Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

A little bit more shopping in Kirkwall was the order of the day today. I took the children and attempted, impeded by impatient diminutives, to shop for CDs, whilst Sarah browsed blissfully further down the street.

One thing that strikes you about Orkney or, perhaps, all of the Scottish islands, is that shops have greatly diversified. I don’t mean amongst themselves, but within themselves: the range of goods offered by a single shop is incredible. Perhaps this is because the number of shops in a village or small town is limited, but people’s needs are more or less the same, no matter where they live. Conversely, the shops have probably needed to branch out in order to survive.

In Stromness, we saw a pet-shop cum Internet café. Is there another, anywhere in the world? Where else can you check your e-mail and buy dog food at the same time?

In Kirkwall, there’s a shop that sells mostly hand-crafted jewellery, but has a sign in the window that proclaims bait worms available inside and has a couple of angling reels in the window. Where else can you buy a silver necklace and a bag of worms?

We drove down to St. Margaret’s Hope today, on the island of South Ronaldsay. The island is connected to Mainland by a causeway. On either side of the causeway, the rusting hulls of grounded vessels can be seen; quite an atmospheric sight.

St. Margaret’s Hope is a pretty little village and an ideal stop-off for lunch. We sat next to two old ladies and chatted to them for a good hour about life on the islands before moving on.

Next up was the Tomb of the Eagles, a.k.a. the Isbister chambered Cairn. This place is a 5000 year old burial chamber, entry to which requires one to lie on a wheeled trolley and pull oneself along the entrance tunnel using a rope. Although the purpose of this is to get inside and see the tomb, you can imagine that Eloïse and Lucas found the means much more exciting than the end.

On the way back to the visitor centre, we took the scenic route along the cliffs and spotted seals frolicking in the waters below.

And that was all we had time for today, really. The tomb took a good two hours and we got a late start on the day in order to do some essential shopping in Kirkwall.

Down in St. Margaret’s Hope, we also bought Lucas a woolly hat, hand-made on the island of North Ronaldsay from local wool. He’s very happy with it.

Tomorrow, we’re hoping to be lucky enough to witness a blackening.

We went on a walk out to the sea stacks at Yesnaby a few days ago. As we were walking back I pointed out one to Ian that he hadn’t noticed on the way there because it was pouring with rain by the time he got there (having dawdled unnecessarily on the way, but that’s a different story). I, on the other hand, passed in the sunshine and was able to see that it was a sea stack that was attached to the nearby cliff in just one tiny place by a narrow bridge of rock just a couple of meters from the top of the sea stack. As I photographed it with a sleeping Lukie in the sling I thought to myself that I would go over there and investigate climbing over to the top of the sea stack if it weren’t for the fact that Lukie is strapped to me when asleep and, when awake, would never let me go over there without trying to follow me and freaking out if he was stopped.

So I showed this to Ian, who is quite afraid of heights. He is forever pulling us back from cliffs and the edges of piers and the like. He’ll even sound panicky if Eloïse is 15 feet from the edge of a cliff and holding my hand if the cliff is pretty high and there’s wind.

Ian asked me with an incredulous voice, “You think people actually climb over there?” I responded that yes, of course they must because it’s just too obvious a thing to do. I told him that I would go climb it myself if it weren’t for Lukie. So then he said, “Do you think I should go try?” which was very surprising given his attitude towards heights so I just decided to stay out of it and let him decide for himself.

Long story short, he went over there and walked across the short bridge section and stood with his hand against the edge of the sea stack. I was videoing and kept yelling “ARE YOU GOING TO DO IT?” but he couldn’t hear a word so I finally just concluded that he had decided that it was too difficult (once I saw him there it did look like it would be quite awkward to climb up the necessary meter and a half or so to clamber onto the sea stack) and wasn’t going to go further. So I took his picture and he came back.

When he got back and realized that I had been talking about actually climbing onto the sea stack, not just standing on the bridge, he nearly shat himself at the idea. As far as he was concerned we were never talking about anything other than going onto the bridge portion.

For the rest of the day he acted noticeably different: he was clearly feeling extremely proud and was walking around with his chest puffed out like a peacock. Knowing how afraid of heights he is it was a big achievement, indeed.

We have pictures of Ian on the bridge with our real camera but with my phone camera which is more convenient for putting putting up photos at this moment I only have the photo that I took on the way out to the sea stacks, before Ian had caught up with me. Stay tuned for further photos and the video of the brave man himself once we return home.

Well, what a surprise. We upped sticks and moved to Kirkwall today. The Lonely Planet says that Orkney’s capital is lovely, but the Rough Guide calls it a disappointment. The LP turns out to be the guidebook with which I concur. How anyone could call this town a let-down is beyond me. It’s really very lovely.

We arrived here via Waulkmill Bay and its lovely, golden sanded beach. The children had a great time playing in the water and collecting shells. The sun even shone during our visit.

Kirkwall’s a sizeable place. It’s going to take us more than an afternoon to get around it. Today, we saw the St. Magnus Cathedral and the ruins of both the Bishop’s Palace and the Earl’s Palace.