Sun, May 12th 2019
Jill is fighting a cold and sleeps in until 9 o’clock and we’re happy to just sit back and enjoy our coffee. By 10 though we’ve pulled ourselves together and we head off to Orphir, south of Stenness, on the road to Kirkwall. We visit again the Orkneyinga Saga Centre but skip the short film we had watched on our first trip, then walked to the Earl’s Bu, ruins of a Norse farmhouse and home to several of the earls who figure in the Orkneyinga Saga and finally to the Round Kirk of which only the apse remains.
https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/earls-bu-and-church-orphir/
We’re off then to Waulkmill Bay, this time properly shod in our new wellies. I’m sure that I saw a rock I’d seen two years before, coveted then but not taken because it was too big. Lynn and I aren’t quite as crazed by now but we all pick up a few to take back to the cottage. https://www.orkney.com/listings/waulkmill
A quick trip to Tesco to return some unneeded olive oil–there’s plenty on hand in our kitchen–and then we head home for lunch, our first BLTs.
We sit and knit for a bit but the weather is beautiful and here in Orkney, in May, one doesn’t waste warm, sunny, windless days so we head for the Ring of Brodgar. We can’t walk into the Ring! Victim of erosion damage, almost certainly caused by climate change, and perhaps too much tourism, the Ring is now cordoned off and we can only walk the exterior perimeter. We drive next to the Stones of Stenness and the neolithic Barnhouse village. https://www.orkneyjar.com/history/barnhouse
We’ve never gone to the Unstan burial cairn so that’s next on our agenda. The cairn is located in a privately owned farm and we meet the owner. We crawl in and see the five burial chambers. There is a swallow-like bird etched on the lintel of one chamber. https://www.orkneyjar.com/history/tombs/unstan/index.html
Back home we have a delicious chicken soup that has slow-cooked all day, watch a Tiny House episode (though Jill is completely engrossed in her BTS K-pop videos) and make plans for a trip to Rousay.