Category: Orcadian crafts

Tomb of the Eagles

Fri, May 17th 2019

Jen has once again found something new for us. (We keep telling her that she would make a terrific tour guide for her own company–thorough, organized, enthusiastic, people-oriented, reliable–in a word or two creatively professional. She isn’t tempted!) Today we will return to the Tomb of the Eagles because there will be a guide there who does story-telling. The site is at the south end of South Ronaldsay, the most southerly of the Orkney archipelago and connected by way of Burray to Mainland via a couple of bridges and the Churchill Barriers. Our storyteller is a young German woman who is okay but not totally scintillating. Perhaps the story she tells isn’t one of the better ones. We skip the milelong walk out to the tomb (we were there just two years ago) and have our lunch on the beach followed by a bit of beach-combing. http://www.tomboftheeagles.co.uk

Then it’s up to St Margaret’s Hope at the north end of the island and a visit to The Workshop and Loft Gallery. www.workshopandloftgallery.co.uk I have sworn off buying any more Orcadian sweaters and so of course immediately find one I want. So does Lynn. We buy them and then head to Robertson’s (where last trip we couldn’t have a dessert while others were eating lunch–“That’s not how it’s done here” she had said.) Fortunately that waitress was not on hand and we happily had our cappuccinos and beers. https://www.orkneyfoodanddrink.com

Next on the agenda is Kirkwall, not easily achieved as there is a stretch of road with construction happening–no sign of this when we had headed out this morning. Slow going and so unusual–generally it’s sheep in the road that tie us up. Lynn had ordered a thumb ring at Aurora and we pick it up now and then Lynn and I find a shop that sells real flags–heavy-duty, double-stitched, not printed Orkney flags for home. We each buy one; our first ones are tattered and faded after two New England winters. There is nothing on the notice board at the Reel to suggest our musician acquaintances we met in Rousay would be performing that weekend.

Here’s one of the new flags behind a very serious Lynn

Back at the cottage I make Jazz Chops, porkchops that have been browned in a salted cast iron skillet then braised in white wine with sliced apples, sliced onion, garlic, honey, and nutmeg until tender. After dinner we stroll down to the Ferry Inn where we think, we hope, there may be live music. The bar is packed with regulars but no music. We have beer or soda, Jill enjoys a mild flirtation and then we head back home feeding all the cats we encounter from our stashes of kitty treats.

Rear door to the Ferry Inn

Our Last Cottage Day

Fri, May 11

I hate coming to the end of a trip, especially journeys where I have stayed in one place long enough to make it feel like home. This morning I stand in the kitchen, awash in nostalgia. I look out at the harbor and think, this is the last day I can breathe in this particular view.

The four of us–Michael again stays behind, this time to work on his drawing–walk down the main street, popping into the bookstore where I buy a print copy of The Outrun so I can share it with the others. Then we drive off to Kirkwall where Jill finally decides on sweat shirts for Gussie and Fayley.  We catch a quick lunch at The Reel, a cafe but also a popular site for folk music and shows,

 https://www.wrigleyandthereel.com/

and then a quick ride up to the Dounby Butcher for lamb chops (to be our final cottage dinner!) and to buy the really substantial tote bags they sell.

We haven’t been to the Michael Sinclair Shop and Gallery–he’s new to the Craft Trail although he has been turning bowls for a quarter century–so he’s our next stop, nearby in Howar. I have collected enough bowls  over the years, surely I will not be tempted here at least. Wrong! I love his work, we all do and all four of us buy bowls. His wife Sara is fun to talk with too. In fact, at one point, she tells me, they too had raised Angora goats.  www.michael-sinclair-woodturner.co.uk

                          This is the one I choose

  

 

Back at the cottage Michael has been busy. He has taped his painting up on one of his windows, drawn the curtains around it and then we are all invited in to view it, one at a time, and only from a certain distance. As each of us is positioned, the curtain is drawn back to reveal his still unfinished work. No, I have no photo of it as this was not allowed.

Jen finally sits down and does a small painting of the Ring of Brodgar.

And Lynn has done some sketching too.

