I have a life driven by time. The time on my watch, the time on my phone and the time on my computer. Time to meet, time to arrive, time to leave, time to eat. Time, time, time. It’s therefore been a curious experience to live for a month on a remote Scottish Island called [...]
A quick trip out this afternoon to visit Mr and Mrs Pig the neighbours, their boar Alfie and their heavily pregnant sow Little Kim. Here’s a typical extract from Mr Pig’s blog: The Edge of Nowhere: About a boar the-edge-of-nowhere.blogspot.com How old will he have to be before he begins “work”? I was sixteen myself. [...]
There’s now only one source of petrol and diesel on the Island – and this is it. We’re on bicycles for a month, so I’ve not had to use it, although I should really have got some for my petrol strimmer. I’ve been too busy enjoying Island life to use it.
This afternoon there was time to cycle to East Kirbest and walk to Inga Ness, skirting Skea Hill and to look out to sea with a posing cow for company.
Cycling to the Westside of Westray I can see the Netherhouse in silhouette. A series of dwellings built up the hill, the middle and lower were left in 1932, whilst the upper was finally only abandoned in the 1970s.
The Cathedral of St Magnus in Kirkwall, Orkney uses red sandstone quarried near Kirkwall and yellow sandstone from the island of Eday in alternating patterns of stripes and checks to beautiful effect.
The most important archaeological find of last year was found on the remote Orkney island of Westray; or at least it was until someone unearthed a massive hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold treasure in Staffordshire. Now only a few archaeologists – and last night, watchers of BBC2′s Digging for Britain – know about the Orkney Venus [...]
Grobust is one of my favourite beaches on Westray. Here it is at sunset.
Grobust is a place I could (and do) go back to again and again. Being up before dawn and going to bed well after dusk, tracking the sun’s movement across the wide open skies and seeing the horizon everywhere I go is something I will miss when I leave.
For a grey, windy, desolate place of long winter nights Westray really knows how to do spectacular natural sights.