3rd April – We are enjoying an extended spell of glorious weather. Today we popped up to Happy Valley. Spring is later here than further sooth but it is on the way. The daffodils here are still dominant but the bluebells are starting to show, we’re looking forward to a great display in a week or so.
8th April – Perfect day for spotting fins but unfortunately nothing but these two kayakers braving the tidal current.
9th April – We seem to being getting more and more exotic avian visitors. These two cranes have been resident in Twatt for around a week now. Photo by Aiden Semmens, Stromness poet and writer.
18th April – We had the unusual sight of a pod of orca in the harbour this morning. They very rarely enter Hamnavoe as there is a lot of ship traffic and no food. So this was a rare occurrence.
29th April – It’s been a lovely month, plenty of sunny days, but we don’t seem to have taken many photos. I still do Shorewatches most days and found this chap at the site this afternoon. He ought to get a phone with a camera, so much easier.
2nd March – Another cold and very windy day, but Sunday is a training day for the lifeboat and they go out regardless.
Stromness Lifeboat
This is the local boat returning to it’s berth and, hopefully, a good and hot lunch for the crew.
6th March – We went along to the Pier Arts Centre to see an exhibition of work by Scottish artist Bet Low.
We were very impressed with her artwork and there were over one hundred pieces on display. Although based in Glasgow, Low spent a lot of time in the Highlands and Islands gaining inspiration. Here are a few examples of her work at different periods in her career.
Apologies for the appalling photography. Taken with my phone and skewed to try and avoid reflections.
The gallery was also showing an exhibition of works from the Orkney primary schools. The standard of work was breathtaking for the ages of the young artists. Here are two that we admired.
These wintry landscapes were created by pupils at Hope Primary. Top drawing P7 (11 yrs), lower drawing P5 (9 yrs).
This incredible flamingo was created by a 9 year old pupil at St Andrews Primary in Kirkwall.
14th March – An atmospheric night sky with the moon popping in and out of the whispy clouds.
15th March – We’ve had a spell of beautiful sunny weather and the inhabitants of the pond are making the most of it.
20th March – The sunny spell is continuing, so we had a run up to Birsay. Not too many tourists about yet so it’s nice and quiet. The waves are always impressive here.
29th March – We were hoping for a glimpse of the partial eclipse this morning but the cloud cover was too heavy, actually raining. However, my friend, Terry, in Dounby managed this hazy shot with his phone before the clouds closed in. Rather looks like a rendering in pastel.
5th February – A nice spell of bright weather, the sunlight picks up the power of the waves coming in to Hoy Sound.
8th February – Another decent day, so H and I went for a “magical mystery tour” over to West Mainland. Everywhere is very quiet just now without the tourists and more relaxing for everyone, including these seals.
This group are in the harbour at St Mary’s, we don’t have any in Stromness now, this must be a quieter harbour.
Passing through St Mary’s is Barrier No.1, built over eighty years ago, it has lasted well and survived all the storms.
13th February – The spell of quiet, mild weather continues. No wind today and a very calm sea, enough to tempt the kayakers out.
14th February – How we captured images before smart phones. An artist does a great job keeping his work on the bench in a stiff, and chilly, breeze.
16th February – The Northern Lighthouse Board vessel, Pharos, is currently at anchor in Cairston Roads, just outside Stromness. We had always assumed that they just maintained Scottish lighthouses and bouys but we recently watched a documentary on their work and they also cover the navigation lights around the Isle of Man.
17th February – After an unproductive couple of watches at lunchtime, I received a tip-off that there were two humpback whales in the vicinity. Just managed to catch them as they passed through the Sound heading west.
22nd February – We were promised to receive, on loan, Ralph Robinson’s sculpture “Small boat in Peril on the Sea” and it has duly arrived. It’s a very poignant piece representing the tragedy of people fleeing war, famine, persecution around the world.
This is an extract of an interview made last year with Ralph, in which he gives a brief description of the work.
