The first day of our Orkney exploration we took the bus from Kirkwall, where we stayed, to St. Margaret's Hope, a village on South Ronaldsay, one of the Orcadian isles. I've heard or read about it once and for some reason, I wanted to go there. Its not a very famous place from the guidebooks, well, it has a certain popularity for its annual ploughing match, where the boys are ploughing in the sands and the girls dress as horses (horses?) ... but it is a really picturesque place with a very own, almost harsh charm.
Sometimes this gut feeling is right and you explore places you wouldn't have find without it, if you know what I mean.
Again, we didn't meet many people, but I love these free, (apparently) unobserved explorations.
We could go to South Ronaldsay by bus, because some of the Orkney islands are connected by causeways, the so-called Churchill barriers. In World War II they were built as naval defences, today they are useful road links. Some old ships were sunk to guard the barriers against the flood, before they could be secured properly with stones.
Their masts still poking out of the water, lest we forget.