We haven’t exactly been prolific with our painting and sketching, not as we had thought we would be. Perhaps the cold, persistent wind deterred us from our plein air plans!

Our last cottage supper, prepared by Jill and Jen, is Dounby lamb chops, mint sauce, steamed new potatoes, herbed carrots and a salad. We drink up the remains of the wine, scotch whisky and beer. A bit of TV, a bit of knitting finishes the evening. We are all pretty quiet. In our bedrooms we pack and repack our bags. Tomorrow we will have to be out of #18 by 10 o’clock.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tomb of the Eagles & Incidentally an Orkney Chair

It has completely slipped my mind until now to tell you about Lynn and her chair. Three years ago we spent time looking at several studios making the traditional hooded Orkney chair because Lynn had her heart set on buying one. Ultimately she decided the chair and its shipping cost too much and said no but she knew she really loved the work of Jackie and Marlene Miller, owners of the Scapa Crafts Orkney Chairs workshop.  https://www.scapacrafts.co.uk/

A couple of days ago she nonchalantly said, “Let’s just stop in again and look at the chairs,” and this time she was ready! In minutes she was getting her bespoke chair designed just for her with hood and drawer, to be delivered late this coming autumn!

Three years ago we all tried out  the Millers’ chairs

Here’s one under construction

Wed, May 3rd

It’s a beautiful warm almost windless sunny day. Three years ago we had decided to skip the Tomb of the Eagles, mostly because when we got there the wind was howling, the spitting rain was close to becoming sleet and the mile-long walk to the site was unappealing. Today however is perfect so we head out to South Ronaldsay, the most southern Orkney island and reachable by car over the famous Churchill Barriers–impressive World War II defenses against the German U-boats.

In the visitors’ centre our guides Lily and Jo fill us in on a lot of interesting facts about the two privately owned sites here, one stone age, one bronze, and the people who built and used them. Then we walk out toward the cliff edge. There are some excellent photos if you follow this link:

https://www.tomboftheeagles.co.uk/

The bronze age site is small and to the untrained eye not particularly interesting but the chambered cairn further on, built five millenia ago,  is impressive. The tomb was used for about 800 years and contained the remains of some 340 bodies as well as the skeletons and talons of numerous sea eagles, possibly a totemic animal for the local population. Artifacts–bones, tools, pottery–can be seen at the museum in the visitors’ centre.

Michael emerges

Jen and Jill in the cairn

We eat lunch there and then drive to the Hoxa Tapestry Gallery; we particularly love Leila and daughter Jo Thomson’s large wall tapestries

and then continue on to village of St Margaret’s Hope where we are eager to revisit the Workshop and Loft Gallery, an artist cooperative which specializes in knitware and other Orcadian crafts. Both Lynn and I buy sweaters. Mine is from The Quernstone shop in Stromness and is half silk, half merino wool.  https://www.workshopandloftgallery.co.uk/

A bit of grocery shopping at Tesco, a quick trip to Dounby and Alison Moore’s gallery where Lynn and I pick up our moonstone rings and then it’s back to Stromness where Michael makes a delicious rice and black bean dinner served with a salad and for dessert, ice cream. Michael and Jen go for a walk, some of us knit and later there’s a game of Spite and Malice.

Skara Brae and Peat Fire Folktales

Tues, May 2

The sky is blue! Off we head to the Bay of Skaill for a bit of beach combing. The water near land is a bright turquoise, farther out a deep ultramarine blue. The gulls swoop and skim the water as we walk along the sand until we are just below the cliff where Skara Brae lies above us.There are some enticing rocks but none that compel me to carry them back to the car. I’m waiting for Waulkmill Bay for that.

 Bay of Skaill

After some debate we decide to go to Skara Brae as we are so close. We buy our tickets, then have tea and scones in the little restaurant before going through the museum then out to the neolithic village itself. While burial mounds and cairns, stone rings and henges are fairly common worldwide, there are very few instances of residences from five thousand years ago and this place, a world heritage site, is probably the best preserved and most extensive.There are eight “houses”  and two other spaces, workshops perhaps, linked by passages. Once these houses most likely would have been roofed over with skins or thatching. Because there was so little wood available on these islands after farming became the way of life, stone sites here in Orkney were preserved. At Skara Brae the structures were buried under dunes for more than forty centuries until a storm in 1850 uncovered them.

