keldaby – Page 7 – Moonshine Mohair at Keldaby Farm

The Rovers Head East

Mon, May 26

Now that we’ve been in our cozy cottage through two weekends and explored so many of the Mainland byways we are feeling both very settled in, almost native Orcadian, and at the same time there is a touch of wistfulness, a hint of premature nostalgia. Journeys once they have dipped past the midpoint tumble down to their conclusion. We are checking our guidebooks more making sure we find the places we have missed so far.

And so today, suited again in our waterproof pants and our matching Slogger rubber shoes and with headlamps, we set out for Cuween Hill and its chambered cairn. Like the Tomb of the Eagles, which we decided last week not to visit, Cuween Hill’s cairn offered up what is surmised to be totemic animal remains, in this case 24 dog skulls, along with human remains and other animal bones. It is 4500 years old.

We are alone when we park and walk up the slope to the mound. The “torch” (flashlight for you non-Brits) has been left on no doubt and the battery is dead. We slither through a very tight entrance with at least two of us wearing our headlamps which though bright do not really illuminate the space well and the chamber is small, only large enough for the four of us sitting there. We can see the four cells off the chamber and we poke our heads into them. If there are any Norse graffiti runes here we can’t see them.

Again…this stone construction is 4500 years old, and being in here with no guide, no other tourists, the sense of history, of prehistory is very strong. One wonders what sorts of ritual, what acts were performed here and by whom. Priests or priestesses? This is just one of over 76 discovered chambered cairns scattered across the Orkney islands Like children, however, we make silly sounds to check the resonance and Michael even sings an aria, which opera?, but the sound is muffled. This is a tomb.

Cuween Hill...entrance to the cairn — Cuween Hill…entrance to the cairn

Back outside Jill finds rhubarb growing wild and picks some. We’ll have rhubarb and apple compote later.

We head further east, and as usual we still comment on every adorable lamb and its mother, every calf with his mom and point out every abandoned farmstead and discuss buying, renovating and how we would live there for weeks or months at a time.

We ask Jill to stop so we can photograph another wonder but she generally says, with a stern glare but a sly smile, “No! You haven’t given me three minutes warning!” and then, once in a while, if she can, she stops. We also pull over to pick the more enticing bits of wool off the barbed wire that is used to fence off most of the fields.

The roads are mostly single lane with lay-bys for encountering oncoming cars and lorries. Farming is a big business here but as far as we can tell, it’s just livestock. We don’t see much except the occasional kitchen garden in the way of vegetables being grown. And the wool, unless it is from one of the special breeds, North Ronaldsay is one, is all sent to a wool pool.

We head out to the peninsula and the brough of Deerness where we have read that many varieties of seabirds can be found. We find seagulls, not even the ubiquitous oystercatcher shows up and we seem to have missed reading about the remains of a small Celtic or Pictish chapel there so we don’t look for it! We don’t see any seals either.

The Gloup...or is it a geo, pronounced gew? — The Gloup…or is it a geo, pronounced gew?

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Heading back toward Kirkwall we try to find an iron age site, Mine Howe, with its 29 treacherous steps leading down into the subterranean chamber. We can’t find it. We drive the stretch of road three times, we ask directions…nothing. Besides being a place where considerable amount of metal work was done–there are kilns set into the interior–it was also a place of burial. We give up and later back in Kirkwall at the Orkney Museum we learn that the site is not always open which may explain the lack of signs. Jill buys the book on Mine Howe and we will have to make do with that.

We have excellent coffee and cake again at Judith Glue’s (and note the sign outside that says “Real” Food which we suspect is a slight poke at The Reel just across the street.

Michael buys the final ingredients for his specialty tonight. We force him to modify the recipe by using the linguine we already have instead of buying the correct penne!

Linguine/Penne with Vodka Sauce

1/4 c olive oil

10 cloves garlic, crushed

salt

35 oz crushed plum tomatoes (or fresh)

crushed hot red pepper

1/2 c heavy cream

2 Tbl butter

1/4 c vodka

1 lb pasta

Process tomatoes to aerate. Heat the oil, add the garlic to brown. Carefully add the tomatoes and simmer about 3 minutes.

Add salt and red pepper, vodka, the cream and butter (olive oil can be substituted)

Add the al dente pasta to the sauce and bring back to a boil.

Add 2 to 3 Tbl Italian parsley and 3/4 c grated Parmesan. Stir together

Serve with a salad…and here’s Lynn’s dressing

1 1/2 lemons, juiced

1 tsp hot Colman’s mustard

Salt, pepper, olive oil, chopped parsley. (Anchovies should be added but in deference to Michael we leave these out!)

It is delicious!!! We have Hereford Red, a tempranillo/malbec with it and then watch Death at a Funeral.

The Stones at Last!

Thur, May 22

We wake this morning to bright sun, a milder temperature and we’re in great spirits. Today we are going to visit two of the three most important west Mainland neolithic sites, the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, and reserve a place for ourselves tomorrow at the third, Maes Howe. The two stone circles occupy important sites on the narrow neck of land that separates the salty Loch of Stenness and the freshwater Loch of Harray, lakes that account for a large area of central Mainland.

