[Photos] UK 26 - The Ferry to Orkney

I have never been on a car ferry before, and Glen and I were both pretty nervous (I think it's one thing to do it with your own car, and quite another to do it with a hire car). Tbh, boarding was super easy on the ship Hamnavoe which was a very nice ship, and honestly the whole process was extremely smooth and easy from start to finish.

Because I get pretty bad motion sickness, I ended up staying on the outer deck once we took off and hadn't really dressed for this. (I was warmly dressed, but that wasn't really enough to deal with the Firth between Orkney and Scotland, and my hands went numb as I took photos). Even so, it was worth it. The trip is fairly short (only about 45 minutes from Thurso to Stromness), we had a mild swell on the way there (and even milder on the way back) and it was relatively quiet on the ship as we were travelling in on Easter Sunday.

Orkney was honestly like something out of a Studio Ghibli movie, and I've never had that experience before. I'm sure I will attempt to explain some of it in the next few posts and I'm sure I'll fail to convey it, but anyway, here is the trip in.



This mild fallstreak hole phenomenon appearing in the altocumulus made me extremely happy.



( I think I'm in love with the sea )

[Photos] UK 27 - The Standing Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar

One of the novelties of the Orkney Mainland for us was how close everything was if you were driving. The Standing Stones of Stenness were a 15 minute drive from where we were staying, and the Ring of Brodgar another 15 minutes from that, and then Skara Brae another 20 or so minutes on. (If that). And all of it connected, so you can do it all at once (which we did).

I was low on energy, so I took my time at all of the places. We didn't start that early and I honestly expected things to be pretty busy as it was the Easter long weekend. But conversely, Stenness was empty of all people except for one Canadian photographer who was on a giant retirement journey and taking a timelapse of the Stones (we snuck in between his shots to get our photos and then chatted to him for a while). There was no one at the Ring of Brodgar, though there were some cars in the parking lot.

And while Skara Brae had people, I got to do a very slow, leisurely circuit around the site completely on my own, bar the guy who was there to provide information and protect the site. I ended up talking to him for a while too.

The day was bright, blue, and filled with nesting seabirds, and curlews doing courting flights. There were rabbits in the fields, though I admit I can't see them and not think of them as feral, even when they very much aren't. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to look at a rabbit and think 'you belong in the ecosystem' thanks to Australian feral incursion.


The Ring of Brodgar, a Neolithic henge erected around 2,500 BC.



( Sacred sites under the cut. )

[Photos] UK 28 - Skara Brae

I'll be frank, Glen cares a lot more about these kinds of places than I do. Glen sort of loves built history, and I love natural history, and we make that work. Skara Brae I objectively recognise as being very significant, but at the end of the day, I was more happy to have gone there for the sake of going there, than out of any sense of feeling or connection to the place itself. I felt far more for even the ocean beyond Skara Brae (which you will see towards the end of my photos).

I'm sure I was influenced in part by fatigue. Being exhausted and sore, and not realising that Skara Brae was such a walk from the heritage centre, as soon as I realised how far away it was I already had a sinking feeling. I just took it very slowly. Not for the first time, I was confronted with my own actual ability vs. how I imagine myself in my mind. But taking it slow was actually the right thing to do, and I'm glad I did it. And we were blessed with incredible weather.

Also the whole place stunk of manure and sheep shit, you can't really escape the fact that there is farming literally everywhere around you, and in view of the site itself. Tbh, I kind of loved that.


Skara Brae, a Neolithic UNESCO site that is older than the Stonehenge and Great Pyramids.



( More beneath the cut. )