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
.
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 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
Category: Orkney
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
. 
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!
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.
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.
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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The Orkney Folk Festival
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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
Maeshowe…or Maes Howe if you prefer
Fri, May 23 First a couple of catch-up things: number one, I want to thank Liz Sorenson for getting us all on the Orkney trail. She and her partner John Nove own an old farmstead on the furthest out Orkney island, Papa Westray, and they rent this now totally renovated farmhouse as a self-catering B&B when they are not in residence. Liz owns Sheep & Shawl (www.sheepandshawl.com) a small yarn (and much more) shop in South Deerfield MA. We had planned to rent their place (www.papawestray.co.uk/papay/peatwell.html) until Michael joined us and we needed larger accommodations. In hindsight I am glad we are staying on Mainland which makes access to many sites a whole lot easier. Papa Westray is really out there and scheduling around ferry times is not easy! Second, I mentioned the “loving bowl” I am giving my son and his fiancee. The official word for this type of bowl is quaich which is pronounced–and I was given much instruction on this–as if you were preparing to expectorate mightily while saying quake.
We have reserved our place for an 11 o’clock tour at Maeshowe so we are all prepared to leave Stromness, dressed for the cold, by 10:15. We get a really good guide Aneka who is from Poland (each group going in is limited to about 15 people) and we are inside the mound for over an hour.
This 4700 year old structure is truly impressive. Four massive standing stones form the corners of the chamber and probably predate the chamber itself. The walls of the chamber are perfectly built with cells off the main room which are assumed to be burials sites. The entrance, which is aligned to the winter solstice sunset as the sun sets between the Hoy hills as aforementioned, is narrow and low (a little over a yard high and about 20 feet long.)
A stone slab, which is positioned to be pivoted, marks and can close off the opening. The roof was originally corbelled stone but is now a concrete dome. This site was certainly noted by the Norsemen who spent time in this chamber and probably lived in or were visiting this region and there are several examples of runic writing, graffiti actually, inside the chamber. Although some of the runes describe great treasures found here, nothing has ever come to light since the Norsemen returning from the crusades carved their comments here: “Ingibiorg, the fair widow….” and “Thorfinn carved these runes….” about 1150 CE
Among the various Norse inscriptions there is the well-known dragon (or lion) which we had expected to be bigger but is only about 4 inches high.
From Maeshowe we drive to Orphir where there is the ruin of the Norse round church modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Only the apse remains, built by Earl Hakon after the slaying of Earl Magnus and upon his return from pilgrimage. Like Maeshowe, it and the adjoining earls’ bu (drinking hall) are mentioned in the Orkneyinga Saga.
We watch a short film in the Orkneyinga Saga Centre on this murder and atonement tale.
From there we drive south down through Burray (skipping the Fossil Museum and its dreadful coffee!) to South Ronaldsay, intending to explore the Tomb of the Eagles. By the time we get there, however, the wind has picked up and the temperature has dropped even more (it is just a micro-degree away from sleet I am convinced) and we learn at the visitor centre that the walk in is more than a mile and the entrance fee of 7 pounds (wish I could find the symbol on my keyboard!) per person seems high plus the description of the site itself seems underwhelming so we give this spot the slip and head up to St Margarets Hope so Michael can see if the people in The Loft still have the cabling needle which had inadvertently been left there when he exchanged the yarn earlier. (They replaced it.) Back in Stromness Jill made dinner. 
Jillian’s Really, It’s Very Simple Lamb Chops (from the Dounby Butcher)
Mint Sauce: 2 handfuls fresh mint (right from our cottage’s courtyard) finely-chopped
2 tsp sugar Almost cover with boiling water.
Add 1/2 tsp salt and
1/3 c malt vinegar. Let sit.
Grill lamb chops on top of stove (we have definitely decided the oven does not work) with
sliced mushrooms.
Serve with boiled new potatoes and steamed broccoli.
At the same time (and for lunch, etc) Lynn has made:
The Great Everything Is It Soup? Stew? Casserole?
In a crock pot put onions, parsnips, garlic, leeks, carrots, celery, savoy cabbage, hot peppers, mixed Italian herbs, all sliced or diced.
Add chicken broth and
about 1 1/2 c soup mix (a dried mixture we had bought at the co-op of barley, red lentils and green and yellow split peas.)
Slow cooked over 4 slices of the wonderful Orkney bacon for 8 to 10 hours on the “low” setting of the crock pot.
Serve with plain Greek yogurt and
sprinkle with fresh cilantro.
More Spite & Malice, more knitting and more of the Chelsea Flower Show. Having given up temporarily on the netzpatent, I am reading the George Mackay Brown Island of the Women.
The Orkney Folk Festival
Weekend, May 24 & 25
When we planned our trip it seemed we were going to take in much of the folk festival yet as this weekend has approached, we have become very laid back about it. We are so laid back in fact that we don’t buy any tickets, we don’t drive out of town. Still, although the festival takes place on nine different islands, much of it happens right here in Stromness.