Off we go, first to the Stones of Stenness, probably the oldest of the many archaeological sites on the Brodgar peninsula, having been carbon-dated to about 3100 BCE. It was built as a henge, which is to say, a level, circular platform surrounded by a ditch with an external bank. The henge here was more than six feet deep and about 22 feet wide. It was later that holes were dug for the placement of 12 standing stones, the largest being 18 feet high. Only four stones remain upright today.

The weather in the meantime has made a most remarkable reversal; it is now much colder, the lowering sky promises rain–or sleet maybe?–the wind is biting. But these massive stones with their angled tops convey such a foreboding, mysterious presence that the cold is almost forgotten.

A brief word about the high hills of Hoy. Generally speaking the Orkney islands are not hilly, but Hoy which lies just south of Mainland has two moderately high hills at its northern end, Ward and Cuilags. Seen from Mainland the slopes of these two hills form a V and it is the orientation of the sunset between the hills in the weeks around the winter solstice, the placement of the stones at Stenness and Brodgar and the entrance of Maes Howe that suggests the sophistication of these stone-age people. We will probably never know what their religious beliefs were but it is fascinating to theorize the possible uses for which these structures were built. The Stones of Stenness are a very popular motif for Island artists.

When we leave the stones we try to locate the Ness of Brodgar which we know is nearby and which we have been told is either open and accessible for anyone wishing to see it or, conversely, will not be open at all until later in the summer when excavations will again begin. It was only discovered 12 years ago. In any case, the only possible site we find is a large mound totally encircled by fencing and covered with turf and some sort of mesh visible in spots. Can this be the Ness? Or a part of it? How tantalizing! It seems to be in the right location, somewhere midway between the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar. The guide book makes this 5000 plus year old site a cogent argument for a return trip!

We push on to the Ring of Brodgar, probably the most familiar landscape in all of Orkney. The Ring is about 310 feet in diameter and the circle is perfect. It too is a henge with a ditch and outer bank. Of the original 60 stones, 27 stand today.

It is nearly impossible to photograph in its entirety except from the air. It sits atop a slight knoll in a huge field of heather, just barely beginning to green up a bit, with a long view down over the Loch of Stenness toward Hoy. In the photo you can just make out the V of those two hills.

Again the sense of endless time pervades the site: people mined, transported and dressed these massive stones and placed them around this henge in a perfect circle. What did they know of geometry? Wasn’t that Euclid, a long time later? How did they do it?

I haven’t felt this touched by the enormity of time since my first visit to Stonehenge more than 50 years ago–before all the fences and gates, the tunnels and parking lots, the swarms of tourists milling around the visitor centre and once, horribly, graffiti. It was midnight then and a nearly full moon and just my mother and me.

. . . . . . . .

Michael, Lynn and Jill suited up for a spring day in Orkney

We eat our sandwiches, surely a different riff on the BLT theme by now, and then drive northeast to the Broch of Gurness. This is also a very impressive site, though practically modern by comparison, a scant 2000 years old or so. This site with its ditches, walls, broch tower and ruins of the community’s buildings, perhaps about 30 families, arrayed around the broch was occupied from the Iron Age to Pictish times to the Norse era about 800 CE. At the same site there is a rebuilt Pictish settlement.It is in the shape of a shamrock with rounded rooms radiating off from the main hearth area. Here’s a shot from one of my guide books showing the site from the air.

In the visitor centre I buy a new copy of Orkneyinga Saga and a book of short stories by the best known Orcadian author George Mackay Brown.

We make another foray into Kirkwall for another round of shopping–Michael buys a beautiful North Ronaldsay sheep fleece, Lynn a ring, T shirts and a biking jersey and Jill found several items for Nicky, Fayley and Gussy. I’m sure I bought something too. Perhaps my second ring from Alison Moore!

Back at the cottage it’s Michael’s turn to make dinner and here it is:

Michael’s Cozy Chicken

Ingredients

2 Tbl olive oil

1 or 2 onions, diced

1 or 2 bell peppers, diced

1 1/2 lb skinless, boneless chicken thighs

6 plum tomatoes, diced

2 Tbl tomato paste

1/4 c worcestershire sauce

2 tsp fresh thyme, salt, pepper

1 1/2 c water

10 oz fresh or frozen corn

10 oz baby lima beans

1 lemon

Heat oil in a heavy pot or dutch oven. Add onions, peppers, salt and cook until onions are translucent

Place chicken on top and add tomatoes, tomato paste, salt, pepper, thyme, worcestershire sauce and water and bring to a boil.

Simmer 15 minutes, covered. Remove chicken to a plate and add to the pot the beans and corn and continue to cook, about 15 minutes.

While the above is cooking, shred the chicken, then return it to the pot, add the juice of 1 lemon and serve.

Note: other vegetables may be substituted and fresh basil is good sprinkled at the end.

