Orkney Trip Day 4

The morning after the dinner party at Brough House, Mark, Katherine and I started on the dishes. There had been paired wines for the various courses so with 17 guests and 8 courses, you can imagine the quantity of glassware. At one stage during the meal, Mark lost synchronization with his wines and courses and went into a mild panic. I tried to reassure him "I don't think anyone has noticed". :-)

Mark offered us a tour of the island and asked what we would like to see. I understand you have a castle on this island" came my reply. :-) Noltland Castle is a substantial tower house built in the late 16th Century for a Gilbert Balfour who was the master of Mary Queen of Scots' household. When Mary was deposed and arrested, Balfour took refuge in the castle, but the building was seized from him although eventually he got it back. Indeed the building went in and out of Balfour ownership, until it was handed into stage care in 1911 by a Balfour. It is now maintained by Historic Environment Scotland.

Instead of windows the bottom two levels of the castle have "gun loops". This indicates a high level of paranoia regarding attacks, and I have seen nothing like this elsewhere. The building was never completed, and Mark wondered how the castle was heated - there is no wood or coal on Westray. 

Noltland Castle: frontage

In another location Norland would be much more valued. Significant parts of it are intact, and there is still a large amount of interior accommodation. The impressive vaulted kitchen is like the greatest of great halls. A number of the gun loops provide illumination in here - though they are too high up to shoot out of!  

Noltland  is a perfect restoration candidate, though the location is too remote for most people. Given the lack of fuel on the islands, Orkney is leading the way in alternative technologies, and Noltland most certainly needs a good alternative heating plan. :-) Katherine had to retreat to the car due to the cold and did not even realise there was an inside, but Mark and I had a good run around, and I made certain I had done the entirety of the structure albeit at high speed.

Noltland Castle: kitchen

Noltland Castle: ginormous spiral staircase

Noltland Castle: click to see VR panorama of courtyard at rear

We then explored most of the rest of the island with Mark highlighting the island gossip associated with the different locations. He pointed out the small number of shops, which are an absolute lifeline. Katherine picked up some Orkney cannonball cheese at one. We had both tried this at the dinner party and fallen in love with it - both the smoked and unsmoked varieties.

We caught the ferry back to the Orkney mainland that evening. While we were waiting for the boat to come in, we saw what looked like a dead body wrapped in black plastic wrap being handled for loading. The first though in my head was that even the way they handle dead people here is alarmingly different! However, Katherine got out the car and asked a few questions - this was a dead porpoise that has been found and that was being sent to the mainland for autopsy. Katherine insists that she knew it was a dolphin or some such from the start, due to the tail. However, I discerned no tail myself, and seeing a dead human being taken out of a van by forklift, had certainly got my heart pumping. 

For this journey, the tiny passenger lounge was above deck. Mark has advised prior to our trip to always go for a lower lounge in any sailing, as the swaying would be less.  By the end of the Orkney trip I had not sussed whether there was more than one lounge to be found or whether different ferries just had a single lounge with different configurations. Bacon butties, however, were doing a good trade on all sailings.

Once back on the Orkney mainland, we went to find our AirBnB accommodation in Stromness. I had wanted to get accommodation in Kirkwall, the capital, as this is very central, but I could not find anywhere as nice and such good value there. In fact Stromness, was win-win: no-where is far from anywhere on Orkney and I have subsequently found out that a number of people think Stromness has more character - and it is at the epicentre of the Neolithic sites we wanted to explore the following day.

Westray ferry terminal

lounge on Westray to Orkney ferry

We found the rough location of the AirBnB accommodation very quickly, though the final part was more tricky as it was up a narrow dark alley, whose entrance we had walked past a number of times without noticing it. The heating was air source heat pump - which I had never seen in the flesh before. There were two wall-fixed units, each controlled by their own remote. We took an age to master the units: finally flaps opened-up and they started emitting warm air.

spacious Stromness AirBnB flat - air source unit above door

Once we had settled in, it was time to explore the fleshpots of Stromness and we eventually settled in a pub filled with locals. Katherine and I were discussing the music, and I exposed a weakness in my heavy metal knowledge. Thankfully a local fisherman sitting on his own, called Rhys, came to my rescue - and Katherine invited him over to sit with us and chat. She is good like that! You don't want to know some of the things you can find in creel pots. :-)

Orkney Trip Day 3

After the stresses and strains of failing to reach Orkney due to the cancelled ferries, waking up the next morning in the emergency Thurso hotel accommodation felt altogether more chilled and like a new beginning,

Katherine and I had resigned ourselves to the fact that Orkney was off the cards and we were going to make the best of a bad situation by doing parts of the North Coast 500 instead, However, before we left Thurso we were going to call in at the ferry company, based outside of town, just to get a definitive lowdown.