The full interview, made by Martin Laird, can be viewed here in the posting for July 2024.
1st January – A cold and chilly start to the year, but at least we’ve no snow as had been forecast. Even the wind has died down. Managed to get a couple of early Shorewatches in, there was nothing to report except the Stromness lifeboat going out on a call. Not a great time of year to be in difficulties at sea!
2nd January – Local chap, Graham Campbell, was on duty at Kirkwall harbour last night. He wasn’t complaining doing a New Year’s Day shift when he could see this from the office window.
I did go out for a look myself but it was cloudy over Stromness unfortunately.
9th January – Amid some wintry flurries we did manage to spot a small group of Orca pass by Stromness. The usual culprit gets too close in his boat.
12th January – The Stromness lifeboat has training sessions on Thursdays and Sundays, today they were practising rescuing someone from the water.
I hope this is a dummy or it might be classed as bullying in the workplace!
The lifeboat returned briefly to harbour after this but went immediately back out on a genuine call.
15th January – An old, derelict dive boat, Sharon Rose, finally gave up the ghost and sank in Stromness harbour. It received a rather undignified removal as it was broken up in situ and, piece by piece, dumped in a skip.
A boom was placed around the site to prevent debris and oil escaping but there didn’t seem to be too much of either.
16th January – The dawn exploded across the sky this morning with a spectacular display just before the sun came up.
3rd December – A eventful afternoon. Set off to do a Shorewatch but was flagged down by a woman to say there was a seal pup on the shore, and it looked poorly. My initial reaction is to leave well alone. But as I came closer it looked in poor condition.
I phoned BDMLR* and their chap arrived within 20 minutes. He confirmed it was weak and arranged for a vet in Kirkwall to receive it. So between us we got it into a large crate and lifted it off the shore. Hopefully the vet can revive it sufficiently to be transported to the Shetland seal sanctuary, where hopefully it can recover and eventually be released.
*British Divers Marine Life Rescue
4th December – An update from BDMLR on the seal pup:
“The little lady in the photos below was looking very sorry for herself on the shingle beach alongside the popular dog walk. After an on the beach assessment by medics it was discovered that she was very underweight and was covered in lots of small wounds some of which were showing sign of significant infection. The decision was made to uplift her and take her to Flett & Carmichael Vets where she underwent another assessment as well as had her wounds cleaned and antibiotics given to help her fight her infections. She is now tucked up in our seal unit for ongoing treatment before heading off to continue her rehab journey. As ever thank you to those who reported her as well as the medics and vet team that have looked after her.“
5th December – More news from BDMLR. The grey seal pup, now named Stevie, is doing really well and enjoying plenty of fish. She will soon be able to join the other rescuees at the Hillswick Sanctuary in Shetland.
8th December – WDC co-ordinator for the Northern Isles, Emma Steel, is taking up a new job as the Senior Science Officer with the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, based on Mull. She set up Shorewatch in the Northern Isles four years ago and has recruited dozens of volunteers in that time. She organised a mulled wine and mince pie get together this afternoon for her Ness Point recruits and we were blessed with decent weather for it.
Emma Steel, third from left.
Emma will be missed and we all wish her good fortune for her new adventure.
11th November – A sad message from Hillswick about Stevie the seal pup:
“It has really been a heartbreaking day here at Hillswick Wildlife Sanctuary. Last weekend we noticed that both our remaining two underweight seal pups from Orkney were showing signs of a similar problem as Sandy who passed away last week. We immediately started them on an intensive course of antibiotics and fluids following advice from our local vets, treating them every three hours. We were confident that both Frankie and Stevie were recovering well throughout this week. They had more energy and all the other signs indicated that they were improving. So it was a devastating shock to walk into the seal unit at 6am this morning to find that they had both passed away. We are determined to find out what the cause of death for all three Orkney pups is, so we have already taken them for a post mortem and hopefully will have some results fairly soon. May they both rest in peace xxx“
It’ll be interesting to hear if the post mortem shows any unusual causes in the deaths of the three Orkney seals.