We had this wonderfully moist and delicious chicken with Tesco’s version of Trader Joe’s Two Buck Chuck. This one was Vino Rosso Italiano, bottled by CVSC of Ortona, Italia.

Do we let what we eat dictate the color of the wine? Of course not! What a tired canard that is!

When Jill, Lynn and I cook we try to limit the number of utensils dirtied in the meal’s preparation. Not so with our Michael!!

A Focus on Orcadian Crafts

Wed, May 21

Not surprisingly it is rainy, cool and windy so this will be another day pursuing crafts and art, this time heading south to South Ronaldsay where we had landed from the ferry. Our first stop is the Hoxa Tapestry Gallery which everyone has told us to visit. Leila Thomson’s work is large and beautifully executed and she tells us that she works at her loom 12 hours a day or more. Her daughter Jo and son Andrew have joined her and their work speaks very much to the wide open windy spaces, the beaches and sky, the birds and the seas. (www.hoxatapestrygallery.co.uk)

Andrew lets me use the WiFi connection (ever in the pursuit of email from home, news of crises…or actually mostly to get rid of unwanted spam). I buy several cards, Jill buys a framed print.

From this gallery we head back to St Margarets Hope to check out The Workshop and Loft Gallery, a crafts producers’ co-op specializing in knitted items and local crafts.

I fall for another sweater; fortunately it’s not my size. Enough already!! Show some restraint! I did however buy a set of Alison Moore’s stacked rings, Michael exchanges some yarn for a darker color. (www.workshopandloftgallery.co.uk)

Here’s a good place to insert a few of the Harray Potter pieces I have bought, both at his studio and in the Stromness shop:

Notice the runic inscriptions.

One of Andrew's "willy" cups! — One of Andrew’s “willy” cups!

Using motifs from neolithic pottery shards

A Loving Bowl that I've bought to give Geoffrey and Monica at their September wedding — A Loving Bowl that I’ve bought to give Geoffrey and Monica at their September wedding

We eat our sandwiches back in the car–can they indeed be BLTs again? Probably, and then we head north across the causeway to Burray Island where we stop to get coffee at the Fossil Museum there. The gift shop is uninspiring, the museum display, as much as we can see, is uninviting and the coffee is undrinkable. We strike that off our list for any potential future visits! I fail again to get a good picture of the sunken ships in Scapa Flow and I tentatively mention that I’d like to visit some of the World War II sites but get no endorsement for the idea. I have watched many British war dramas (I think particularly of A Family at War) that I feel an attachment to this place. I will have to be content with the Italian Chapel.

Then of course we are back in Kirkwall again, but this time we are looking for Orkney chairs. Lynn has been talking about buying one of the hooded chairs for months. Our first stop is Scapa Crafts Orkney Chairs where Jackie and Marlene Miller show us how these traditional chairs are made. (www.scapacraftsorkneychairs.co.uk)

This one is sold and will be on its way to California soon.

Jackie and Marlene Miller — Jackie shows off a nearly finished piece and Marlene talks with Lynn who is wearing her new Orkney sweater

The chairs are very comfortable and Lynn has practically handed over her credit card until we learn how much just the shipping will be. About $1000! We tell them that we are thinking of visiting Eday Island because it is such a good place to observe seabirds. Jackie, who is originally from Eday, says they will be going there on Friday, practically invites us to go with them but then remembers it is for a funeral. From there we go just a couple of blocks to the studio of a former Miller apprentice, Fraser Anderson, and look at his furniture. His is a bit more varied in style but the shipping cost looms ever larger. Eventually both Lynn and I settle on buying small model chairs. She really hates to give up the idea but we try to convince her that she can craft her own, perhaps with the help of Michael and Ruth (ruthbmcdowell.com) who have done a lot of basketry and twig furniture.

Jill has been hankering for fish and chips so this will be an evening without one of our home-cooked meals. We pull up next to the shop and Jill calls to some teenage boys hanging out, fish and chips in hand, “Is it good?” and we are told that yes, it’s good and one boy says to the other, ” Eh, you fancy ‘er?” We bring in three portions (Michael never, ever eats any sort of fish or seafood so he heats up the remainder of the pot roast and tries not to gag over the odor floating up from our decidedly heavy meals. If we do this again we’ll skip the chips.) And no, they’re not wrapped in newspaper, but in plain white butcher’s paper.

We watch a bit of the Chelsea Garden Show judging and an English version of American Pickers and do a bit of knitting. I am getting more and more frustrated trying to master netzpatent! Poor Michael. Every time I screw up I hand it to him to tink–that’s knit spelt backwards–back past the mistake and get me on the straight and narrow again. Hopeless!!