In fact, the website for the ferry company was the best resource: it indicated

that although no ferry services were scheduled that day, passengers should check up again before their sailing time in case conditions changed. I had emailed the evening before to book a sailing at the same time as the cancelled booking but a day later.

In the meanwhile, there was plenty of time for Katherine and I to explore Thurso in the daylight. However, as we stepped out of the hotel after the re-energizing cooked breakfast, Katherine announced "There's a problem" pointing to a totally flat tyre on her car. It doesn't rain but it pours! She had had this wheel fixed before leaving Glasgow, but obviously the problem had not been solved.

Katherine set off to change the wheel for the narrow replacement one in her boot. In fact, Katherine was far more capable of changing the wheel than me, and I suggested in game-theory terms that the best thing I could do would be to walk round the block i.e. disappearing to leave a "helpless" female on her own changing a tyre. Of course, Katherine is anything but helpless. :-)

When I reappeared 15 minutes later, no mechanical knight in armour had emerged. However, a local had advised Katherine on the nearest garage in town that could perhaps fix the proper wheel. I took over the wheel change and Katherine was going to walk to the garage. However, Katherine suggested I walk to the garage instead and she would resume the wheel change, on the same game theory principle.

As I walked across the bridge over the river Thurso en route to the garage, I spotted a stone tower on the horizon and somehow I recognised it, despite never having been to Thurso before in my life. It looked like the main tower of Thurso Castle, which is one of my favourite Scottish castles.  It slowly dawned on me that as I was actually in Thurso, it might actually indeed be the tower of the eponymous castle which I had always wanted to visit. :-) The building is now in ruins, but in its day was one of the most audacious of Victorian castellated extravaganzas.

The mechanics were very friendly, but apparently neither the registration number nor the make & model of the car would be enough to identify the type of wheel required. However, it could be determined by measurement if we could somehow get the car to the garage, 

I returned to where I had abandoned Katherine, but she was nowhere to be seen. The car had gone. The fact that it must have moved was a good one, but the absence of Katherine and the fact I did not spot her on the walk back from the garage was not encouraging. Was I, in fact, stranded in Thurso without a paddle?

There were a couple of young ladies gossiping in front of the hotel, so I asked them if they had seen what had happened. Apparently,  a man had turned up, the wheel had been changed (result!) and Katherine had driven off! 

I returned to the garage. Much to my relief Katherine was there. There was a  dent in the wheel's rim which should have been hammered back to the round by the Glasgow garage, and the resulting bad seal was behind the flat tyre. The mechanics were happy to do the repair for free, as they were sitting around with nothing to do but I slipped them a 20 note for their quick and effortless fix.

It was time to explore Thurso.

Katherine took little persuasion to head to Thurso Castle which, even in ruin, is an awesome  structure with an impossibly romantic location directly on the beach. Attached to one end is an inhabited and considerably more modest Baronial structure of later date. The term "semi-detached ruin" was never more appropriate.

Thurso Castle

Thurso Castle 360 Panorama - click this image several times to get VR panorama

Thurso Castle Before Dereliction: Seaward Elevation

Thurso Castle Before Dereliction: Landward Elevation

I knew the layout of the area around the castle already from previous studying of satellite photos on Google Maps, and wanted to explore the original courtyard at the back of the building and could see a stone archway that probably led there.  However, Katherine was suffering badly from exposure by this stage and we retreated back to her car.

 "The Way Things Were" was just as fabulous as it had been the night before, even though we were now viewing it in a hail storm. I popped a fiver into their donation box. Storm Arwen was still rampaging.

