Towards the Orkney Islands, Scotland, 2013

6 May, 2013

Well today was the day we had been waiting for as we were to move onto the Orkney Islands, the furthest north in Scotland we would tour. It was rather a long, but enjoyable drive, up the east coast with the North Sea looking as placid as could be and some spectacular coastal scenery.
(Remember to click on the photos to enlarge them)

Scenery along the way

Note the snow capped mountains in the background.

As per usual we stopped for our ritual morning tea, this time at Wick, before driving on through John O’Groats , which was a disappointment as there wasn’t anything special to see.  We caught the ferry from Gills Bay over to St Margaret’s Hope on the Orkney Island. It was very cold and windy on the ferry so we “rugged”” up well.

It was a tad rough on the trip over.

Tom all rugged up on the car ferry.

The reason we were visiting the Orkneys was twofold, first because of the abundance of stone age Neolithic  sites and  Bronze Age sites and secondly because of Scapa Flow and WWI and WWII history.

We were no sooner off the car ferry than we “hit the road” to our first site, the Isbister Chambered Cairn, commonly known as Eagles Tomb, because of the white tailed sea eagles talons found with the bodies .  It was discovered in 1952 by a farmer and the tomb contained an amazing collection of 5000 year old bones and artifacts.

The only way to enter the tomb was to crawl in or to lie on the trolley on your stomach and to pull yourself in, which we did and had a good old laugh at one another as we each took turns. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any photos of this manoeuvre, maybe we were too busy laughing.  Once inside the tomb opened up and was fairly large. At one stage Roslyn, Tom and Fran were all in there!

The Tomb (Courtesy of the Internet)

Roslyn and Fran inside the Tomb

After having spent a considerable time at this site we were ready drive to the accommodation  near Portsea which we had booked for the next 4 nights. Phew what a long day it had been!