Onward to Orkney

Sat., May 17th continued… We head up (with far too many roundabouts as mentioned before) through lovely Leith and Elgin and have lunch in Helmsdale and reach Gill’s Bay on the Pentland Firth where we catch our ferry to St Margaret’s Hope (named for a 13th c Norse princess who came to marry an English prince. Hope however means bay, not hope as in hope chest.) Rain spits at us but the ferry ride–about an hour–is uneventful and unthreatening, even for those without proper sea legs. The first thing to know about Orkney is that it is indisputably Nordic. It may be part of Scotland today but nearly all its place names and much of its culture is Norse, not Celtic. When it became part of Scotland the islanders were culturally much closer to the lowland Scots than to the highlanders. Gaelic was never spoken here, but Orkney Norn. There’s very little in the way of pipe bands, tartans and all the Sir Walter Scott rigmarole found in Scotland
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From South Ronaldsay we head across the causeway to Burray and then across two more causeways to Mainland. To our left is Scapa Flow, famous during both world wars as the base of the British Home Fleet, the famous Churchill Barriers constructed in 1940, and for visitors, the site of the Italian Chapel built by Italian prisoners of war who were held there and employed in the Barriers’ construction. The chapel, which is simply two Nissen huts, end to end, with an elaborate Italianate facade was designed and executed by an artist Domenico Chiocchetti who said many years later to the assembled Orcadians, “The chapel is yours, for you to love and preserve. I take with me to Italy the remembrance of your kindness and wonderful hospitality. I shall remember you always…[and I thank you again] for having given me the joy of seeing again the little chapel of Lamb Holm, where I, in leaving, leave a part of my heart.” It is a touching place and the trompe l’oeil, restored not long ago, is quite amazing
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It is much cooler and windier as we arrive in Stromness, a little appendix at the southwest corner of Mainland
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Very narrow streets, eh?
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Here is the Stromness Hotel right down by the harbor.
Our cottage, discovered so fortuitously by Jill online, turns out to be a real gem. It is one of the self-catering Anderson Cottages should you be heading our way. This one has three bedrooms and two and a half baths. It’s on three storeys (UK spelling again!) First floor has a kitchen and dining room, the second the master suite and a sitting room with fireplace and up top two more bedrooms and a bath. The kitchen is fully stocked (we had been advised to bring our own spices and herbs; fortunately we didn’t take that advice to heart as everything is right here in the cupboard.) The theme is nautical and cozy and a bit fluffy but so comfortable. Michael of course gets his own room with bath (the good shower, I am forced to point out; ours is rather unreliable though we have a very large tub to compensate) and closet, Lynn and Jill bunk in together and I get the third bedroom…logic here as follows: I normally share a double bed with a dog, two cats and Bob; they both live alone, hence deserve some company. I get the luxury of my own room and I’m not about to fight that logic! We go off on foot down the narrow stone streets to the co-op for our first grocery shopping…a very decent place with plenty of choices. We stock up on all the essentials…tomatoes, string beans, onions, garlic, beer, lettuce and spinach, potatoes, meats, Orkney bacon (Yummm), coffee, milk (don’t need teas, there are about four dozen already in the cupboard along with a plethora of instant coffee choices which we eschew), bread, wine, hot peppers, bell peppers, shortbread, ice cream, another bottle of wine and two more Orkney Dark Island beers, butter, double cream, yogurt, one more bottle of wine (keep in mind that only Michael and I really drink, the others just pretend, for our sake, to partake), mushrooms, and Coleman’s mustard.
The Orkney Rovers’ Stir-Fry Chicken
1 entire head of garlic, skinned and sliced
1 largish onion sliced and diced
2 medium-hot red peppers chopped fine
2 bell peppers sliced
8 to 10 mushrooms sliced
2 c fresh string beans
6 oz package of spinach
6 small skinned and boned chicken thighs
1 jar (10 oz perhaps) korma sauce found along with many more condiments, rice, cereals, three types of sugar…and of course Marmite.
Served with rice and a bottle of a mediocre red wine and that was that.
It’s the best we can do on our first day. It’s excellent none the less and leaves us ready for a game or two of Spite & Malice, which Michael of course wins. (But the worm will turn soon!) And so to bed, dear reader!

Jill, still shellshocked from driving the incredibly narrow streets of Stromness

View from the sitting room

Who could ask for a better dining room and place to play cards?

From our deck here’s the view out over Hoy Sound. Just barely visible is one of the “high hills” of Hoy

A Day in Stromness

Monday, May 19

The day begins very slowly. Jill doesn’t want to drive and no one else feels competent on these very narrow streets, my toe throbs and Michael wants to knit. When the rain finally stops however we venture out to explore the shops, many of them listed in the Crafts Trail booklet. Jill as usual wanders off and is soon lost to me and Lynn. Michael is where? We have no idea. We look at sweaters at Quernstone–beautiful but machine knit so we stroll out. We find a very nice North Ronaldsay sheep pelt (these are the sheep that live on seaweed and kelp mainly, at least on North Ronaldsay) and chat with the storekeeper and we find our way to the Harray Potter (not Harry or Hairy for that matter) which we have heard a lot about. We’re holding off on buying anything yet, just sizing up the many crafts. Lynn is yearning for an Orkney chair.

