A visit to the Orkneys

June 8, 2019

Saturday morning finds us up early and catching a bus in Inverness to ride the 120 miles to the village of John o’Groats in the far north of Scotland. The settlement of 300 people takes its name from Jan de Groot, a Dutchman who once plied a ferry from the Scottish mainland to Orkney. Local legend has that the "o' Groats" refers to John's charge of one groat for use of his ferry. 

We chatted the bus hours away all the while enjoying beautiful views of Scotland and the rocky cliffs and sandy shores of the North Sea. We spent a little time in John o’ Groats doing some shopping. Of course, we took the tourist obligatory photo at the landmark "Journey's End" signpost! We grabbed a sack breakfast to eat on the way to the Orkney Islands and we were off! We boarded the “Pentland Venture” and settled in with our breakfast to chat with a couple visiting from Belgium. Part of the fun of vacation is talking to the wonderful people that I meet. Never one to avoid a new conversation, we exchanged favorite places we each have seen recently and the windswept ride passed quickly and soon we are pulling into port.

Separated from the northern tip of mainland Scotland by the choppy waters of the Pentland Firth strait, the Orkney Islands are an archaeological wonderland made up of about 20 inhabited islands. We boarded another bus and saw more quaint stone cottages along the seashore, a darling little stone church and graveyard, and a couple of rusting shipwrecks. Our first destination is St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. St Magnus (why there is not a period after St I do not know, but all my research shows it without a period) is the most northerly cathedral in the United Kingdom. Construction began in 1137, and it was added to over the next 300 years and even has a dungeon.

As always, I find myself looking up. With magnificent arched ceilings and huge pillars, this Romanesque architecture uses red sandstone quarried near Kirkwall and yellow sandstone from the island of Eday, often in alternating courses or in a checkerboard pattern. It is very striking to look at! I loved the beautifully carved wooden baptismal font and wooden doors, and I found many stone carvings of skulls along the walls. Pretty cool!

We journeyed on to the site of Skara Brae. “Skara Brae is a stone-built Neolithic settlement consisting of eight clustered houses, it was occupied from roughly 3180 BC to about 2500 BC and is Europe's most complete Neolithic village.” (previous info from Wikipedia.) It is said to have been discovered in 1850 when a storm struck Orkney and dispersed the sand and soil which had buried the site. In this exposed site I can see that totally happening. The wind was howling today and the waters of the sea were wild. I can see why the people who inhabited here built the houses into the earth – a kind of underground dwelling. All the furniture of the house was made of stone also, even the beds!

We are not able to go into the actual ancient village but instead walked on paths around it looking down into the rooms. There was a replica house that we could walk through and I thought a sort of pit in the ground to hold cold foods was pretty genius for the time. If only they had a cold soda to keep in it! There was a lot of walking out to the site and back and we certainly added to our step counts today!

This part of the world is filled with stone circles and here in the Orkneys is no exception. We stopped at the largest and most famous one, the Ring of Brodgar. Oh, and did I mention it was windy today? We walked quite a way and crossed a bridge over a wetland area and followed a long path to get to the actual stones. It is the third largest stone circle in the British Isles and the stone circle is 341 ft. in diameter. The ring originally had up to 60 stones, of which only 27 remained standing. We were close to the summer equinox today but I did not hear any buzzing! (Outlander fans will understand this) Some of the stones were huge and I continually wonder how in the world people got these things erected! It is a beautiful location with lush greenery, mountains in the background, and the sea nearby. I see tons of brown heather so I can imagine it is lovely when the heather is in bloom and the color purple abounds. Next time maybe!

Our final stop of the day is at the Italian Chapel. This lovely Catholic chapel was built during WW II by Italian prisoners of war. When reading about its construction, it was just too interesting not to include in my writings. This next information is taken from Wikipedia: “550 Italian prisoners of war, captured in North Africa during World War II, were brought to Orkney in 1942. They worked on the construction of the Churchill Barriers, four causeways created to block access to Scapa Flow. In 1943, Major Thomas Pyres Buckland, Camp 60's new commandant, and Father Gioacchino

Giacobazzi, the camp's Catholic priest, agreed that a place of worship was required. The chapel was constructed from limited materials by the prisoners. Two Nissen huts were joined end-to-end. The corrugated interior was then covered with plasterboard and the altar and altar rail were constructed from concrete left over from work on the barriers. Most of the interior decoration was done by Domenico Chiocchetti, a prisoner from Moena. He painted the sanctuary end of the chapel and fellow-prisoners decorated the entire interior. They created a facade out of concrete, concealing the shape of the hut and making the building look like a church. The light holders were made out of corned beef tins. The baptismal font was made from the inside of a car exhaust covered in a layer of concrete.”

Next to the chapel is a War Memorial with a statue of Saint George who was a Greek soldier sentenced to death for refusing to recant his Christian faith. Saint George is the patron saint of soldiers and all people protecting the nation.

As others dozed lightly on the bus ride back to Inverness, I chatted the time away with the bus driver.  I was in the front seat and I learned that he has been a tour bus driver for 30 years. I did feel comfortable knowing this as we wound around the roads and up and down the hills. I must tell you that the tour bus drivers are incredible! How they manage those giant busses on narrow streets and around hairpin turns amazes me. Sometimes there simply is not room and they just drive up on the sidewalks! Soon, we are back in our spacious flat and calling it a night! There are more adventures in store tomorrow!