The Way Things Were: Interior Set-Up 1

The Way Things Were - Interior Set-Up 2

We also visited St. Peter's Kirk, ruined but dating from 1220. I was immediately drawn to the tower which was clearly the oldest part of the structure and fully merited the 1220 date, by virtue of its aura of deep antiquity.

St. Peter's Kirk Thurso

The Tower, St Peter's Kirk, Thurso

One last check up with the ferry company website, showed that the storm had calmed down enough for the 12:30 sailing to take place! We were overjoyed and set-off to the ferry terminal. We were not expecting this - what happened from then on would be pure bonus.

As we drove out of Thurso, I spotted a stunning historic structure down a narrow lane. "Wow" I exclaimed, and Katherine, always up for an adventure, drove down the lane. What we had found by accident was the gate lodge for Thurso Castle. This was quite magnificent and still inhabited. It is often the case that the main house has gone but that the gate lodge (with a more practical size) has survived. The owners of this building are privileged indeed to live within this magnificence.

Thurso Castle Gate Lodge

We also called in at the Castle of Mey. This was closed up for the winter, but we walked around the edge of the grounds. This visit was not like the tour I had planned in my head. Sections of the Castle of Mey were built by William Burn, the architect of Balintore, so obviously my script had written in an internal viewing. The building was somewhat dinkier than I had expected, but as the viewing occurred at a distance in the middle of a storm, any judgment could have been faulty, and just seeing the building at all felt like a privilege. My theory is that restoring the Castle of Mey was the Queen Mum's bereavement project after her husband had died.

The Castle of Mey

We arrived an hour early at Gills Bay for the ferry. The passenger lounge on board was surprisingly large and modern, but also surprisingly empty. Despite the cancellations the day before, winter is clearly low season.

Passenger Lounge: Ferry from Gills Bay, Caithness to St. Marys Hope, Orkney

Katherine regaled me of her tales of being badly seasick in the past. She certainly got me worried, and I think she had also scared herself. I can't remember the last time I had been on board a boat, but it most certainly had not been in a storm, and my sea legs had never been tested. In fact, we drove off the ferry at St. Margaret's Hope in Orkney, with stomachs unvoided. We had no time to waste as we had to make our ferry connection to Westray in short order.

The landscape of Orkney is quite assaulting. Straightaway we had to drive across causeways with ocean on either side and wrecked ships from long ago jaggedly tearing the vista and telling us not to underestimate the power of nature here.

I described Orkney as lobular, as fingers of land extend everywhere into the sea. These fingers often curl round enclosing bays, so one is often seeing the landscape across water,  Katherine hated the term as it made her think of unpleasant medical phenomena, but I insisted on its valid applicability and naturally it had now to be used at every possible opportunity.

Inland, parts of Orkney had the Scottish small town vibe, so one could have been almost anywhere in Scotland. So the islands possessed a beguiling mix of the familiar and the alien.

We stopped off at the Italian Chapel very briefly, as this was just off the road from the ferry terminal, and we had a feeling we might not be able to fit this in at any other time. This proved correct. The building was locked-up, but I walked round the outside. I can't say I was bowled over by the spirituality of the space (the inaccessible interior notwithstanding) but I love what it says about the human condition triumphing even when being held captive as a prisoner of war.

The Italian Chapel: built during WWII by Italian POWs

We were about 30 minutes early for the Westray ferry, but essentially we had just made it in time. The relief was huge. I loved that we had to queue in outer island-order, for the correct loading and unloading of vehicles! I knew about alphabetic and numeric ordering before, but island-ordering is a new one for me.

Kirkwall to Westray Ferry

Katherine and I stayed in the car thinking that such a dinky ferry could not possibly have a passenger lounge. However, we were directed out of our vehicle by a crew member, to a compact below-decks lounge. This was every bit as rough and ready as I could have dreamed of. Locals doing their knitting and reading books. Out-of-season, I don't think Westray gets tourists.

Passenger Lounge: Kirkwall to Westray Ferry

The serving hatch in the background of the photograph, was according to Katherine, largely for the benefit of the crew - mariners have traditionally been fed well. However, having said that, passengers were not holding back on the bacon rolls. Katherine gamely changed into her party frock in the ferry toilet, and dabbed on the macquillage in the lounge.