Remarkably the houses, constructed of unmortared stones, do not differ greatly from the two and three century old farm museums we have visited.  Stone cupboards, dressers, beds, water tanks and a central hearth are the common motif. It is believed this was a community of about 75 to 90 people. Although it has been removed now, the village was originally surrounded and cocooned within its own midden heaps, both to protect the villagers from the weather–that incessant wind!–and to hide them from any marauding bands of enemies. Skara Brae was inhabited for 600 to 1000 years!

https://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/skarab2.htm

We leave the village and walk up to the nearby Skaill House, home of the Graham family since 1620. The seventh laird, William Graham Watt, discovered the ruins of Skara Brae after that storm of 1850 and undertook the first excavations.

Skaill House

We head back to Stromness, still exclaiming over all the tiny lambs and their mothers in every field we pass. I have forgotten to mention, but this trip, because we have arrived two weeks earlier, right after lambing, we see that many of the babies are sporting little biodegradable poly jackets which disappear after a couple of weeks but which keep the newborn lambs dry. There are no sheds or even protecting trees for the animals to shelter under.

We have our BLTs–will we ever tire of them–and I and (I think) Jill, spend the rest of the afternoon knitting. The others go for a walk up to Brinkie’s Brae.

Jen, Lynn and Michael

This is from the official Stromness website:

From the top of Brinkie’s Brae and along the western coastline there are spectacular vistas across to Graemsay and Hoy. It is quite unlike any other town in Orkney, partly because its geology is so unusual.

StromnessBrinkie’s Brae is formed from granite-schist, unlike the fine-grained sedimentary rocks of the surrounding area. This is one of the only places in Orkney where rocks like these, more characteristic of the western Highlands, are exposed.

View from Brinkie’s Brae

Jill and Jen make dinner: lamb chops from Dounby, steamed new potatoes in herbs and butter, salad and Orkney ice cream. After dinner we drive to the Orkney Folklore and Storytelling Centre where we hear Lynn O’Brien Barbour tell stories of selkies and finmen as she sits by a peat fire in her traditional Orkney chair . It’s another magical evening.

Lynn Barbour

Two guests from Sweden

https://www.orkneystorytelling.com/peatfire-tales/

We decide we will want to hear her again, next time at the Stromness Hotel in the Whisky Bar.

Shopping the Crafts Trail

The first thing to note is that my second and third posts were set up as pages, not posts, so their titles–Sea Hames and Kirbister Farm and Beltane at the Ring of Brodgar–don’t show up in the list of posts and I haven’t been able to figure out how to reinstate them correctly.

Ahh… We have an update here. Yesterday Joanie brought over Reine, a knowledgeable young friend who came originally from Benin and visited us with her husband Zeke, originally from Belize, and she solved my blogging problem SO EASILY!! So all my entries now are posts, not pages. Thank you, Reine!!

 

And she bought a hat!

Meanwhile Zeke helped (immensely!) Bob get the tractor going again.

Mon, May 1st

Jason arrives in the morning with replacement parts for the sewer connection. The problem is fixed quickly and we suspect that this has been an ongoing problem along the main street as road construction has obviously been going on for some time. The street is closed immediately beyond us on the final portion of the main street which turns from South End to Ness Road just past our cottage.

Jill, Jen, Lynn and I head out to visit all our favorite shops along the street, the Quernstone and its sister shop across the street where we look at sweaters, Sutherland Pharmacy and Lynn and I visit the Pier Art Centre which has a show of contemporary Orcadian artists and a small collection of 20th century work.

After lunch we head out to follow the Craft Trail. It’s quite cool and windy and I am glad I bought a good sweater at a consignment shop back in Kirkwall last Saturday. Tomorrow we will be more organized and really begin to visit the various archaeological sites. I make a stir fry for dinner and then Michael, Lynn and I play Spite and Malice all evening.