The best thing about traveling is chance encounters with fellow travelers, and meeting people lucky enough to live in the places where you have chosen to vacation. Interestingly, we’ve continued to encounter mostly other Brits, Norwegians and a few French. No Americans. Also the general age range has skewed older – many intrepid folks in their 70s and beyond, walking and biking through the Isles.
On our last day of adventure in Orkney we took the very early ferry north to Westray, known as the Queen of the Isles. Westray is eleven miles long and has 600 residents (down from over a thousand in the 1800s) and boasts the shortest scheduled flight in the world, the longest golf hole in the UK and a castle ruin steeped in history. More seabirds than anywhere I’ve ever been with a boggling range of species. Including – oh yes – the MIGHTY PUFFIN.
We were met at the ferry by Karen and Andy Penn, who run Westraak Tours. If you ever find yourself in Westray, book them. Karen was born in Orkney and Andy is an “incomer,” having moved to the island from Dumfries when they married six years ago. We swung by a local B&B and picked up Angela and Peter, a couple from Cornwall, and headed to “coffee,” which ended up being in Karen and Andy’s home, a lovely surprise. We sat around their table and got acquainted, also meeting Andy’s son Callum, who is in his twenties and has autism. It was lovely chatting with him and sharing our names and places of origin. It wasn’t long before Angela shared with the group that Peter, a retired physician, was struggling with early stages of Alzheimers. It was quite touching how he relied on Angela to fill in gaps. He looked to her and said, “do that thing you do,” and she riffed through words to help him find the right one. They were lovely and delightful, up for anything, and all-around excellent traveling companions.
We left Callum with a shopping list for lunch, which would also be at Karen and Andy’s, and set off across the Island. Our first stop was a bird-nesting area along the coastal cliffs.
Next we headed to Quoygrew, the ruins of a Viking settlement. One of its longhouses had been excavated between 1997 and 2005. On the way, we met the charismatic Miss Piggy and fed her dandelions.
Quoygrew was a settlement of farmers and fishermen first inhabited in the 10th century and lived in as late as the 1930s.
Our lunch at Karen and Andy’s was utterly delicious thanks to Callum’s successful shopping excursion. Karen made sweet potato soup, accompanied by egg salad from chickens just up the road, locally made cheese, locally caught and smoked mackerel, rhubarb compote and possibly the best sticky toffee pudding in the world. Lunch was accompanied by a very animated political discussion about Boris Johnson (“a dreadful buffoon”) the current Tory government (“corrupt to the bone”) anti-immigration British home secretary Priti Patel, whose family immigrated to the UK but would not be able to do so under current policy (“a terrible hypocrite” and also “appalling”) and of course Brexit (“a complete disaster”). Angela expressed admiration for the qualified and educated Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, and wondered, “why wouldn’t people want this type of person to lead the country,” as opposed to Johnson, who won votes because he was “a laugh” and would be an entertaining pub date. Angela also talked of the ever-growing wealth discrepancy in the UK. It all sounded wearyingly familiar.
We next visited Noltland Castle which was the biggest surprise of the tour. On our way we drove by a golf course, which perked up Peter, an avid golfer. Andy said the course boasted the longest hole in the UK at 738 yards. It’s a par 6. Andy said he got a 7 once, but with the constant winds a 15 is more likely.
Noltland Castle was constructed in the 1500s, so a bit late in the game as far as castles go. It was built by Gilbert Balfour, who at the time owned Westray and Shapinsay, both given to him by his brother-in-law, the Bishop of Orkney. It’s odd because apparently he ran out of money or interest because he never finished the castle – the Great Hall remains open to the stars, even while Gilbert lived there. Maybe he blew his budget on the gorgeous spiral staircase, one of the UK’s grandest of the period. Roofs are kind of boring and expensive for sure – but handy to have in place nonetheless. The castle boasts an incredible 71 gun holes. There’s even one in the WC. Was Gilbert paranoid? Or were his fears justified because he moved through life cultivating mortal enemies wherever he went? You be the judge.
Balfour was the self-appointed Sheriff of Orkney, constable of Kirkwall Castle and master of Mary Queen of Scots’ household. Sounds good so far. But. He was also implicated in the murder of Cardinal Beaton at St. Andrews (mutilating his body and hanging it outside the window), after which he was captured by the French and condemned to be a navy galley slave for a few years. Fully not rehabilitated by that experience, he next helped murder Lord Darnley, Mary’s second husband, in Edinburgh.
You might be wondering why Mary didn’t dump Gilbert after he murdered her husband. The thing is she might have married Darnley mostly because he was also a Stuart and so would have given her a stronger claim to the English throne. Their son James did become James I of England, so that worked pretty well. Also, she had fallen in love with the Earl of Bothwell by that time and, who knows, perhaps she was in on the murder plot, as it was the only way to get rid of husbands back then.
Before Mary’s ultimate arrest, she was urged to flee to Noltland and some say that Gilbert was sweet on her and actually built the castle with her in mind. Sadly, she did not take this advice and was ultimately captured. You know the rest.
Balfour’s incurable habitual plotting continued apace, and he was implicated in the Mornay murder plot against King John III of Sweden. Karma finally caught up to him and he was executed in Stockholm.
Next stop was Noup Head Lighthouse (one of over 200 built around the Scottish coastline). One family, the Stevensons, was responsible for designing all of Scotland’s lighthouses over a 150-year period – which explains why they all look alike. The lighthouses, not the Stephensons. The sole black sheep who rejected the family business in favor of a dodgy writing career was named Robert Louis Stevenson.