We pick up a program flier and are rather alarmed at the prices of admission to many of the events, 10 to 20 pounds a person ($18 to $36) which wouldn’t be daunting if it were dollars instead of pounds or if we had any idea which events might be most worthwhile. Meantime the town does begin to fill up in a moderate sort of way. This is more like the Newport Folk Festival circa 1964, when I sat right at the feet of Pete Seeger, Theodore Bickel, Joan Baez. We hear strains of music drifting from pubs and there are groups forming outside a couple of cafes down near the pier for impromptu pick-up sessions. No one is willing to say “Let’s go here…let’s go there….” We are all waiting for the other person to take the initiative. It doesn’t happen; we haven’t done our research and we are unsure of each other’s musical tastes and don’t want to impose. (At least, that is what I think.)
On Saturday there is a pipe band in Sinclair tartan that takes shape and eventually marches down Ferry Road to Victoria Street and plays for quite a while near the Stomness Hotel. We wander toward the pier and sitting around a table, ales in hand, is an informal group playing fiddles, clarinet, bodhran, guitars, squeezebox, flute and penny whistles.
There is a fiddlers’ rally scheduled for Sunday afternoon in the Stromness Academy Lecture Theatre and we decide that will be our big commitment, pound-wise. Meanwhile the caretaker for the cottage has shown up–the first actual contact we have had with someone connected to our spot–and he fixes the Wi-Fi connection (we have no idea what magic he has wrought but now Michael can get email and although I can get on line, I can’t get email) and sets the TV so we will be able to watch some of the DVDs that have been left there.
We see two young fiddlers and Michael asks them how long they have been playing. “Since I was four” says one.
Sunday morning Lynn and I go for a walk along streets not previously visited and shortly after lunch we four head over to the Academy (high school) so to be sure to get tickets. It’s lucky we do because by 2 o’clock the auditorium is packed and the concert begins. There are three different groups participating in various configurations, both the West Mainland and Orkney Strathspey & Reel Societies and the Orkney Accordion & Fiddle Club plus four of the five members of Feis Rois Ceilidh Trail. I know I have never seen so many accordions in one spot! They fill the stage. We recognize the young fiddlers sitting on the wall (above) in the youth group.
The director is a woman who with a minimum of fuss manages to get the groups on and off and reconfigured. During the intermission and after a particularly beautiful piece has been played Michael goes down to speak with her about it. It is a wedding piece written by a young violinist and the director pulls a copy of the music from one of the music stands and gives it to him. (He will upon returning home take the theme, embellish and enlarge it and compose variations on it for piano and play it for all of us on a recent Monday afternoon. We are misty-eyed when he finishes.)
One of the members of Feis Rois is the young–and very handsome–Eric Linklater, originally from Stromness (and not a relative of the writer Eric Linklater), whose playing we wish we could hear more of. Jill manages to buy the last copy, possibly in all Mainland, of his CD at the Reel in Kirkwall. The two sopranos have clear, sweet voices and they sing several traditional Gaelic songs, a guitarist accompanies.
Upon reflection I do wish we had bought tickets to one of the closing concerts that evening but instead we head to the cottage and another evening of knitting and a very strange and dark episode of Dr Quirk, I think it’s called.
And here are our weekend meals.
Chicken Tikka Masala, a classic Cynthia non-recipe concoction making use of the strange vegetables lurking in the crisper drawer.
In a wok cook over a fairly hot flame, in olive oil
1 lg onion, sliced
6 to 8 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 a bell pepper julienned
1 hot pepper
1/4 head savoy cabbage
2 sliced and parboiled parsnips
Add 1/2 bottle dark beer, salt, pepper, cumin, herbes de provence
In a separate pan cook 6 chicken thighs, cut into manageable pieces and 1 c sliced mushrooms
Combine and add 6 to 8 oz tikka masala sauce (jars of all these Indian sauces are widely available there) and a Tbl chopped cilantro. Squeeze a lemon over the top. Serve with herbed rice and a dash of chili powder.
A bottle of Tesco’s Chilean shiraz went well with it. Like all my “recipes” there is a great deal of latitude here!
Sunday night Jill prepares Tabouli for 4
2 c bulgur
2 tsp salt
1 1/2 c boiling water
1/2 c olive oil
juice of 2 lemons
2 cloves garlic chopped fine
1 onion, diced
1 green pepper, diced
1 cucumber, diced
1 tomato, diced
1 Tbl finely chopped fresh peppermint or spearmint
1/2 c finely chopped fresh Italian parsley
1/2 tsp black pepper
In a large bowl mix bulgur with salt and boiling water. Cover for 20 minutes stirring occasionally. Add the oil and lemon juice and let sit for another 10 minutes. Toss in chopped vegetables, mint, parsley and pepper and refrigerate for several hours, stirring from time to time. Serve with pita, black olives and feta.
