasn't yet managed to get the cattle out in the fields as everything is so wet.
That's all for today.
Seems like you were lucky to get the catamaran.
ReplyDeleteAny photos of anything?