Passenger Lounge: Kirkwall to Westray Ferry

Disembarking on Westray

Once on Westray, our destination was "Brough House": the location for the dinner party. We panicked about our ability to find the building now that darkness had fallen. Our host Mark had provided written directions and there was just one main (north-south) road on the island. However, getting lost in low visibility caused by the driving rain still felt eminently achievable. Earlier research revealed that the whole island seems to have the one postcode, so even my SATNAV would not save us.

The main landmark in the instructions was a large white-washed church.  We did pass a large church but in the dark it looked anything but white-washed to me. A later daylight viewing showed the building to be slightly and confusingly grubby!

A large house eventually showed-up ahead of us with lights streaming welcomingly out the windows. "This must be it." said Katherine. My first thought was "Surely this is too impressive and too large", but I was wrong.

We were so happy to have finally reached our destination.

Mark showed us to our respective bedrooms for the evening so we could "freshen up". This Laird's house has been wonderfully restored from a state of semi-ruination. It was my first visit to see it in the flesh and I was enormously impressed.  And in fact Mark has been wonderfully supportive via email of my restoration of Balintore. Being an architect, Mark has provided some key advice over the years.

Mark promised us 18 guests and 8 courses. The disappointment of only 17 guests turning up mattered not a jot. :-) The food and company were glorious. Due to Mark's connections, we had expected a bohemian set congregating on Westray from all over the UK. "You are the only off-islanders" declared Mark to Katherine and myself. It was half-flattering somehow - I had never felt so exotic before -  and half like the opening of "An American Werewolf in London".

Anyhow, if you wanted to get a feel for island life you couldn't have chosen a better set of guests. Connections go back generations through families, and there is a closeness and shared sense of fun that I had not experienced before. Many islanders had spent some of their life elsewhere, but returning to Westray seems much more of a thing. The salmon fishery is the island's major employer, and this provides more than enough work for the island to be viable. Mark's connections to the island go way back: his grandfather pioneered air-transport between the Orkney islands. You could tell everyone was pleased Mark had brought the Brough back to life.

Just to illustrate the well-known multiple roles of  island inhabitants: Louis, Mark's gardener, is also the grave digger, the ambulance driver, a barman and a chef. He is currently studying catering part-time too.

Another interesting angle is that outer-island kids are all weekly borders in Kirkwall, only coming back to their home island at weekends. The bonds between the boarders are apparently incredibly strong and can be lifelong. In this culture, weekly boarding is the norm, not that of a privileged few.

My feeling is that island life preserves the way human societies would have been before urbanisation with more natural and stronger bonds between individuals. The islanders seemed much more in touch with good and well-sourced food, and were enormously proud and knowledgeable about Orkney produce.

Anyhow, thanks to Mark for the delightful evening, delightful food and the delightful encounters with the locals. Katherine and I retired around 11PM, but the party continued at the island hotel and then at Louis's place. What lightweights we were, but then we were exhausted by the travelling and knew we wanted to fit in some sightseeing on Westray the next day.

A New Ceiling for the Gentleman's Dressing Room

Gregor has just sent me these images of the new plaster-boarding in what we call "the gentleman's dressing room". The name is well-chosen as this room would have been the dressing room for David Lyon who had the castle built in 1860.

The original fireplace in here has a spectacular draw, so it is the room of choice for retiring to in the evening with friends. There is also something indefinable about the room which makes it particularly pleasant to gather in, and there's no doubt that David Lyon would also have spent time in here with his acquaintances.

The down-side is that the room has no ceiling i.e. we rebuilt the floor but not the ceiling so heat from the fire escapes into the room above. In winter, we find ourselves huddling as close to the fire as possible. With the simple expediency of a ceiling,  the whole room could easily become toasty with just the fireplace and no other source of heating.

Anyhow, Gregor has just finished repairing missing and damaged areas of lath-and-plaster with plasterboard - this includes the whole ceiling of course and large areas of the walls. We put modern insulation behind the repaired areas. I expect the thermodynamics of the space have been revolutionised, and I can't wait to spend a winter's evening in here again with a glowing hearth and the best of company.

new ceiling - for years you could see floor joists

new wall - Gregor has left a rectangle of old wall above the fireplace

plasterboard patched-in round the windows - rare winter sunshine in evidence

Plastering Aunty Nellie's Room

Greg has been working in Aberdeen most recently but returned to the castle over the last few days to plaster Aunt Nellie's bedroom. Glen and Gregor had previously lined and plaster-boarded sections of wall and ceiling that had been destroyed by dry rot as described in my previous blog entry here.