The wind is brisk and after a quick trip to the pier where I can get my email we head back to the cottage and after cooking up some of the Scottish bacon ( a far cry from our over salted version) we make BLTs for lunch. In the afternoon I beg Michael to attempt to teach me how to do the netzpatent knit pattern which I have watched other folks in our spinning group try to do without mistakes…or barring that level of perfection, learn how to unknit correctly. It’s not that difficult but it is incredibly hard for me to remember which row I am on. Here is the pattern. The yarn is North Ronaldsay wool from the Woolshed.

NETZPATENT

After casting on an even number of stitches, knit the foundation row on the wrong side: K 1 (YO sl 1, K 1) repeat to final stitch YO sl 1. Now the pattern begins:

Row 1 K 1 (K 2, sl 1) repeat to end YO sl 1

Row 2: K 1 (K 2 tog, YO sl 1) to last stitch, YO sl 1 This row requires a full counterclockwise wrap (a full circle) on the final stitch

Row 3: K 1 (K 1, sl 1, K 1) to final stitch YO sl 1 Be sure to K knit stitches & Sl slipped stitches!

Row 4: K 1 (YO sl 1, K 2 tog) to last stitch YO sl 1

Easy enough…and so easy to switch pattern in the middle of a row when distracted!!

After an hour of this we decide to go out and explore the town leaving Michael behind in the peace and quiet. He is still trying to figure out why we can’t get WiFi. The password has been written on three separate stones left conveniently around the sitting room. We walk off the main street we live on–it is actually six streets more or less end to end, Ferry Rd, Victoria St, Dundas St, Alfred St, South End (we’re at #4) and Ness Rd–and walk up the hill.

Here is a view of the harbor looking off toward Hoy (the name means High Island)

Jill asks a couple of young mothers with their babies in prams what people do for work here in Stromness. There isn’t a lot. The fishing industry has collapsed as it has everywhere, there’s farming and tourism

There aren't a lot of trees on Orkney so the rooks make use of those there are! — There aren’t a lot of trees on Orkney so the rooks make use of those there are! Here’s one nest

Stromness loves its cats and they are all very friendly. This one looks like my Muizza

Jill and I make dinner. It hasn’t been a very exciting day and dinner isn’t very exciting either:

Frittata Stromness

2 large potatoes, sliced and parboiled, layered with

a large onion, sliced very thin

3 mildly hot peppers

a crumbled slice of bacon left over from lunch

1/2 a head of garlic sliced…all sauteed for about 10 minutes

6 eggs, well beaten poured over the vegetables, a bit of chili powder, herbes de Provence, salt & pepper

Cook covered an additional 5 minutes

Serve with a good bottle of Beringer’s 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon

After dinner it’s more Spite & Malice and this time Lynn is really on a roll. She wins all three games: in all three games I draw exactly four wild cards, not exactly winnable hands. Michael is stoic in defeat

Skara Brae and Kirkwall

Sunday, May 18

We are all feeling a bit dopey and lazy this morning so for a while we curl up on the sofas and knit. We’ve brought our various projects and, as if she had read our collective mind, the owner has provided us with a wicker basket by the fireplace filled with balls of yarns, needles and half-finished knitted swatches. I can’t sit still long though–much too expensive a trip to do what we do at home!–and despite the cool, grey weather we set off for Skara Brae, the 5000 year old neolithic community about ten miles north of Stromness right on the Bay of Skaill. It’s a World Heritage site and quite full of tourists on this Sunday morning but not so many as to spoil the illusion of stone-age life. The weather is perfect for transporting us back through, as people love to say, the mists of time.

The area of the excavations (begun with the discovery of stone walls in 1850 when a particularly bad storm unearthed some) is small, much smaller than I had imagined. We pace off the perimeter and figure it is no more than about a quarter acre but archaeologists think that 50 to 100 people once lived in these eight dwellings.

Looking out over the Bay of Skaill which would have been much farther away 5000 year ago

One of houses which once could be seen by the public is particularly complete but being judged “very fragile” has been resealed and a replica built.

A stone-age home with hearth, beds , shelves and room dividers. This is the replica

The stonework is amazingly complex and beautifully fashioned. Stone slabs divide rooms, form shelves and enclose beds; the original ceilings were elegantly corbelled with a hole at the top to allow smoke to leave from the hearth. Having read several Icelandic and Scandinavian novels over the years I suspect that life did not change much from 3000 BCE until about 1900! How very dark, smokey, crowded and smelly the homes must have been!

Our tickets also let us into 17th c (and more recently) Skaill House, home of the local laird. It was the seventh laird, William Graham Watt, who on being shown the exposed ruins undertook the first excavations of Skara Brae. The furnishings are mainly Victorian.

Hard to see, but the Queen has signed the book

As all roads on Mainland lead to Kirkwall, the capital, we head there next. We eat at The Reel where I can finally get my email–WiFi at the cottage does not seem to work–and Michael for some reason does not have to pay for his lunch (he argues with them but they prevail and he is about 8 pounds ahead of the game) and we go across the street to Judith Glue’s (both these places have been recommended) and I decide that Michael should treat us to cones of Orkney ice cream. Later he claims he was about to offer anyway. St Magnus Cathedral is just across the street. Jill and Lynn head over and sit on a bench while Michael and I stay and get the cones. Michael takes his and Lynn’s, I follow shortly with mine–yumm, it is good–and Jill’s. I’m sure you can guess there is a story coming….