12th December – One of the many problems facing the local fishermen is the loss of creels in rough seas. This is a local crab fisherman collecting one of his creels at Ness Point. At £100 each they need to be recovered.
19th December – MV Hamnavoe departing Scrabster for Stromness. Rather them than me!
20th December – We are bracing ourselves for some wild winds tomorrow. Gusting up to nearly 87 mph, these are perhaps the strongest winds we’ve seen in Stromness since moving here.
A lot of Norwegian children will be getting Orcadian trampolines for Christmas!
24th December – We visited our friends Terry and Judith today. They certainly put a lot of work into their Christmas decorations.
27th December – Santa brought a weather station so that Well Park can record the gales that whistle through here.
Hopefully it will be sturdy enough to withstand the winter storms.
30th December – We have snow forecast for this coming week and the first has arrived on Hoy last night. The straight line effect clearly showing the altitude at which the temperature allows the snow to settle.
31st December 2024 – Hogmanay sees the annual log pull in Stromness. A team of Northenders vie with the muscle of the Soothenders to drag a piece of tree through the town.
This year the junior event was won by the Northenders but Soothend took the senior event. So honours shared this year.
1st November – With the storm clouds passing, the evening light on Hoy can be truly magical.
We’ve had some strong winds lately, and a lot of rain but the forecast is reasonable for the next week, so might be able to get some Shorewatches done. Having just passed 2000, I’m keen to keep the momentum going.
13th November – H and I took a stroll along to Stromness Museum this afternoon. It was good to see the old team working away, preparing the winter exhibition on the theme of seaweed. There have been a lot of changes since my time there and the place looks good.
Amongst the new artefacts on show are these Malagan funerary carvings from Papua New Guinea. They were presented to Kirkwall Museum in 1928 by John Muir, a merchant seaman from North Ronaldsay.
Some things never change though, and poor old John Rae is still paddling across an Arctic river using a tin plate.
14th November – A large fire lit up Stromness harbour this evening. A shed adjacent to the Pole Star pier was engulfed in flames and the fire was so intense that nearby windows were blown out.
Some residents were evacuated and other homes were advised to keep their windows closed. This incident is almost next door to Gray’s Noust, so that would have been a worrying time for us.
18th November – First flurry of snow this season, it’s cold but still sunny enough to charge the car.
19th November – This excellent painting hangs in Stromness Library. Stromness Books and Prints is the tiny bookshop in Stromness that was run for many years by Tam McPhail, more in the way of philanthropy rather than a profit making exercise.
The Bookseller of Stromness by Calum Morrison
The following is from the Library description. “The Bookseller of Stromness combines a portrait of Tam McPhail, of Stromness Books and Prints, with a surrealistic tapestry of literary achievements. Orkney has a thriving literary and cultural life, which stems from the creativity of local authors.
Many of the books whose covers are shown are instantly recognisable as being written by Orcadians, about Orkney or have some other Orkney connection.
It is a painting about connections, and in a small community such as Stromness, connections are the lifeblood of the town, giving a sense of belonging and weaving people and place together.
The painting was purchased for Stromness with aid from The Art Fund and the National Fund for Acquisitions.”
3rd October – One of those days when the sun is just at the right angle to catch the lamp on the lighthouse, making it appear lit.
18th October – We visited the Ship of Fools gallery in Kirkwall today, they were hosting an exhibition entitled “Lost at Sea”. Featuring dozens of excellent model ships, clever lighting and backdrop videos it highlighted the perils of life at sea.
It was great to catch up with Ralph Robinson as well, he had an exhibit named “Harlequinade”, highlighting the ongoing plight of refugees.
22nd October – Not much happening during stormy October. I thought I’d dig out this archive photo of engineers trialling designs for the new bridge from Stromness to Graemsay.
