2nd July – I don’t know what has triggered this but our phormium has gone into overdrive this year. It normally produces four or five flower spikes, but this year it has sixteen!

I don’t know if a long winter followed by a warm spell has triggered this growth spurt. According to other gardeners across Orkney all the phormiums are doing the same. Some people have had no blooms for years and suddenly their plants are performing. It would be interesting to know if this is happening elsewhere.

7th June – Departing Stromness this morning is the 75ft former herring boat “Swan”. Launched in Lerwick in May 1900, this represented the pinnacle of sailing boat design in the herring industry. Its mastery of the seas was shortlived, however, as steam drifters were already taking over the fleet.
The boat has extended it’s life by entering the charter business, and is available for hire.

13th June – As today was a special day, we decided to not paint the garden fence and have a tea and cakes afternoon. We visited the “Polly Kettle” in Burray, which is owned by an Egyptian chap (English wife) and specialises in Middle Eastern cuisine.

As we had planned on just tea and cakes we weren’t too adventurous but we shall return and try a wider selection of their menu, both sweet and savoury.

17th June – A bit of entertainment for us this morning. Two boats were craned out of the boatyard and back into the sea.

Sunrise and Sealgair have been ashore for several months now, receiving some TLC. They are now back in their natural environment.

22nd June – Looking out at midnight last night the sky was still very light. This is what Orcadians call the Simmer Dim, where it never gets truly dark at night. Some folk find it difficult to sleep at this time of year.

23rd June – A warm, sunny day here, ideal for a run out to the South Isles. After stopping for lunch at Celina Rupp’s Cafe in Holm we drove down to St Margaret’s Hope. The local smiddy has been maintained as a museum and shows what a tough life a blacksmith had.
They have this nice example of a costume used in the annual Plooin’ Competition.

Unique to South Ronaldsay, the Plooin’ (ploughing) Competitions see children, usually from farming families, wearing ornate costumes and demonstrating their skills in ploughing straight lines on a sandy beach. A big day out in Orkney.

5th May – Stromness’ first cruise ship of the year has arrived. National Geographic Explorer is relatively small, only 148 passengers. It looks like a quiet season ahead with only eleven ships scheduled. Perhaps the current fuel crisis is limiting the numbers.

The weather is warming up now and the little pond has attracted a new resident, this frog has moved in and, I think, it has scoffed most of the tadpoles.

Interesting to think that it was perhaps a tadpole here a few years ago. Still, they’re always welcome in a garden to keep pests down.

7th May – A bright but breezy day saw us travel over to Deerness to have lunch with our pal Fran. We had booked a table at Sheila Fleet’s gallery, it can get really busy here.

Sheila Fleet is a noted Orkney jeweller and the main body of the church contains a gallery of her work. The bright and airy extension is a cafe area, with some lovely dishes.

8th May – Stromness harbour is, once again, playing host to the Dutch barquentine, Thalassa. This boat is regular visitor here and has featured in many previous posts. It looks a bit cramped on its berth.

10th May – A pair of Red Throated Divers glided past the window this morning. Very elegant birds, and usual to see them in the harbour.

18th May – A warm and sunny day at last. We had a walk through Happy Valley in Stenness and the bluebells are out in force.

24th May – This weekend is the busiest of the year in Stromness, It’s the Orkney Folk Festival. A wide array of performers from around the world brings large numbers of spectators. Most book conventional accomodation in B&Bs, hotels, etc. Some come with motorhomes and some with just tents. But some arrive in style, such as those on the “Lady of Avenel”, seen here, gliding gracefully into Stromness harbour.

Many of the acts are students on limited budgets and have to risk the capricious Orkney weather sleeping in small tents along the shore.

All the venues are reporting sell-out shows, and the music spills out onto the streets. The cruise ship passengers probably assume this has been put on for them!

It’s great to see the numbers of young people involved in the traditional music scene in Scotland and Orkney plays a big part in that. Kirkwall Grammar School has been running a folk orchestra for thirty years now, called Hadhirgaan (meaning “keep it going”). many of it’s members have gone on to full time careers in traditional music.

2nd April – They’re back. It’s tourist time again. The campsite has opened and has a few motorhomes already. The guided tours of Stromness have started and groups are walking by the house. At least it’s a decent day for them all.

Hopefully they will get their sightseeing done before Storm Dave arrives over the coming weekend.

