On a dizzy Saturday morning in August, we boarded the ferry to Scotland and said Goodbye to the Islands with a heavy heart. 

A part of them is still with us, and a part of us is still there. 

Places like these do such things, you leave something behind and get so much. 

It was not possible to sit below deck, because of the amazing landscapes passing by, summarizing all the beauty we have seen. 

The robust, rough, harsh cliffs, the soft, almost elegant curves of the hills, the greens and reds, magentas and browns...

When I looked at this picture below, I instantly thought that it looks like something alive, like a mossy, rough back of something. 

But rather a sleeping beauty, than a sleeping sea monster.

It was not possible, to give these heights a dimension in a picture. If there would have been someone standing on the beach, you would probably not see him,
because these cliff's are St Johns Head, and St Johns Head is about 400 metres high...

Bye, bye, Old Man of Hoy.

We had walked along the edge of these. They were flat and green. And high.

... like finger's reaching out...

And then there was Scotland and the clocks began to tick faster again.

It was so good to share my memories of the islands and write it all down for you - and for me. So that now they are "frozen", at least a bit.
I'm thinking of giving those pictures a book, so that I can put them under my pillow or  browse them on a rainy afternoon...

Thank you for coming with me!

The old men of Hoy III

When we came back from the cliffs, there still was some time to explore the remnants of Rackwick.

Some decades ago, Rackwick was a small village with real people and all the things that belong to the every-day life of a village. As the years went by the village grew smaller, its people older and the younger left for the city, until only one old man was left, who lived there until the end of his time.

Today the stones of Rackwick’s old houses crumble under the wind. In certain places you see a new bungalow or a mobile home, which, we were told, belong to the people of Orkney’s mainland, who like to come here for the summer.

Although there is no one living permanently in Radwick, the people of Hoy did not leave this village to its fate. A small street sign led us to a house, looking relatively new, with white curtains in its windows and an open door. It is a strange feeling to enter a house in a place that is empty of people.

We stood in a single room, almost a living room, with a chair under the window and an old cupboard. In this we found hundreds of old pictures of Radwick, ordered meticulously by year. You could make yourself comfortable in the old chair and delve into Radwick’s past. I’ve never seen such a calm and tender  memento to a gone place.

We also found the old school house, or rather school room, where they even had preserved the last teacher's table.

If I remember correctly, the bus driver told us that the school of Rackwick sent of its last pupils in the 1950s. The old man, the last villager, died in the 1980s.

While walking around the bay, I imagined the old man sitting at the beach or in front of his house at night, counting the thousand stars and watching the ghosts of his past.

Punctually in the afternoon the little red bus came over the hill to pick up our small party, with the same cheerful guy who fitted so well into the curiousity and uniqueness of this place and day.

The old men of Hoy II

The walk up to the Old Man of Hoy takes you up and along the cliffs with the wind dragging you back and forth. 

The abyss and the infinity of the Ocean on your left, blunt and sweet landscapes on your right. 

I will never tire of such landscapes.

The Old Men of Hoy I

The day before we left Orkney for Scotland we took a trip to Hoy, an island in the south of the Orkneys. Hoy is famous for its massive cliffs and a large red sandstone stack. This stack is called the Old Man of Hoy and stands on the north side of the island, greeting the ferries on their way to and fro Scotland.

In the morning we took the bus over the mainland to Stromness from where a small ferry departs for Hoy. We were not really sure how we would go further after our arrival, but we were confident of the public transport of the islands since our Shetland experiences. So together with about 10 other tourists we headed through the foggy morning for Hoy. 

When we arrived after the short passage we weren't disappointed: a small red bus waited for us on the quay ready to drive us through the Mars-like landscapes of the island. The bus driver was a very communicative old man with a Sherlock-Holmes-hat who entertained us with stories, sayings and jokes about Hoy and its people (of whom we didn't see any). The small group of people cramped into the old bus driving through the deserted hills that were without any trace of human life apart from our little red bus ... that's what films are made of ...

The tour ended in Rackwick, a deserted settlement that is situated in a bay and surrounded by huge cliffs. The decayed houses were deserted and there was nobody apart from sheep and a large yellow tent on the beach. The fog rolled in from behind the mountains and hung over the cliffs, as if teasing the sea and I could not get rid of the feeling of being an extra in a film set.

Our cheerful busdriver left us, telling us he would be back at 3pm to pick us up and drive us back to the ferry. I didn't want to imagine what you would do in Rackwick when you missed the bus and the night would come over the hills. A mixture of adventuresomeness and panic...  I tried to push the thought aside.

Our old new friend was surely experienced with tourists getting lost in Hoy - although he made some very disconcerting jokes about it ...

The cliffs are among the largest in Britain with about 400m height at their highest point. The ascent to the Old Man of Hoy starts in Rackwick and leads up to a fantastic view over the bay.

To be continued.

St. Margaret's Hope

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.