As I write this a bunch of mostly blootered men are down in the hotel bar watching a football game. Panicky hyperventilating shrieks like the sound I imagine people make who are having all of their limbs slowly pulled off while being eaten alive by lions. In the States this would be irritating but I’m completely fine with it.
Our first hike on Orkney was to the Old Man of Hoy, one of the most spectacular seastacks in the world. He’s just off the Isle of Hoy (from the Norse “Haey” meaning high island) to which we took a tiny ferry that left at 6:30 am and dropped us off at a tiny terminal half an hour later. All the hikers on the boat, mostly older (than me) Brits plus one Aussie, took off across the island in varying directions for a day of walking.
We hiked 13 miles through rain, wind and fog with boggy conditions, slippery rocks and boot-sucking mud, all of it fabulous. We did enjoy a relatively brief period of sunny and warm weather on our way back and it was like we had been transported to an old western and were about to die of heat prostration with our bones picked clean by vultures. Don’t worry, though, chilly fogginess returned in time for our ferry ride back to Mainland, which is, by the way, what the main island is called, from the Norse “meginland.” Same deal goes for Shetland.
We first hiked through a valley with steep hills on both sides. The sun lightened things up a bit as we got closer to the sea.
When we neared the small town of Rackwick we ducked behind someone’s house, passed through a couple of kissing gates, and started the upward climb to the fog-shrouded cliffs. As always in Scotland, colorful and weather-beaten signs marked the way, and we were even met with the iconic red phone booth, still standing but infested with flies, the phone having been removed long ago. If it was actually a back entrance to the Ministry of Magic and the flies were a protective spell, it completely worked.
As we climbed, the wind howled and the fog rolled back in so we lost sight of the sea below (did I mention we were hiking on cliffs?). I very nearly lost my hat in all the blow. When we arrived at the long-awaited but entirely fogged in viewpoint, we waited patiently, watching all the sea birds nesting in the cliffs and eating lunch with hands that were cold and wet from our walk through clouds. All of the sudden a suggestion of an outline and then – there he was. What an entrance Old Man, what an entrance.
On the long road back, the sun.
The crinkly woman who served us breakfast every morning at the Royal Hotel had a few opinions about Hoy from the perspective of a Stromness native who has seen a few things. She announced to everyone in the room, with certitude and spot-on comic timing, “Oh, I suppose it’s nice and all but such a relief to get off it, though, aye?” and “I feel all a’ trembly when I’m there, it’s so depressin’,” and “It’s no place for women.” She speaks her mind about all the topics, and yet you can tell by the twinkle in her eye, the cock to her head and her appraising gaze that she’s still holding a few things back.
Wee Dram of Scotland 