4th April – The precursor to the arrival of Dave, a flurry of snow on Hoy. The temperature has dropped and there is a chance that tomorrows storm will bring more.

12th April – The storm passed over without incident and the weather is gradually warming. We are able to take more walks around the shore and passed the boatyard, where this vessel is being prepared to go back in the water.

14th April – As it was a decent day, we went over to Happy Valley in Stenness to see if the bluebells were out. But, as you can see, they are a long way off.

Only bluebell leaves visible at the moment and the trees are still bare with little sign of leaf buds. We are a long way behind the gardens further south.

This little plot is looking bare, caught between the snowdrops and daffodils, and the tulips and bluebells. We will come back in a couple of weeks and hopefully it will be more colourful.

15th April – Whack-a-mole, Stromness style! Or it might be three men replacing the skylights.

16th April – Another walrus has appeared in Orkney, this time in Stronsay. This is becoming a more common occurrence, the last visit was in March 2018. No-one seems to know why they are venturing this far south.

19th April – The Pier Art Gallery has been hosting an exhibition of artwork by Orkney’s senior school pupils. There’s a lot of talent about.

3rd March – Moonrise over Stenness. Not a great photo as it was taken hurriedly with my phone.

6th March – Took delivery of our new car this morning. It’s an electric Ford Explorer, it’s a similar size to the Kia eNiro, so not too many differences.

It took about two hours to work out what the buttons do and then H and I went for an inaugural spin out to Evie. A lovely day for it, not a cloud in the sky.

10th March – We have some frog spawn in our little pond now. Fingers crossed that it survives long enough to produce taddies.

18th March – We’ve just finished putting together our little Lidl coldframe. Quite a fiddly job as all these cheap, self-assembly things are. Weighing in at a sturdy 27 grams, we are taking bets as to whether it will make it to Easter.

Before you ask, the plants in it are Catananche seedlings, grown indoors over the winter from seeds collected in the garden.

10th February – The driverless car trial was carried out yesterday and the BBC were there to record the event. We were surprised to see our friends, Terry and Judith featured in the article.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cedz09gxjy8o

I don’t think they were too impressed, Judith described it as being “as aerodynamic as a breezeblock”.

15th February – A brief spell of sunshine has tempted this Peacock butterfly out of hibernation. I don’t think it’ll survive for long, it’s still cold and there are few flowers to feed on. Pity.

22nd February – Promising signs that the weather is warming up, a nice sunny day in Stromness. H and I managed a walk down through the campsite. With it being the weekend, quite a few swimmers were out – brrrr.

26th February – Another long day for H in the Balfour as she underwent her final, for the foreseeable future, session of intravenous chemotherapy. It all went well and the nursing staff are very pleased with her progress. Going forward the treatment will be taken orally. She has a phone appointment with the consultant in Aberdeen in early March to monitor her progress, so hopefully he will give her a “thumbs up”.

2nd January – Happy New Year everybody.

We had a quiet Hogmanay in Stromness. New Year’s Eve was blessed with gales and heavy rain. Few revellers ventured out and the midnight fireworks didn’t happen. Instead there was a midnight chorus of ship’s horns in the harbour.

We woke, this morning, to our first proper snowfall. The roads are quite tricky, so we probably won’t venture too far today. Graham Place was looking very festive, with few people about the snow is still fairly untouched.

When it snows what else can you do but go sledging. Apparently Stromness Golf Course does have a use after all!

3rd January – The cold spell seems to be with us for another few days now, roads are closed, buses and ferries cancelled. We’ll just have to wrap up and turn the heating on.

Let’s hope that the Tesco delivery drivers are made of stronger stuff than the bus drivers!

5th January – More snow! Looks pretty but it keeps us restricted to home. Shops are empty and deliveries are struggling to get here.

The solar panels are struggling to produce with a blanket of snow, which is a shame as it’s a bright sunny day. Hopefully the sun will warm them enough to let the snow slide off.

5th January – The cold weather has produced some interesting phenomena. The Orcadian posted this item on “snow rollers” on the farms in Sandwick.

Something strange has been going on in Sandwick… We’ve been inundated with photos of these “snow bales” which have appeared on the hills there this afternoon.

Also known as “snow rollers” or “snow doughnuts” these unusual swirls are a fairly rare phenomenon.

According to the Royal Meteorological Society, snow rollers are snow balls formed naturally by strong winds blowing across a flat, snow-covered field or hillside.