25th October – The winds have died down and Hoy Sound was like a millpond this morning.
I was able to do some watching and was rewarded by this little group of common dolphins. They’ve been in the area for at least a week but I’ve not been able to catch up with them, until today.
26th October – In what is probably a breach of copyright, Stromness is taking a leaf out of Lerwick’s book and is staging it’s own Viking fire festival.
A Jarl squad has been brought from Shetland and casual participants can purchase a flaming torch for £10 (proceeds to charity). Setting off from the Ferry Inn, they progress through the town to the south end, where a Viking ship is duly incinerated in the customary fashion.
H went down as they passed Well Park and took this short clip of the spectacle, led by the Stromness Pipe Band. To be honest, Vikings don’t seem as scary as they used to be!
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.
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.
2nd August – In 2020 Orkney Islands Council went shopping in Norway and purchased Nordic Sea as a replacement passenger ferry for the Westray/Papay route.
Nordic Sea
It was quickly realised that it was not suitable for the intended route and was effectively put into mothballs. This summer it was dusted down and put on to provide a service from Stromness to Lyness on Hoy and to the oil terminal on Flotta.
As it was a nice morning I went with our Dounby friends, Terry and Judith, on the run down to Lyness. As an indicator of the route’s popularity, there were eight passengers outbound and just the three of us inbound.
People can be extremely silly when they have the boat to themselves. We were hoping to see some fins but no luck. We did, however, see a Golden Eagle over Hoy.
Here I take the opportunity to explain quantum string theory to Terry (who’s from Macclesfield!).
7th August – Last year I built a small pond, using a pre-formed plastic liner. Put some pond plants in and left it to overwinter. Despite an icy covering it came through and seems to have settled in nicely.
I gauge its success by the number of residents it now has. As Kevin Costner said “build it and they will come”.
We now have a thriving population of froglets and tadpoles in various stages of development. The cold start to year has meant that they are later than usual, I just hope they can grow enough to survive an Orkney winter.
14th August – During a break in the recent stormy weather we took a trip to the Ness of Brodgar. This week marks the end of the archaeological works on the site for the foreseeable future, this weekend the gates will be locked and the excavations covered over for the last time.
The work here has been the biggest archaeology project in Orkney for years and has been running since 2003. This final week is drawing large crowds, here a large group are being shown the works in progress.
The site looks like a quarry in this photo but other views reveal the intricate masonry that was laid down some 5000 years ago.
Of course, we couldn’t visit the Ness of Brodgar without bumping into Jeanne Rose, here she is in her element, painting the structures as they are uncovered.
An interesting supplementary to the Neolithic story arose this week with the revelation that one of the large stones at Stonehenge came from north of Scotland and not Wales, as previously thought.
Subsequent to this story, scientists have confirmed that the Altar Stone is not from Orkney.
22nd August – It’s that time of year when there is a “super” moon. It looks great if there’s a clear sky. It does bring tides that are higher than usual and flood warnings were issued, thankfully unnecessarily in Stromness.
24th August – The frogs in the little pond continue to grow and are becoming more adventurous. They will soon be up and away, hopefully keeping garden pests under control.
27th August – A blast from the past. This handsome three masted barquentine has been visiting Stromness. Thalassa is a Dutch training ship and often visits Orkney, it’s a good looking vessel, it’s a shame they don’t set sail until they’re out into open water.
Thalassa
31st August – The sun rose over Stromness at 06:35 this morning, the forecast is for a lovely day. Unfortunately, as tomorrow is September, these days are becoming shorter and fewer.
The day fulfilled its early promise and gave us a beautiful sunny afternoon. We were invited to tea and cakes in Terry and Judith’s garden in Dounby.
The couple either side of yours truly are Marilyn and Kevin Bell, from Stenness. They are fellow Shorewatchers and cover the Tuesday and Thursday shifts.
Scapa Views 