Heading North

[Matt2matt2002]

Heading North but first it's South for the ferry.
Under 2 hours, door to ship.
Then 7 hours afloat to......
Update to follow.

Best

Matt

[in4]

Fantastic ride ahead 🤞 Matt

[John Saxby]

Good on ya, mate!  Look forward to photos and stories.

Cheers,  John

[PH]

Have a good one Matt, look forward to the report and photos, hope the wind isn't too bad! 

[Andre Jute]

Have a good one Matt, look forward to the report and photos, hope the wind isn't too bad! 

Plus one!

[Matt2matt2002]

The ferry from Aberdeen took me to Kirkwall on Orkney.
The 6 hour crossing passed quickly, the only minus is that disembarkation is at 11pm
The hostel was a short ride and I was in bed by midnight.

Today's ride was north to visit Broch of Gurness.
Around 500 BC Iron Age inhabitants of Orkney began to build strong circular houses as the main dwellings for their farms. Some formed the centres of small agricultural villages. The Broch of Gurness is one such building, constructed between 500 and 200BC and abandoned some time after 100AD.

Good signage made the visit enjoyable but hard to imagine the lives lead by the folks who built the place.

Good roads, a few showers and mixed winds coupled with interesting scenery finished off a circular route back to base.

Tomorrow I'll head South to pick up a few geocaches and visit some stunning coastal scenery.

Best from the North.

Matt

[j-ms]

I suggest you try and get to Scara Brae and the Ring of Brodgar while on the Orkneys.

[Matt2matt2002]

Second day on Orkney.
Headed west across the rolling hills through green and fertile farms with plenty of sheep and cows.
Further North on Shetlander there are fewer pastures and much more peat areas.
They say an Orchadian is a farmer with a boat and a Shetlander is a sailor with a croft.
The soil here looks so rich. Formed 380 million years ago from sandstone.

Scapa Flow had a small exhibition describing the sinking of the Royal Oak. Sunk in October 1949 with the loss of 835 lives. Such a tragedy.

On a clifftop walk I was stopped by a chap who admired my Rohloff. His tandem trip had been cut short when his hanger didn't shear off and ruined his back wheel and frame. I didn't get more details but he had heard of Thorn and planned a new tandem asap.
More observations: roads are good, drivers courteous, rain comes in short showers, never lasting long, economy appears thriving, lambing season was last month, Orchadian accent is soft and rolling, rather like their roads.

Stromness is a beautiful small town. I think I prefer it to Kirkwall. A main Street running parallel to the harbour road. Lots of independent shops and litter free roads

Called in to see the Neolithic standing stones at Stenness. At 5,000 years old they've seen a few changes in this world. Not all good ones.

A heavy shower caught me out on the way back, but a handy bus shelter for half an hour solved that problem.

Tomorrow heading south to the Italian chapel built in 1943 by prisoners who were constructing the Churchill barriers.

Fingers crossed for dry weather

Matt

[ourclarioncall]

Been years since I was over to Orkney to see my auntie Sheila. Think she stays in Burray

I met a guy from Shetland recently(total stranger )  who was down in Aberdeenshire working. He had just bought a nice road bike off my cousins friend. What are the chances . Love the accent, makes me want to go visit again

[Matt2matt2002]

Rod, I'll be down in Burray on Wednesday if you'd like me to say hi? 😃

[Matt2matt2002]

Penultimate day here on Orkney and a very strange experience.
No rain AND sun.

Headed south after viewing the Kirkwall cathedral.
A couple of cruise ships had docked so the place was teaming with tourists

I left them behind as i headed south on smooth tarmac passing the airport before arriving at Mullhead. I took a circular walk around the cliff tops taking in the stunning scenery and ticking off three geocaches I had missed on a previous visit.

Just 40 miles today. Previous day's have been 55+.
This is a no rush tour. Enjoying chatting to folks I pass as I walked around the cliff tops.

My usual greeting is "Fine day" And the usual reply is similar. Today I was caught off guard when a chap replied, "What's that?". He grinned when he saw my confused face. I guess there aren't too many fine days here, given the amount of rain I've experienced.

The other notable exchange was in a small shop where I had stopped for an ice-cream.
I asked the lady assistant if she had lived here all of her life.
She said, "Not yet". But with a smile . Good sense of humour here.

Tomorrow it's another trip south to the famous Italian chapel and the Churchill barriers.

Best  Matt

[Andre Jute]

Dramatic photos, Matt.

[Matt2matt2002]

Thanks Andre. To be honest it's the kind of place where it's hard to take a bad picture.

Last day on Orkney so headed south to visit the Italian chapel. Built during the second world war by Italian prisoners who were working on the Churchill barriers. Incredible decoration inside. It looks like plaster but it's all painted.

Further on I looked back at Scapa Flow and reflected on the terrible lost of life when the Royal Oak was sunk by a German U-boat.

Further south to St. Margaret's Hope and Hoxa Head where I bagged a geocashe and viewed the ruined WW11 gun emplacements.

The sun was out all day so my shorts had an airing.

Coffee stop at Tankerness then back to the hostel for a shower before catching ferry home at 2300.

Would it come again?
This is my second visit this year and a third is planned.

Cycling here: you'll probably get all kinds of weather but the showers never lasted for long
Wind will probably be noticeable.

Thanks for reading.

Always ready to answer any questions for further information if you're considering coming here.

Stay safe folks

Matt

[PH]

Excellent report and photos Matt.
Brings back memories of my trip, the constant wind kept the mileage down, but as you show you don't have to go far to find something to see or do off the bike.

[John Saxby]

Splendid clifftop flars-and-sea, Matt!  And some good humour and history too.  Fine tour, and the rain makes it, uh, authentic.

My "experience" with the Orkneys is very distant and umpteenth-hand: I once worked with a Welsh guy, a climbing buddy of Joe Brown, he of the 1st ascent of the Old Man of Hoy.  I understood the weight of that when I saw the photo.

Secondly, early on in Farley Mowat's book, The Farfarers, there's a riff on the Orkney connection to Canada (long before John Rae and the many factors & clerks of the Hudson's Bay Company).  Mowat is gazing at Orkney fishing boats dragged ashore and flipped upside down for the winter.  Then, he has an "a-ha" moment:  the pointed oval outline of the boats' gunwales matched the outline of rock formations he'd seen along the Labrador coast, but couldn't explain.  That's a key moment in his story-and-speculation about the first Europeans to reach North America. (He makes a good case that it wasn't the Vikings.)

Cheers,  John