You can see that large areas of new plastering have been required, particularly along the east wall where nothing survived due to decades of water ingress from a blocked box gutter. Overall, it is now probably 50/50 in terms of new and old fabric. Professional developers would have ripped everything off and started from scratch. However, for better or worse, we have been studiously conservative of original fabric.

You can see we still have window linings to recreate, and the order for the appropriate mouldings is in with a local carpentry workshop. Greg likes to give new plasterwork a coat of white paint as soon as it's humanly possible. Not only does this seal the plaster, but it also is the best indication of whether any additional filling is required. I am looking forward to that paint job: there's a certain stage when there is a transition from a "space in a derelict building" to a "almost creditably habitable room", which is very rewarding.

Anyhow, this blog entry makes it 52 for this year which is the highest ever and though the achievement is definitely covid related, I am still proud of doing a blog entry (on average) once a week.

Thanks to Greg for the photos.

Aunt Nellie's bedroom - looking south-west

Aunt Nellie's bedroom - looking north-west - towards the Great Hall

Aunt Nellie's bedroom - looking north - east wall on the right

Merry Christmas 2021!

I am hijacking this blog entry as my annual Christmas message! The reason is that I have only just found the time to upload photographs for this article (a few days before Christmas) so combining the two blog entries makes sense.

2021 has been a monumental one for most people: each of us trying to work out how best to navigate the pandemic that we thought would be over by now. I had taken a year off work to concentrate on the restoration, when the first wave hit, and was just re-entering the job market. The economic uncertainty at that stage resulted in many redundancies, and I wondered if it was the opportunity in life to really push forward with the restoration instead. In fact, this is how it has worked out and we made the best yearly progress during this year (2021) as well as last (2020). 

Funding a restoration without employment is not a sustainable activity, and much to my relief and indeed pleasure I started to work remotely for the Met Office on the 1st Sept. The incredible coincidence is that both my parents worked for the Met Office, and I had no idea when I applied for the scientific programming role who it was with. The job spec mentioned Fortran so I thought the presumed small pool of applicants would increase my chances. :-) With my only previous Fortran role, I thought the job agent was winding me up when he asked "How's your Fortran?". Such is the antiquity of the language, that all I could do was laugh! :-) 

Obviously the new job means my eyes are a bit off the restoration ball at the moment, so thanks to team G (Greg, Glen and Gregor) and my friend Andrew for their continuing good works at the castle!

There were three open days at the castle this year. The plan was to do one annually, but obviously 2020 was a no-no. After a successful open day on the 10th July, my volunteers were keen to help out again. The Doors Open weekend (11th and 12th September) was an ideal opportunity, and Angus Council were delighted to incorporate us into their program. Angus Council then took us off the program with no explanation or consultation, but after some shenanigans, did say we could go ahead with an independent event on the same dates. The shenanigans are worthy of several blog entries. Huge thanks to the volunteers, my neighbours for helping out, and of course to the members of the public who came along.

On the 27th of November this year I attended a dinner party in Orkney. The first part of the associated travelogue takes up the remainder of the blog. No obligation to read it. of course, but I thought it might entertain. :-) The story needs some framing i.e. there is a restoration angle, even though it is not apparent in part one. This is also a Christmas angle too: I had a rather trippy encounter with Christmas angels in Thurso and this may keep you reading to the end. 

Anyhow, Merry Christmas to one and all, and I wish you the best of bounce-backs in 2022.


David



Orkney Trip: Days 1 and 2

One strategy I have in life, is to accept all invites without question. It is in part fear of missing out (FOMO), but it also come from a spirit of adventure, and who is to say that these two motivators are not one and the same.

When one receives an invite to a dinner party on Westray, an outermost island of the Orkney archipelago, this principle is tested to the limit. The date of the high latitude meal was dove-tailed between appointments in the deep south of England, so it would be easier and cheaper not to make the trip at all.