Three conditions need to occur for snow rollers to form:

The ground must be icy or covered with a snow crust.

Winds must be strong and gusty.

Snowfall must be wet and at least a couple of inches deep.

Once a snow roller is formed the wind gets it to roll, collecting snow as it moves, in some cases even creating tracks of bare ground. They can vary in size and can get as large as 1.5m in length.

10th January – Stromness is now, thankfully, free of snow, heavy rain mid-week has cleared most of the town, the hills on Hoy clinging on to the last of it.

This photo is Saturday, 2:30pm. if Stromnessians are mobbing the January sales, they must be in Inverness, the town is deserted.

20th January – With yet more gales forecast for the next three days, we have made sure that the larder is fully stocked and dusted off some boardgames to stop us getting bored. (geddit?)

30th January – Kirkwall is abuzz just now with the arrival of driverless vehicles for a trial period. The immediate plan is to use them to run between the airport, Kirkwall and the cruise ship terminal. The automonous vehicles arrive next month for testing over short distances at Hatston.

Of course, it’s been done before in the 19th century, and they were easier to fix then, if it broke down, they simply changed the horse.

January 2026

February 2026

March 2026

April 2026

May 2026

June 2026

July 2026

2nd December – Passing through the pierhead this afternoon and noticed that this year’s Christmas tree is made up of crab creels. A lot of work has gone into this , top marks to all involved.

And after dark…

Even the RNLI have spruced up their offices, everyone is making a lot of effort this year.

6th December – A stormy night with strong easterly winds. With the rain driving on to the windows, it should save washing them for a while. It does, however, make the pavement tricky for pedestrians!

7th December – I don’t know if there is a connection between yesterday’s storm and the arrival of this seal pup in front of Well Park. It looks well fed and healthy but there is no sign of the mother.

It’s lying very close to the road and won’t get any peace and quiet here. I called the BDMLR people to see if they wanted to move it.

Within the hour they had sent a marine mammal medic out to assess the situation.

10th December – We are in the middle of Storm Bram today, severe gales have spread across the country. Last night, our little weather station recorded it’s highest wind speed since we installed it, the display showing 52.1 mph. Thankfully we didn’t have any damage.

12th December – Curious signage in the main street today, as the road isn’t wide enough along it’s length for two lanes of traffic, it seems to be stating the obvious.

15th December – A local choir has been entertaining patients and visitors in the main atrium at the Balfour today. Only a matter of time before one of these peedie vocalists appears on The Voice!

21st December – We’ve had this Codiaeum Petra for over four years, this is the first time it has flowered. Perhaps a good omen for 2026?

25th December – Flying the flag for Christmas in Stromness. Happy Christmas everyone.

27th December – A beautiful day today, so we went for a walk around the top end of the harbour. The low sun was very bright on the water but it highlighted this Dementor, doubtless looking for the Harray Potter.

As darkness fell, the local kayakers decorated their craft and went for a festive cruise around the bay.

29th December – Whilst out for our daily constitutional around the shore, we bumped into Davy Prentice (in orange) and his family exercising their horses. Davy has done all the plumbing work for us at Well Park.

It’s worth following them around, as the the roses can benefit greatly!

30th December – There are lots of events at this time of year, one of the more spectacular is the Annual Tractor Run. Farmers from across Orkney decorate their vehicles and visit all the townships over the days between Christmas and Hogmanay. Almost a hundred tractors take part so it’s quite a spectacle (and noisy too!) Here are just a few…

8th November – Orkney is very quiet now, the last of the tourists have long since departed. It’s nice to be able to get around without buses and motorhomes blocking the roads. The downside is that it is a lean time for local businesses. They now must turn their attention to the Christmas market.

Here they have created a short video with some of the producers promoting their wares.

11th November – At last, promise of a nice day. A colourful sunrise catches early morning swimmers emerging from a chilly sea,

18th November – This isn’t a great photo, definitely not calendar worthy, but I’m posting it as a record of our first snow this winter. The hills of Hoy are just visible above the golf course but the grey day makes for a dull pic.

20th November – It looks like the Orcadian cartoonist has been up at Ness Point. This is the location that we carried out our Shorewatches – with similar results!

24th November – The team in the Macmillan unit have started preparing for Christmas. A simply decorated tree gives some cheer in a stark corridor.

26th November – Another boring sunrise photo, it really was blazing this morning. But, as is often the case with red skies in the morning the weather quickly deteriorated.