July 2021

1st July – H is on strong medication again and it’s affecting her sleep patterns. The down side is that she can be awake through the night, the upside is she sees the dawn at 04:30 and gets some great photos.

3rd July – My local Shorewatch co-ordinator, Emma, decided to hold a publicity session for Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC) at Ness Point. She put up the banners and had everything ready to let people have a go. She was there for two hours and, despite plenty of people out walking, no-one came over to see what was going on.

It’s really disappointing to see the lack of interest people have in their natural environment. They walk or jog past, eyes glued to phones, earplugs in, listening to music, or blogs, or learning Spanish*.

What they’re not listening to is the symphony of birdsong, waves lapping on the shore, singing seals, squeaking otters. They are missing the poetry of Orkney.

Rant over.

*Other languages are available.

6th July – After another unsuccessful Shorewatch vigil I returned home to be greeted by a beautiful double rainbow over Ness Point. It had been quite foggy earlier but cleared to give a lovely evening.

7th July – The coast is still shrouded in fog today and doesn’t look like lifting, so no Shorewatching today.

Decided to resort to the old favourite of puffin watching at Birsay. Always a good chance of finding one on the cliffs. This wee chap is taking a rest from fishing at sea.

14th July – A warm, sunny day, so we took a run over to Scapa Beach. It’s just outside Kirkwall and has a nice, long sandy shore, what might be called a “traditional” beach.

There are a number of houses overlooking the beach and one has this interesting horseshoe “tree”. It looks nice just now but the leaves make an awful mess in Autumn!

16th July – Popped over to Kirkwall this morning, H was having a CT scan at the Balfour. Appointment was at 10am and we were back in Stromness for 11am, so a fairly speedy process. This is the team with the high tech gadget.

H never has any problems about getting people to pose for her pics. Personally, I wouldn’t dream of asking.

Not sure when the results will be available but it was around ten days for the previous scan.

20th July – We’re well into July now and the plants in the garden are just beginning to perform. Everything had a late start this year, hopefully we’ll get an Indian Summer to give them a chance to strengthen before autumn sets in.

These are few things just coming into flower. The aconite came from dividing one in the garden and it’s done well. The pansies were grown from seed and really slow to develop but seem to be fine now. The pots have really thrived and will need dividing for next year.

24th July – Having visited Stromness, the sail training vessel, Pelican of London, departs through Hoy Sound.

An image of bygone times, it was built in 1946, in France and used as an Arctic trawler for twenty years. Retired from trawling in the 1960s, it spent many years as a coaster before being converted to a training ship in 1995.

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Due to Covid restrictions, we haven’t witnessed a “blackening” here for many months, but this bùrach on wheels passed by this afternoon.

Blackenings are wedding rituals in parts of Scotland and Ireland.  The bride or groom is surprise ‘captured’ by his or her friends some days prior to the wedding and thoroughly messed up with foodstuffs such as treacle, flour and instant coffee powder (tarred and feathered).  Then they are paraded around the streets in the back of a pick-up.  Drink is taken and a great deal of noise is made. The proceedings can also involve tying the victim to a post or tree in a public place (pilloried) and leaving them on their own for a while.
Apparently this has all evolved from a more subtle ritual of washing the bride or bridegroom’s feet before a wedding.  Over time that ritual started to include also blackening the feet before washing them.

It is hard to determine which of the boys here is the ‘victim’ because everyone seems to be in a mess.

30th July – After an eighteen month absence, Orkney has received it’s first cruise ship of the season today. The Anthem of the Seas is 350m long and can carry 5000 passengers and crew, although we’re told that, on this trip, it was at 25% capacity. Even so, with Covid still virulent, a lot of people are not happy to see these ships return.

As a guide to scale, the red and white boat in front is the Pentalina, which used to serve the St Margaret’s Hope to Gill’s Bay ferry route. It can carry 58 cars and 9 articulated lorries, so a reasonable size itself.

Go to August 2021