I was uncharacteristically non-committal: "I would love to come, and will make my best effort to do so but I need to check if the travel arrangements will work out". I was genuinely in two minds.

Then on Facebook, my lovely journalist friend Katherine, who is based in Glasgow posted a message, asking if anyone knew of any cheap accommodation in Orkney as she fancied dropping everything and just taking off there. I responded immediately that if she could hold off a fortnight, then she could join me on a joint expedition.

The deal was done then and there, I would cover the accommodation costs which I would incur in any case and we would split the travel costs. Taking a car on a ferry is much more expensive than being a foot passenger, but touring Orkney without a car is a logistic nightmare, and this had been weighing on my mind. The deal was win-win.

My own car's power steering fluid had been leaking out like billy-o over the previous months. I had been getting-by by topping the tank before each journey, but for a serious drive up north from my house in Oxfordshire, the leak needed this to be fixed. The local garage assured me they could install new hydraulic pipework in time, but 2 days before the departure date they let me know that this would not be possible - eeek!

So there were some last minute changes of plan. I booked return train tickets to Glasgow Central where Katherine and I would meet up, and we would take her car to Orkney. We would overnight at Balintore Castle (Angus) on the way up and on the way down to break up the long drive from Glasgow to John O'Groats, from where the ferry departs.

We scheduled in a couple of sightseeing days on Orkney's mainland either side of the Westray trip as we were aware that this could be a once in a lifetime experience. I arranged accommodation in a spacious AirBnB flat in Stomness - 2 bedrooms for £50 a night - incredible!

With the extra unexpected train journeys at each end, the long weekend trip turned into a long, long weekend trip. However, with ferries booked there was no backing out, and the itinerary looked as follows. It seems busy, but in fact there was plenty of travel contingency - no rushing and no more than one ferry trip a day!

Date	Travel
Thursday 25th Nov 2021	Oxfordshire → Glasgow → Balintore
Friday 26th Nov 2021	Balintore     → Stromness
Saturday 27h Nov 2021	Stromness  → Westray
Sunday 28th Nov 2021	Westray      → Stromness
Monday 29th Nov 2021	Stromness  → Balintore
Tuesday 30th Nov 2021	Balintore     → Glasgow → Oxfordshire

Day 1

Getting up to Balintore on the Thursday was a full day of travel. I had forgotten how relaxing a long train journey is as you get time to catch up with things. Masks were worn in "zones", on the train to London most people were wearing masks; on the train to Glasgow most people weren't.

Katherine picked me up at Glasgow Central. She had parked by the station: in English cities this would simply not be possible.,  I can't remember when I was last picked up. When you have no family, it is a real privilege. Ironically, the last time I used Glasgow Central I was an undergraduate and I would have been excited to be travelling "home" to my parents' house. An intense and unexpected feeling of loss struck me at the station, because it is some kind of time capsule for when my parents were still around.

We arrived late at night at Balintore Castle and went straight to bed. This was my first use of the castle as a stop-over, and it was frustrating not to be able to do anything e.g. there were a large quantity of wine glasses needing washed! :-)

Day 2

Katherine and I got up at 5:30 AM on the Friday morning at Balintore Castle to make sure we did not miss the Orkney ferry. We both have similar levels of paranoia, so there was no animosity. I was going to make porridge for breakfast, but at 5:50 AM we decided just to leave.

Driving in the dark, with wind and driving rain was pretty tiring for Katherine. Storm Arwen was operating at full force. However, Katherine declared herself up for extreme driving and with the coming of daylight she was much happier, then with the arrival of driving snow she was totally in her element. These were the first snows of winter: on the higher hills a considerable quantity of snow had already been deposited.

Katherine often plies the A9 between her home in Glasgow and her parents in Inverness, and mentioned that if there was to be snow it would be at the pass of Drumochter. Her prediction was spot on, there was SO much snow at Drumochter, that I feared for the rest of the journey. About an hour later, I got a call from the ferry company to say all of today's ferries had been cancelled (Friday), and this would likely be the case for tomorrow (Saturday) too.

