The open sea
To the terminal to catch the afternoon boat to Kirkwall. I haven’t had a chance to buy a daily paper to supplement the view of the world from the Shetland Times but the ship’s shop stocks the Press and Journal. It’s a Highland and Islands edition rich in misdemeanours around Inverness but with only one Shetland story that I can find and no Orkney one. However I have bought the Orcadian, which like the Shetland Times has the feel of a real local newspaper about it, protected by distance and distinctive community identity from the loss of character often apparent elsewhere.
I also catch up with television, dominated by the football World Cup. England are scraping through on the way to later disaster but the English voices around me aren’t pleased. A unanimous vote of no confidence is passed on team and coach. One or two passengers also seem to have no confidence in their digestion as we reach the 50 miles of open water (apart from the Fair Isle) between Sumburgh Head and North Ronaldsay, but the mild swell settles long before Kirkwall Bay.
Ancient Orkney
Kirkwall, unlike Lerwick, is quite a venerable place but we head inland (if that applies in a land of lochs and voes), still dazzled by the brightness of Orkney’s green pastures after the rocks and roughness of Shetland.
There are two wonderful things about Orkney, one ancient, one modern. It’s astonishing that such a small community, cultured but remote from ‘centres of culture’ should have inspired the contribution to Scottish life, English literature, and the arts of Edwin Muir, Eric Linklater, George Mackay Brown, Stanley Cursiter, and the Lancastrian Orcadian, Peter Maxwell Davies. But far more remarkable is the concentration within easy reach of historic Kirkwall of some of Europe’s greatest prehistoric remains: the standing-stones at Stenness and in the Ring of Brodgar, the chambered cairn-tomb at Maes Howe, and the Neolithic village at Skara Brae. They draw far more cars and buses than I saw on previous visits but they are not yet spoiled, overwhelmed, and fenced off like Stonehenge.
The view from Skara Brae
Scapa Flow
Scapa Flow is one of the key places in 20th-century naval history. But you have to know where to look for the buoy that marks H.M.S. Royal Oak’s war grave and there is no marker for the unsalvaged remnants of the German High Seas Fleet.
For most visitors, some rushed on day trips from as far south as Inverness, the most spectacular attraction is the Italian Chapel built from huts and scrap by the P.O.W.s working on the ‘Churchill Barriers’ which now carry the road to South Ronaldsay. It’s a thing of beauty created by accidents of history and deserves to survive wind, rain, and tourists. It’s best seen quietly on a bright day out of season but we have the next best thing, for most of the visitors are from an Italian coach party.
Stromness
I expected more bustle than Stromness offers. Maybe the pace of life is dictated by ferry times. At 4.50 in the afternoon the travel centre appeared closed and across the road an inviting-looking cafe had its chairs already stacked away. I was unenthusiastically served – ‘we close at five’ – and at two minutes past was sorry for a teenager trying to get in. I needn’t have bothered. He wasn’t there for his tea but for amorous dalliance. The clock-watching waitress perked up, unsnibbed the door, and came out for hugs and kisses.
Table of distances from Stromness
Kirkwall
The Kirkwall Hotel, where I also stayed in expenses-paid days of auld lang syne, is probably the best hotel in the Northern Isles. It has character, history, and some eccentricity. It served as the wartime H.M.S. Pyramus and its lift, still in excellent order, is reputedly a forthcoming addition to Orkney’s schedule of ancient monuments. In a land of large portions it annoys some guests with tiny cheese platters and others grumble at the contrast between the splendour of its à la carte and the limited tour-party menus. But our room is fine.
The obvious place to go next morning is St Magnus Cathedral but it’s accommodating a school service. That provides time to gasp at the prices for the new-season Rangers strips in the sports-shop – can there be a supporters’ longship to Ibrox? – and wander round the Orkney Museum in Tankerness House, less grand and convenient than the Shetland one but with a good Second World War exhibition and a fine Cursiter painting.
And so to a reopened Saint Magnus. The congregation passes my rough and ready weekday test, which is to assess the number of hymn-books stacked at the back and showing signs of use, but the Kirk doesn’t own this great building. I used to wonder about its civic ownership but now I’m glad these glorious stones are secure from the destructive tendency within the General Assembly which sees the Kirk’s historic buildings and its share of Scotland’s architectural inheritance as a burden. It should be a joy and a duty, as it is for Orkney.
On the Hrossey
Even though the Aberdeen boat is a late-night departure and early-morning arrival, I berth down eagerly on the Hrossey with more Sir Walter Scott. I’ve discovered the secret of a rediscovery which lets us recapture the excitement he created not only among contemporaries but in the Victorian age of self-education and self-improvement. It’s to read him while stimulated by places, legends, and history that inspired him. When I was on the unpaid Ancient Monuments Board I never got a freebie matching his seven weeks’ wining, dining, and lairdly hospitality ashore between Leith and Greenock, the long way round. But I’m glad the Bar’s old-boy network got him to the Northern Isles.
I’m glad too I sailed back in this year’s hazy ‘simmer dim’. Both groups of islands have problems beyond winds and weather. Even near oilfields money is tight and sometimes oddly spent from the public purse. These are not isles of ease – nor are they always isles of bliss, for I recall nasty murders on both. But they have some of the most remarkable traditions in the British Isles, with a balanced sense of local identity and wider connection that the rest of the United Kingdom should envy and emulate.
R D Kernohan is a writer and broadcaster
All photographs by Islay McLeod
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The holiday
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09.07.10-
02.08.10
No 282
Our favourite
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A selection of nominations
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Faces of the
year…so far
A selection of
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North to the
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R D Kernohan’s
summer journey to Orkney
and Shetland
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Daydreams
Francis O Young
Fragments of a life
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Ironing a sari
The July poem
Gerard Rochford
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A surprise
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Bob Smith has completed
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