Day four: Skara Brae is 5000 years old and Brough of Birsay is Beautiful

On the fourth day, I was looking at the world with different eyes. I'd achieved my aim in effect: I'd ridden as far north as I could in the UK without taking a long sea journey. Shetland is a lot further north but much more traveling by sea is involved. So on this day, I decided to do no more than amble around, trading in the atmosphere, discovering something about the island and it's culture. It was a good decision.

Camp cooker brewing tea, under an Orkney sky

The weather wad just beautiful. I was hearing takes of impossible heat in England and elsewhere. It was perfect on Orkney. All the more perfect after getting soaked doing Loch Ness yesterday. So after breakfasting on fried egg sandwiches ascends a gain of tea, I saddled up and rode out of Stomness campsite with the simple idea of taking small roads north, towards Skara Brae and Birsay.

Isle of Hoy in the distance

Ruby is 25 years old this year. I am 50 years old. Skara Brae is 5000 years old. There's some kind of mathematical rightness about this.  It is a Neolithic settlement on Orkney. Ruby and I visited it yesterday. That label, Neolithic, makes it sound as though it is a crude mound of boulders. Not at all. It is a network of homes connected by covered walkways, with spaces for beds, hearths and even display shelves built in to their sides. The stone work is clean and neat, with slim interlocking blocks like modern dry stone walling. I was super impressed, needless to say, by this place. 

Orkney is a fertile place that belies its northerly location. Apparently the gulf stream does it's work up here too. I was told I'd come on the nicest day of the year, with unprecedented views out over the Pentland Firth and across Skapa Flow. My ride took me first down a dead-end set of tracks with views out towards the Isle of Hoy. After a lovely chat with a local lady, I retraced my steps back to Stromness and headed north. My northerly mission could hardly end without visiting the most northerly point on this island. So I meandered along single-track farm lanes to Brough Head.

Paddling at Brough of Birsay, towards the northern tip of Orkney, was an incredibly peaceful experience. The rocks are hard and craggy, sloping into the sea with their strata creating ridges like frozen waves. 

The Brough is a headland accessible at low tide by walking across a causeway over a stretch of these ridges. Each of them the creates long tapering rock pools, about a foot wide and may be as deep. I took my boots and socks off, stretched out my toes and plunged them into the sandy pools here.The water was reasonably warm, having stood in the Orkney summer sun for a couple of hours. Little hermit crabs wandering along beside me in the crystal clear water. A family with a couple of children, 18 months and 4 years old, were enjoying the same experience next to me. That's what I call peaceful: being a parent myself, I could appreciate the discoveries they were making and hear their utterances as a kind of twittering song. 

I continued to ride around the main island for about 50 miles, enjoying bright sunlight that only faded to black at 11:30pm. It is an agrarian landscape, a jewel of gently rolling fertile hills in the North Sea.

But my visit. I'm told, hides the nature of the place. It might be temperate haven but the winds are legendary. No trees can stand against them except some willows in a few relatively sheltered spots. I was to discover this the next day.