I was asked what I wanted to do - cancel or reschedule? With no ferries today or tomorrow, there was no way we could make the dinner party, and we would just have to turn back. However, I told the lady from the ferry company that I would have to think about it, as our plans had been totally thrown.

Katherine was much the more resilient traveller, she suggested we could overnight in Thurso - not far from the ferry terminal and reassess the situation tomorrow morning, In the meanwhile she had some suggestions for touring in the area for the rest of the day. Katherine instructed me to rapidly book accommodation at the Pentland Hotel in Thurso, as many others would be stranded and also looking for accommodation. We could even do sections of the North Coast 500 driving route (NC500) round the north coast of Scotland on the way back to Glasgow if push came to shove.

I slowly resigned myself to the non-Orkney NC500 option, making the best of a bad deal. After all, I had always wanted to do the NC500.

We first stopped off at Katherine's friends Bob and Becky in Golspie. It was such a delight to meet lovely people for a normal coffee after all the bad ferry cancellation news. The added benefit is that Bob and Becky live at, and Bob works at, historic Golspie Mill producing artisan flour. One is never totally down in the dumps surrounded by beautiful architecture.

We then did Dornoch Castle and Cathedral; Dunrobin Castle; the Dunbeath Heritage Centre, and the Neolithic Camster Cairns !!!!!

I had always wanted to do Dornoch and Dunrobin Castles. However, the last thing I expected was to be visiting them on this trip. Dornoch Castle is a hotel in the centre of town, and has been on the market for some time and is currently pitched at £2.5m as the owner is of retirement age. Disregarding the £2.5m, I have considered Dornoch as an "already done up" prospect. Unless one was super rich, one would have to regard it as a hotel business rather than a residence and this is not me. Most people, including myself, want their castle home to be in the country and this is not Dornoch.

A member of staff kindly and courteously showed us around. She was however quite plain speaking. When I asked the significance of a carved "S" on a magnificent bedroom fireplace, the reply was "I don't have a f******g clue". :-) The staff member remembers well the occasion of Madonna's wedding to Guy Ritchie in town, with journalists clammering for rooms with views over the main street. Katherine told me of one photographer who lived in the cathedral's organ cabinet for 2 days to get exclusive shots, armed with food and an empty bottle (go figure). He was only routed on the final security sweep before the ceremony. It was said he was ex-army or special forces - hence his ability to withstand such conditions. He was ejected to jeers from the assembled press waiting outside, but he had been commissioned by a major title.

gorgeous bedroom in Dornoch Castle Hotel (note "S" on fireplace)

The hotel is in pretty good "ready to go" condition and while not ultimate top-end, staying here would be a positive experience. A number of the bedrooms are knock-out and the bar area has a huge vaulted medieval fireplace. The look is a mix of the contemporary and bare stone "historic" - the latter channelling the in-vogue "Game of Thrones" vibe. I am much more into historical authenticity -  whatever that means - but would have taken on Dornoch Castle had it been in poor condition and came in at a bargain price. This was the real deal 15th Century fortress, and Dornoch is a delightful, des-res town.

bar area at Dornoch Castle Hotel

I was interested in the heating system (cold is the bane of all castle owners) and newer bedrooms just had electric heating due to the sheer difficulty of bringing in pipework, However, these newer bedrooms were toasty warn, so I guess you just have to bite the bullet when paying the heating bill.

Dunrobin Castle and grounds were closed, so we just took in views of the building from the adjacent car park. Given the extreme cold outside we did this very quickly. It is one of the most amazing looking Scottish castles with a setting right on the coast, It felt very odd giving such a building short change and not going inside - the long planned trip in my head was nothing like this. Dunrobin has always stuck me as rather too French, and dare I say frou-frou?, to be a building that I would really love, However, I always suspend final judgement, especially as I have had good reviews from friends whose taste I respect. The lightning and incomplete nature of the visit, means the jury is still out.

Dunrobin Castle

Dunrobin Castle: porte-cochère 
N.B. ancient Roman stylee tripods & mermaid knockers

mermaid knockers (not mermaids' knockers)

We just happened to be driving past the Dunbeath heritage Centre and decided to stop in - Katherine mentioned a connection to the Scottish writer Neil M. Gunn who had been born in this hamlet at the mouth of a Highland river.

