September 2024

1st September – One of our neighbours, Charlie Groundwater, made this short video of Stromness harbour. Taken from the campsite, Well Park can be seen at the beginning. A blustery morning but the women were still out swimming.

https://www.facebook.com/100013338494285/videos/1426789311342968

4th September – A grey but mainly dry day, we went with Caroline, Lady Findhorn, to visit the the re-furbished Scapa Flow Museum at Lyness on Hoy. It was the first time we’d visited the new museum since it was opened by Sir Chris Hoy last April. A lovely trip rounded off with tea and cakes in the new cafe at the museum.

Here they are dwarfed by the stones dedicated to those that served on the Arctic convoys to Russia.

The return to Stromness was through a grey haar but it helped to highlight the Guiding Lights on Hellihole Road, lit up to give approaching vessels the line into the harbour.

7th September – As Stromness was fogbound today, I went to Kirkwall to see inside the power station there. In the event of a failure in the undersea cable from the mainland, Orkney has an emergency power generation capability. Built in the 1950s these generators are still maintained and tested but, thankfully, rarely used.

The oil storage facility on Flotta also has it’s own generator which can be linked in, if needed.

8th September – The fog cleared in time to spot these common dolphins passing Ness Point.

This is the WDC Big Watch Weekend and as most of our sites around northeast Scotland are fogbound, this was a good sighting.

27th September – Helen’s old friends, Elaine and Ian, from her days in Portland, Dorset, came to visit this week. We’d pencilled in all the usual things to see and do in Orkney.
They began with Maeshowe and the Ring of Brodgar on the Tuesday and that evening we dined at the Foveran.

After our meal we popped into Kirkwall to see the floodlit Cathedral, which looked great.

The following day, Wednesday, began with a trip to the shop at the Scapa distillery, Ian is a fan of this product and he managed to pick up a bottle of his favourite tipple.

We continued on and went to the Italian Chapel on Lambs Holm, something that they particularly wanted to see.

We continued southward to see the Churchill Barriers and South Ronaldsay. So far so good.

Returning to Kirkwall we visited St Magnus’ Cathedral, which they were suitably impressed by. Ian decided to get a photo from the street and headed out. Unfortunately, while the rest of us were inside, he tripped on the steps and had an awful fall on to the stone flags.
He landed on his face, broke some teeth and badly cut his arm and hand. We rushed him to A&E at the Balfour where he was patched up and a dentist looked at the teeth. It was arranged that he would return on the Thursday to the dental unit, where they removed the broken teeth and then back to A&E to have the dressings changed.

As you can imagine, all this put a dampener on their holiday but Ian put a brave face on things and that afternoon we just drove around the north of the island. They headed back to Scrabster on Friday morning, no doubt glad to see the back of Orkney!!

In spite of everything and some drizzly weather they managed a cheer wave on departure.