Along the Crafts Trail
Tues, May 20
A bright, sunshiny day, windy and no rain in the forecast. We head out early, north toward Birsay, watching our map which has all the studios and shops selling local crafts noted. Then we see a sign for the Barony Mill and we decide to check this out first.
It’s a lovely collection of farm buildings and the man who greets us is clearly happy to tell us all about grains and the milling process. We learn about the various grains in Orkney, especially the primitive form of barley called bere.. There are paper bags filled with barley, wheat, oats, bere and he asks us to identify each (we do fairly well) and then he takes us on a tour of the mill itself.
By the way the lower left bag contains the bere. Bere isn’t grown much now but had been the staple of Orcadian baked goods up through the 19th c. Jill buys a booklet of bere recipes and a bag of ground bere to bring back. The mill is about 150 years old–the building of it, especially the amount of wood which needed to be brought in, cost the family three generations to pay off–and is water powered. I get to open the sluice gate that starts the belts and then the various grindstones turning. Our guide explains the different gear ratios for each step of the process.
After we leave Barony Mill we head up to the village of Birsay, a rather rag-taggle place, wind-swept and very remote feeling. The ruins of Earl Robert’s mid 16th century palace (half-brother to Mary Queen of Scots and not a pleasant fellow) is here, much of it surrounded with scaffolding and some desultory reconstruction going on. His son Earl Patrick found the palace insufficient, abandoned it and built the more elaborate, more Renaissance palace in Kirkwall.
The kirk 
From there we drive out to the headland of Birsay and although we can look across to the Brough of Birsay on an island just a few hundred feet away, we can’t get there because the tide is high and the causeway is under water. We walk along the beach but it’s very windy so we sit in our Focus, eat our BLTs and Michael and I share an Orkney Dark Island beer. We will be back another day after we’ve checked the tide times.
At the Yellowbird Gallery, where following my own tenet that if you take up someone’s time in a shop you should then buy something, I acquire several cards, reproductions of larger prints. They (husband and wife) also make small ceramic “rocking robins”, lovely little birdlike forms that do indeed rock back and forth. Then we’re on to Fluke Jewellery (www.flukejewellery.com) where Jill buys a couple of silver charms for her granddaughter Fayley’s charm bracelet. Michael, who has previously found a tiny cowrie shell, learns from the artist that such shells are tokens of good luck. But what we are most interested in finding is The Woolshed where we meet Denise Dupres and where we know we will find yarns, roving and finished goods made from the North Ronaldsay seaweed-eating sheep.
The fleece is not particularly soft and there is a fair amount of kemp but nonetheless it makes very handsome sweaters. Jill buys a vest, Lynn and I each buy a sweater and a skein of rainbow-dyed yarn. (I know I’m going to need my sweater as the weather continues cool and windy even with all the layers I’ve brought with me.) Michael buys a kit with yarn and a pattern for a scarf and hat. We cut across the West Mainland and drive into Dounby where we find a cafe in the small local hotel and although we have had our BLTs , we stop in for a pick me upper.
Afternoon snack in Dounby where we find good coffee
The coffee is good and the teenage boy who serves us bobs a little curtsy as he sets down the cups. Then we go across the street to the Dounby Butcher where we buy lamb chops and pork sausages from the owner’s farm. The farm turns out to be one we saw when we were at Skara Brae and we learn from a passerby who happens in that the shop has just been named “Best in Scotland” …the owner proudly shows her plaque to prove it.
Nearby is the Harray Potter studio where we meet up with the potter himself, Andrew Appleby, and see a much greater range of his work. Among his several styles he has studied the neolithic art very closely and incorporates many of these motifs into his pots, mugs, buttons. (www.applepot.co.uk) We also admire his chickens…
Back in Kirkwall we park again near the main shopping street and spend a lot of time in the Sheila Fleet Gallery (Jill orders a ring) and other shops. And finally on a more practical level we shop at the Tesco supermarket, finding everything we will need for the coming week. As guardian of the kitty (we had each put in 200 pounds) I find that after this foray into Tesco we have about half our joint account left. I must mention that although all of us are certainly familiar with sheep and cows and by now have seen thousands of ewes with their babies and cows with their calves we continue to ooh and aah every time we see more (which is all the time!). They are dotted everywhere in the landscape, often grazing around abandoned farmsteads.
Back in Stromness Michael and I go to the library because there are signs saying “Free WiFi” and a “Open 2 to 7 PM” the window…but inexplicably it has closed early.
Barony Mill Supreme
4 fresh pork sausages, sliced and fried in the wok, then set aside
1 chopped onion
2 sliced parsnips
3 large cloves garlic….sauteed together
1/2 head of savoy cabbage
2 Bramley apples (Granny Smiths would do) sliced
Combine all with rosemary, salt and pepper and cook until the cabbage and apples are slightly carmelised.
Serve with mashed potatoes and healthy dollops of butter and yogurt.
We had a very nice Chilano tempranillo and, while playing our usual Spite & Malice, vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce (50:50 ratio of dark chocolate and yogurt).
Lynn continues to win. Then we knit….