The staff opened the museum section of the centre specially for us, and it was great. The karma was extraordinary. One of Gunn's most rated novels is "Highland River" and this is at the top of my reading list. I am determined to do more Scottish Literature so I bought the book in the gift shop and was reading it on the trip. It is great and seeing the actual location that was the genesis of the story, makes everything come alive much more intently. The novel most people know is "The Silver Darlings", but I did a lot of digging to find out which books are regarded as the best of Scottish Literature, What I love is that the book is written in standard English - works in dialect can suffer from contrived-ness and impenetrability.

We spend a long time looking for Camster Cairns, recommended by Bob and Becky. They proved very elusive on the SAT NAV, and Google Timeline afterwards reveals much inefficient meandering.

Normally long-barrows are earthworks. These were stones piled up almost in organic forms, reminiscent of H. R. Giger. I never knew anything like these existed. Katherine and I were being blasted by sleet, so exploration involved physical suffering. The cairns were across a bog, so there were wooden walkways to access the monuments. However, there had been so much rain, sections of the walkways where themselves underwater. The water penetrated our shoes. 

Camster Cairns: long barrow (background) and round barrow (foreground)

Camster Cairns: one of the long barrow's inner chambers

Camster Cairns: one of the long barrow's crawl-in-only entry passages

There were small openings in the side of the cairns - with 2 feet high passageways. I started crawling into one - the floors were covered in water, the space was pitch black and after a certain distance I knew I wanted to get out - the only way was reversing - it was petrifying. If I had proceeded, would the passage have dwindled to nothing? I could have got stuck or the operation of reversing would have been even more lengthy and difficult.

We did climb into other openings that felt safer and we got our reward, these opened up into a central chamber where we would stand up, turn around and exit by crawling forwards. These were dark, spiritual spaces with huge stone slabs in similar configurations, including a massive "altar" stone whose transportation did not bear thinking about. It was such a relief to be out of the wind.

The wall construction was reminiscent of Skara Brae and this visit was a lesson that Skara Brae was not just an Orkney thing but representative of a wide-spread culture in the area.

We were almost broken by the exploration so it was a relief to check into the Pentland Hotel in Thurso that evening. This is an old-fashioned hotel that has been running as prestige accommodation for a long time and I can recommend (£60/room). I got the better room which I offered to Katherine, but by that time she had settled into her own. Storm Arwen was still ranging, but we decided to explore the flesh pots of Thurso that evening. We had identified an Indian restaurant in town, which we thought we would prefer to the predictability of dining in the hotel. "I wonder if you have a table for two" asked Katherine in the restaurant which was obviously completely empty. Katherine afterwards said she felt such a fool, but the beaming smile on the face of the waiter was most definitely worth it.

There were rumours of a Country and Western evening in the "British Legion Club" and of an "Italian Evening" in one of the cafes - in Thurso you have to take entertainment when it comes! :-) I understand Katherine has past form at this C&W event. 

We gained access to the British Legion Hall and talked to the club organisers - lovely people. A Country and Western band were going to perform at 9PM. We sat down with the intention of waiting, but Katherine realised it was not for another hour and we made our excuses and left. We asked at the café, but the Italian Gourmet evening was fully booked. We had thought we were doing the establishment a favour by dropping in as it was completely empty when we called round.

We went for a walk round the harbour area in the dark instead, and approached a rather intriguing small building with a sign that proclaimed "The Way Things Were". Looking in windows, and peering through the gloom in a manner akin to Howard Carter at Tutankhamen's tomb, revealed period interior set-ups, which were filled with junk/ephemera from the past. We finally sussed this was someone's house, but a number of street-facing rooms were dedicated to this mini-museum. How utterly fabulous!

We staggered reeling from the shock of this odd encounter with the past to a shop front with large angel dolls, perhaps a couple of feet high, with wings than flapped and arms that moved. These wings were lit up in multicoloured lights, and had an iridescent sheen. We reeled again - this time from the kitsch overload - and I defy anyone to distinguish this walk around Thurso after dark from a drug overdose.

We would re-visit "The Way Things Were" in the morning, and hoped it would be just as fabulous in the daylight. The illuminated angels were clearly creatures of the night, and we had already given them their finest hour.