So, I start up the steps toward the cathedral, a cone in each hand…and trip. I crash down, bang my left big toe sharply on the edge of the step, and yell out a very blasphemous phrase, especially given the location, which I will simply refer to as the J…F…C incident.This is bad enough one would think but no, I top even this. My cone has broken and I am clutching its various pieces in my left hand. Jill’s cone has lost about half its ice cream but following every mother’s three-second rule, I scoop it back onto her cone, then getting up limp over to the bench and give it to her. Jill hasn’t seen what I have done, the others have. She begins to eat it and Lynn, aghast, says “Why did you give her that cone!?” Still in shock–honestly–I respond “Because I had already licked mine.” Now we are truly in hysterics. Everyone who has witnessed this debacle politely looks elsewhere. We are totally beside ourselves; we cannot, are physically unable to stop laughing.

At last we regain some dignity and sobriety and visit the church which is truly lovely, Romanesque in style, begun in 1137 to atone for the murder of Earl Magnus. The story can be found in the Orkneyinga Saga which is a must-read for everyone visiting Orkney. (Unfortunately and inexplicably it is not in the newish Penguin collection Sagas of the Icelanders but can be found as a separate Penguin book.)

Spite & Malice again in the evening…Michael loses a game and tsk, tsk, tsk, he is one sore loser! The sides of his mouth went right down…very grim!

Michael’s Exceptionally Tasty

Crock Pot Pot Roast (on low all day long)

Potatoes peeled and quartered

Carrots ditto

Onions ditto…how much simpler can it get?

1 small rump pot roast rubbed with salt and pepper

1 small can of tomato sauce

1/2 c water

Put the vegetables in the bottom of the pot, cover with the meat, pour the tomato sauce and extra water over the top, sprinkle with oregano, basil. This oh so simple recipe is delicious and we served it was a Spanish rioja wine and a small green salad.

Stromness at Last!

From South Ronaldsay we head across the causeway to Burray and then across two more causeways to Mainland. To our left is Scapa Flow, famous during both world wars as the base of the British Home Fleet, the famous Churchill Barriers constructed in 1940, and for visitors, the site of the Italian Chapel built by Italian prisoners of war who were held there and employed in the Barriers’ construction. The chapel, which is simply two Nissen huts, end to end, with an elaborate Italianate facade was designed and executed by an artist Domenico Chiocchetti who said many years later to the assembled Orcadians, “The chapel is yours, for you to love and preserve. I take with me to Italy the remembrance of your kindness and wonderful hospitality. I shall remember you always…[and I thank you again] for having given me the joy of seeing again the little chapel of Lamb Holm, where I, in leaving, leave a part of my heart.” It is a touching place and the trompe l’oeil, restored not long ago, is quite amazing

It is much cooler and windier as we arrive in Stromness, a little appendix at the southwest corner of Mainland

Very narrow streets, eh?

Here is the Stromness Hotel right down by the harbor.

Our cottage, discovered so fortuitously by Jill online, turns out to be a real gem. It is one of the self-catering Anderson Cottages should you be heading our way. This one has three bedrooms and two and a half baths. It’s on three storeys (UK spelling again!) First floor has a kitchen and dining room, the second the master suite and a sitting room with fireplace and up top two more bedrooms and a bath. The kitchen is fully stocked (we had been advised to bring our own spices and herbs; fortunately we didn’t take that advice to heart as everything is right here in the cupboard.) The theme is nautical and cozy and a bit fluffy but so comfortable. Michael of course gets his own room with bath (the good shower, I am forced to point out; ours is rather unreliable though we have a very large tub to compensate) and closet, Lynn and Jill bunk in together and I get the third bedroom…logic here as follows: I normally share a double bed with a dog, two cats and Bob; they both live alone, hence deserve some company. I get the luxury of my own room and I’m not about to fight that logic! We go off on foot down the narrow stone streets to the co-op for our first grocery shopping…a very decent place with plenty of choices. We stock up on all the essentials…tomatoes, string beans, onions, garlic, beer, lettuce and spinach, potatoes, meats, Orkney bacon (Yummm), coffee, milk (don’t need teas, there are about four dozen already in the cupboard along with a plethora of instant coffee choices which we eschew), bread, wine, hot peppers, bell peppers, shortbread, ice cream, another bottle of wine and two more Orkney Dark Island beers, butter, double cream, yogurt, one more bottle of wine (keep in mind that only Michael and I really drink, the others just pretend, for our sake, to partake), mushrooms, and Coleman’s mustard.

