So this is going to be a brief summary of a really interesting few days in the Orkneys – brief because there is only so much time in the day and if you want the full detail you’ll need to wait for the book!
Long Hope. We set off from Stromness for an afternoon sail across the western edge of Scapa Flow down towards the Scapa Flow Museum at Lyness and home of the Royal Navy base during the two world wars. Longhope, a nearby village had visitor moorings so after securing we were ashore in Terry (the Tender) in search of refreshment for the evening.
We found the Royal Hotel, Longhope and it’s busy bar and extremely hospitable landlord, Alan a Lancastrian butcher (allegedly!) from Bacup. Sadly Alan’s kitchen wasn’t open but he provided us with his evening meal (an excellent packet of crisps), offered us the use of a tandem for our visit to the naval museum the following day and he also, we noticed, followed us down to the harbour side to ensure that despite our cheerful state, we safely made it back into Terry and on-board Little Scarlet without incident.
The following morning we collected the tandem, and spent a great day visiting the Scapa Flow Museum (Museum website) and Lyness Naval Cemetery. This was an excellent day of naval of history, tired legs from cycling a rather small tandem and more hospitality in the Royal Hotel. Despite the kitchen still being closed when we returned from Lyness Alan provided us with an excellent meal; he was an outstanding host to us and meeting him (and his tandem!) provided a lot of fun to our visit! Thanks Alan and if any of our readers are ever in and around Longhope, do please visit the Royal Hotel!
Our next port of call was Margaret’s Hope, a lovely anchorage just a few miles east of Longhope. We anchored in the centre of the bay and took Terry ashore for a beautiful evening in a very atmospheric little coastal village. Most of the fishing industry has now gone and the village had a quiet, holiday home feel with a nearby ferry port, providing a route to Scotland, providing some activity.
We had read that some of the northerly Orkney islands were very quiet and unspoiled so we headed north to Westray, through the Rapness Sound/Westray Firth and past a set of platforms with underwater turbines generating power from the tidal streams .. There was plenty of tide, we achieved speeds of over 10 knots over the ground.
Westray was peaceful and a very pleasant spot with a berth in a small fishing port adjacent to a crab processing port. We enjoyed seeing the seals and lots of ‘dummies’ decorating the lanes, part of an RNLI fundraising competition.
We were then back to the relatively busy port of Kirkwall where we shared the streets with numerous cruise ship passengers (local opinion seemed to differ over the pros and cons), visited the cathedral and paid respects to the HMS ROYAL OAK’s bell, noted the close ties to Scandanavia and embarked old friend Tim for the passage down to Edinburgh.