Here there were more dramatic cliffs and thousands of seabirds, transforming the cliffs into a layer cake of different types of birds, who clustered together by species in neat rows.
We next visited the Heritage Center, home of the Westray Wife, a small Neolithic figurine carved from sandstone, the first Neolithic carving of a human form to have been found in Scotland. It is also the earliest depiction of a face found in the UK.
The center also featured rare china made for Edward VIII’s coronation. As we know, he abdicated after his ascension but before his coronation, in favor of his love Wallis Simpson. The American divorcee may have done the world a favor by removing a Nazi sympathizer from the board in favor of George VI, the beloved “Bertie,” who, along with the Queen Mum, refused to leave London during the Blitz and was photographed wandering amongst the rubble.
As we were leaving the Center, we spotted a small plane flying overhead – the shortest scheduled flight in the world from Westray to a (very) nearby island called Papa Westray. It’s scheduled for 1.5 minutes with actual flying time closer to a minute. The record for the fastest flight is 53 seconds.
Nearing the end of the day, we dropped off Angela and Peter, bidding them a very fond farewell. Angela was worried about her husband, as he had apparently been struggling more than usual during their trip, and they were headed to Shetland for another week. I hope they find that the familiarity of being back home in Cornwall will return him to form. They traveled extensively during their marriage, having many adventures around the world. Peter would smile happily, looking into the middle distance with fond remembrance as he shared some of their experiences. I dearly hope they are able to continue traveling for a bit longer before Peter’s illness makes it too challenging.
Our last stop on our way back to the ferry was the main puffin colony on the island. You know all those photos of puffins where they appear to be frolicking right underfoot? Sadly, my friends, these photos are largely due to high-powered zoom lenses and a lot of patience. Puffins nest in cliffs like the other birds, only they burrow rather than nesting on ledges. So you must wait for them to fly in and land, or perhaps pop out of their burrow to have a wee, which we witnessed and was adorable. The best time to see them is at dusk. But we still saw a good handful, and it was incredibly thrilling, and this is the best I could do with my iPhone.
As consolation here’s a photo from an exhibit in the Heritage Center.
Next morning we ordered a cab for 5:15 am to catch the ferry to the mainland. Happy to see Dougal waiting patiently for us in the car park, we drove off across the North Coast. Despite the occasional flare of irritation at campers, we mostly traveled along the single track road in complete solitude through moody landscapes, farmland and villages. We stopped at some spectacular, almost deserted beaches and visited Smoo Cave.
Smoo Cave was interesting although I’m not really a cave person. We opted against the hard hat tour. Lovely waterfall though.
At long last, we left the beaches of the north coast behind and dropped down into the rugged and spectacular Western Highlands I remember so fondly from my last trip.
We stayed the night at Newton Lodge, which is situated in an impossibly gorgeous location on Loch Glencoul.
I’ll leave you with a chance encounter we had with a cyclist we met as we arrived at Newton Lodge, John Loughran. We met him as he pulled up on his bike and tried to sort out where he had booked a room. As we were headed to nearby Kylesku Hotel for lunch, he asked for a ride. Of course we were happy to oblige, and John joined us for a lovely lunch. He is 78 years old, a retired engineer, and a Scot, although he has lived in England these past fifty years. He was riding the North Coast 500 in the opposite direction as we had done, riding valiantly through rain and wind and up and down serious hills on roads with no shoulders, or margins or verges as they are called, somewhat more descriptively than “shoulders.” John didn’t complain about any of it, just nodded and smiled, saying, “oh, it’s quite alright actually.” He told of a time when a local cyclist pedaled by who could see he was running out of steam on a climb. The guy rode alongside offering words of encouragement, and John said softly with a smile, “he got me through.”
John had planned the trip for 2020 along with a fellow cyclist. Sadly his friend bailed on the rescheduled ride, as his wife, whom John sweetly described as “a bit neurotic,” didn’t want to lose her husband for two weeks. John said proudly that his own wife, who was “very busy” and active in their community, was fine without him. He was “a bit disappointed” without his friend and his friend was “gutted” not be alongside him. I am slightly peeved by the clingy wife but like John’s wife very much. John added that he and his busy wife have five very successful children and seven grandkids spread around Scotland, England, Spain, Japan and Australia.
He showed us how he created a page for every day of his journey, carefully planning stops to recharge his electrical-assist bike. He shared many tales of his life, and how on this ride he was visiting spots in his home country that had meant a lot to his family over the years. John might be the sweetest man ever.
I’ll share one of his stories about a business trip he took to Rio in the fall of 2001. He was about to give a presentation to thirty of his colleagues when he heard someone say something bad had happened in the States. They all gathered around a television in time to watch the second plane hit the south tower. As he was telling the story, his mouth trembled and he broke down. He said he could not ever talk about that day without getting emotional, even after all this time. He said quietly, “of course, we cancelled the presentation, we simply could not go on.” When he was able to find a flight home, he remembers stepping over sleeping, marooned Americans in Schipol Airport. A reminder that the horrific 9/11 attacks took a psychic toll on humanity, even though they occurred on American soil. And the residual impact of that terrible day reverberates still, especially in empathetic souls.
Godspeed, John.
Wee Dram of Scotland 