The Orkney Rovers’ Stir-Fry Chicken

1 entire head of garlic, skinned and sliced

1 largish onion sliced and diced

2 medium-hot red peppers chopped fine

2 bell peppers sliced

8 to 10 mushrooms sliced

2 c fresh string beans

6 oz package of spinach

6 small skinned and boned chicken thighs

1 jar (10 oz perhaps) korma sauce found along with many more condiments, rice, cereals, three types of sugar…and of course Marmite.

Served with rice and a bottle of a mediocre red wine and that was that.

It’s the best we can do on our first day. It’s excellent none the less and leaves us ready for a game or two of Spite & Malice, which Michael of course wins. (But the worm will turn soon!) And so to bed, dear reader!

Jill, still shellshocked from driving the incredibly narrow streets of Stromness

View from Jill and Lynn's bedroom — View from the sitting room

Who could ask for a better dining room and place to play cards?

From our deck here's Hoy Sound — From our deck here’s the view out over Hoy Sound. Just barely visible is one of the “high hills” of Hoy

Orkney or Bust

First of all I want to thank Carol Adams for guiding me through some of the intricacies of blogging. Don’t have it all under my belt yet and she probably would not appreciate a call for help at this time of night! You can find her blog by googling Whispering Pines Farm Colrain. And thanks to all of you who have already found this journal

May 16

We pick up our rental car at the Aberdeen airport, a classy black Ford Focus, squeeze in all our luggage and very tentatively Jill drives us into the city–stick shift, six-on-the-floor, left-hand drive, narrow streets and a less than helpful map. But Jill is after all English and quite capable of handling anything…until she finds herself headed into the wrong parking garage and tries to back out and can’t find reverse. The tension is palpable but eventually, and just before slamming into the wall, she and Michael discover that the shift lever has to be raised, not pushed down, to achieve reverse.

The Douglas Hotel is a lovely place, we settle in, take a brief walk around town and at 5 decide to eat dinner though we’re not very hungry. We play cards, the first of many sessions of Spite & Malice. We do everything we can to stay awake so as to defeat jet lag but about 6:30 we all admit defeat and collapse into our beds. Michael, down the hall, has the alarm clock and has been told to awaken us at 7 AM so we can get to the ferry on time.

I am sound asleep when suddenly Lynn wakes us, “We’re late! Oh my god, we’re late! It’s 8:30…why didn’t Michael wake us?” She’s all dressed, Jill leaps out of bed to get into the shower, both of them agree that they are SO refreshed. What a great sleep! Refreshed? I’m a bit skeptical about that. Down the hall goes Lynn to get Michael, whose mumbled response through the door is “Have you all been drinking? Go back to bed!” But the sun is shining so brightly, the shadows are not long, people are going about their business and Jill says,” Look, there are all the kids with their backpacks going to school! What is wrong with Michael?” I suggest we phone the desk so Jill with her best English accent calls and asks what time it is. “Nine-fifteen” is the answer and she hangs up. Yes, I say, but Jill, is it Friday or is it Saturday? Well, of course you know the answer. The second call confirms it is indeed still Friday and we have slept just two, not 14, hours. We are hysterical…for a long time. Every time we stop laughing someone says “Is it yesterday or is it tomorrow?” and we begin all over again.

Clearly this table was way too small for our lavish breakfast!

A good sleep…an all night sleep later, we eat a fabulous breakfast and head north to the ferry at Gill’s Bay that will take us to St Margaret’s Hope on South Ronaldsay. There are roundabouts at every road crossing it seems and each of them is more terrifying than the one before. After bumping over several kerbs (yes, this is the UK) Michael, who is still in the front seat, puts his head down, covers his ears and assumes the crash position we have been advised whilst in flight to take in the event of an unanticipated and watery landing.

Lunch along the way. He was painting the facade

A fairly common sight in Scotland and Orkney

But we’ll leave our journey here for now. Tomorrow, or is it today, we’ll be in Stromness.

We Head East

Mon, May 26
Now that we’ve been in our cozy cottage through two weekends and explored so many of the Mainland byways we are feeling both very settled in, almost native Orcadian, and at the same time there is a touch of wistfulness, a hint of premature nostalgia. Journeys once they have dipped past the midpoint tumble down to their conclusion. We are checking our guidebooks more making sure we find the places we have missed so far.
And so today, suited again in our waterproof pants and our matching Slogger rubber shoes and with headlamps, we set out for Cuween Hill and its chambered cairn. Like the Tomb of the Eagles, which we decided last week not to visit, Cuween Hill’s cairn offered up what is surmised to be totemic animal remains, in this case 24 dog skulls, along with human remains and other animal bones. It is 4500 years old.
We are alone when we park and walk up the slope to the mound. The “torch” (flashlight for you non-Brits) has been left on no doubt and the battery is dead. We slither through a very tight entrance with at least two of us wearing our headlamps which though bright do not really illuminate the space well and the chamber is small, only large enough for the four of us sitting there. We can see the four cells off the chamber and we poke our heads into them. If there are any Norse graffiti runes here we can’t see them.

Again…this stone construction is 4500 years old, and being in here with no guide, no other tourists, the sense of history, of prehistory is very strong. One wonders what sorts of ritual, what acts were performed here and by whom. Priests or priestesses? This is just one of over 76 discovered chambered cairns scattered across the Orkney islands Like children, however, we make silly sounds to check the resonance and Michael even sings an aria, which opera?, but the sound is muffled. This is a tomb.

Cuween Hill…entrance to the cairn
Back outside Jill finds rhubarb growing wild and picks some. We’ll have rhubarb and apple compote later.

We head further east, and as usual we still comment on every adorable lamb and its mother, every calf with his mom and point out every abandoned farmstead and discuss buying, renovating and how we would live there for weeks or months at a time.

We ask Jill to stop so we can photograph another wonder but she generally says, with a stern glare but a sly smile, “No! You haven’t given me three minutes warning!” and then, once in a while, if she can, she stops. We also pull over to pick the more enticing bits of wool off the barbed wire that is used to fence off most of the fields.

The roads are mostly single lane with lay-bys for encountering oncoming cars and lorries. Farming is a big business here but as far as we can tell, it’s just livestock. We don’t see much except the occasional kitchen garden in the way of vegetables being grown. And the wool, unless it is from one of the special breeds, North Ronaldsay is one, is all sent to a wool pool.
We head out to the peninsula and the brough of Deerness where we have read that many varieties of seabirds can be found. We find seagulls, not even the ubiquitous oystercatcher shows up and we seem to have missed reading about the remains of a small Celtic or Pictish chapel there so we don’t look for it! We don’t see any seals either.

The Gloup…or is it a geo, pronounced gew?

nesting seagulls

Heading back toward Kirkwall we try to find an iron age site, Mine Howe, with its 29 treacherous steps leading down into the subterranean chamber. We can’t find it. We drive the stretch of road three times, we ask directions…nothing. Besides being a place where considerable amount of metal work was done–there are kilns set into the interior–it was also a place of burial. We give up and later back in Kirkwall at the Orkney Museum we learn that the site is not always open which may explain the lack of signs. Jill buys the book on Mine Howe and we will have to make do with that.
We have excellent coffee and cake again at Judith Glue’s (and note the sign outside that says “Real” Food which we suspect is a slight poke at The Reel just across the street.
Michael buys the final ingredients for his specialty tonight. We force him to modify the recipe by using the linguine we already have instead of buying the correct penne!
Linguine/Penne with Vodka Sauce
1/4 c olive oil
10 cloves garlic, crushed
salt
35 oz crushed plum tomatoes (or fresh)
crushed hot red pepper
1/2 c heavy cream
2 Tbl butter
1/4 c vodka
1 lb pasta
Process tomatoes to aerate. Heat the oil, add the garlic to brown. Carefully add the tomatoes and simmer about 3 minutes.
Add salt and red pepper, vodka, the cream and butter (olive oil can be substituted)
Add the al dente pasta to the sauce and bring back to a boil.
Add 2 to 3 Tbl Italian parsley and 3/4 c grated Parmesan. Stir together
Serve with a salad…and here’s Lynn’s dressing
1 1/2 lemons, juiced
1 tsp hot Colman’s mustard
Salt, pepper, olive oil, chopped parsley. (Anchovies should be added but in deference to Michael we leave these out!)
It is delicious!!! We have Hereford Red, a tempranillo/malbec with it and then watch Death at a Funeral.

Geology of Orkney, Maes Howe, Orkney, Orkney Rovers’ Recipes
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Brough of Birsay

Orkney on My Mind

It does seem a bit perverse to begin a blog about a farm–a small New England place with these days just a few Angora goats, a dozen peafowl, two exceptionally bright dogs, two equally beguiling cats and two cockatiels, one of them bald– with notes from a wonderful trip just taken.

I am also entirely new to the mechanics of blogging and have been wading through the instructions and feeling overwhelmed. Finally this morning I decided to just plunge in and let the chips fall where they may. I also decided to write the Orkney Journal as if it were happening right now, not three weeks ago…So here we go

May 15…The Orkney Rovers, Jill, Lynn, Michael and I, head off down I-91 in high spirits. The jokes are scatological, the laughter infectious and never-ending. We park in Framingham, grab the LoganExpress, eat a quick late lunch at a franchise Durgin Park (it bears no resemblance to the Durgin Park I remember!) and at 7 o’clock board our British Airways flight. We are seated four abreast like sardines in a can but hilarity continues…I’ll let Michael fill in the story..and we finally touch down at Heathrow about 1 am (New England time) where we are flung mercilessly into the jaws of post 9/11 security. It’s 6:30 am here in London and we have two hours to make our flight to Aberdeen. Will we make it?

Two retinal eye scans, three passport/boarding pass checks, two baggage inspections, painfully slow movement through the lines slogging our heavy luggage and the fortunate delay of the next flight (else we would indeed have missed it), we are on our way north.

But now we’re way into May 16 so that will have to wait till tomorrow….Cynthia

xxxxx

Author: keldaby