Friday, August 17, 2007 Thurso
like so many Scottish northern towns is gray. The buildings are built with
gray block or gray stone and they all have gray slate roofs; there is very
little color in the architecture, but I have found the people to be friendly
and even colorful in some ways, like the way they speak, for example. This
part of Scotland does not have much in the way of natural resources; there
are no forests for timber, and the soil is nutrient-poor so sheep and cattle
graze, and hay is grown for winter feed. I have seen neither corn nor wheat
growing. They have very hairy type of cattle known as “hielan coos.”
 The
sea is perhaps the greatest source of food in the highlands. However, the
gray stone is abundant and so it’s the traditional building material. Even
farm houses and barns are built of stone.The Royal Hotel (there’s one in every ton, it seems), around the corner from Sandra’s Backpackers Hostel, where I am staying, held a “Gathering of the Tartans,” ceilidh (clay-dee). This was not an extravagant event, rather, it was more like a small town dance party. People of all ages, including many families, attended the party; the music and dancing were great. Many people were dressed in traditional kilts. A full adult kilt outfit can cost $1,000 or more. Tartan dress is very colorful. So with a local brew, I sat and watched the traditional Scottish dances, and listened to the bagpipes and the band. Three women from Australia shared the table with me. One of the women was active in Scouting, and went back to her room to bring me some of the Australian contingent patches for the World Jamboree. She had visited the Jamboree, and was very interested in the amateur radio section here I had worked. Her friends in Australia, are “hams,” and I gave her my card with my call sign and email address. The MC for the event, a kilt bedecked Scottish gentleman, introduced the performers, and announced where visitors were from. There were some other Americans in the audience although I did not get to meet any of them. The MC also told stories and a joke, but warned us that only the Scots would understand the joke. He was right. The joke was about bonnie Prince Charlie fooling the English into believing that he escaped from the Isle of Skye. According to the joke, Charlie lived out his full life on Skye and when he died, was cut up into small pieces. The punch line: “Charlie is ‘na a wa.’” Of course, neither the Australians at my table nor I got it. So when I got a chance, I asked the MC to tell me what the last two words of the joke meant. He said, “na a wa” means “now a wall.” At least I know what he said, but I still don’t understand the joke. However, the Scottish people laughed, and enjoyed it. I stayed at the ceilidh until a little after 10:00 p.m., and then walked back to the hostel only to find someone in my bed! Evidently, someone had over booked the beds in the hostel. Richard, a sixteen-year-old boy had the night shift at the hostel, and he was a little flustered by the situation. I got my bed back after some discussion, but now the English fellow who thought he had a bed to sleep in, needed a place to stay. The hostel was completely full, as is almost every accommodation in Thurso. August is the traditional month for “holidays” here in the U.K., and finding a place to stay can be a challenge if you don’t have a reservation (as I discovered too). In the morning, I learned that Richard had to call the owner of the hostel to resolve the problem. The English fellow wound up staying in the owner’s home for the night. The big challenge for me was arranging for the ferry journeys to the Orkney Islands, and eventually onwards to Norway. The ferries leave from a harbor village called Scrabster, a few miles out of Thurso. The people in the ticket office at the ferry terminal in Scrabster could only provide information about the Norway ferry as they only book the Orkney Ferry. Their advice after giving me information about possible schedules was to try to book my reservations on-line. The first part of the journey was not hard; I got a reservation to Stromness in Orkney for Monday. However, trying to make a booking for the ferry to Bergen, Norway, proved too hard. The Norwegian ferry company, Smyril, has the most complicated web site, and the booking area was not operational yet. However, a local travel agency here in Thurso is an agent for Smyril, and the people there were quite helpful. I booked an overnight ferry from Scrabster to Bergen for a week from Monday, August 27, 2007. So I am going to have a week to roam around the Orkney Islands. Originally, I had hoped to go to both the Orkney Islands and to the Shetland Islands, but there is not a good way to do so in the one week available to me. The next ferry to Bergen would be two weeks later, and I did not want to spend that much time waiting. The ferry between Orkney and Shetland runs overnight. It would basically take three days to go to the Shetlands, and return to Orkney and then return again to Scrabster to catch the ferry to Norway. That’s too much to do in one week. There are other islands to visit, like the Faeroes and Harris, but not on this trip. The ferry from Scrabster to Bergen takes more than sixteen hours. It leaves around 11:00 p.m., and arrives the next day after 4:00 p.m. The fare is surprisingly low for me, both because I am “senior” and because I did not reserve a cabin on the ferry. Instead of a cabin, I have a “couchette,” a sleeping seat. With travel arrangements completed, it was time to explore the North. Dunnet Head is as far north as you can go in the U.K. Dunnet Head is a high cliff jutting out into the North Sea; Dunnet Head has a lighthouse, and footpaths along the coast. A little further on is John O’Groats, with a small ferry dock, and an old hotel landmark. The name is an English version of the Dutch name, Jan de Groots. There are some tourist shops at John O’Groats too, but this northern coastal area does not have a lot in the way of civilization. Saturday, August 18, 2007 My car rental contract ends officially today, and I have to return to Inverness to return the car. From Thurso, it’s about a four-hour drive to Inverness along the northeast coast, on a good “A” road. I had not been able to make a lodging reservation in Inverness as everything was full, but I had no choice and had to drive back to return the car. The people in the Highlander Hostel where I stayed before, remembered me. Although they had no beds, they offered to let me sleep on the couch in the common room. I readily accepted their offer, and actually had a comfortable night sleep. The common room and kitchen close around 11:30 p.m.; there is a bathroom just down the hall. The arrangements worked out well. Sunday, August 19, 2007 In the morning, I returned the rental car. Since the rental car office is closed Sunday, I had to drop the key into a slot, and leave the car parked near the office. The bus back to Thurso leaves Inverness just before noon. I had made a reservation at Sandra’s hostel before leaving Thurso, so I had a place to stay when I got back. Tomorrow afternoon, I leave for Orkney. Chatting with the owner’s back at Sandra’s, we discovered that we had scouting in common. It turns out they are involved as adult commissioners and that their son is the leader of one of the units in the area. They asked me if I would like to attend a meeting when I returned from the Orkney’s, and I readily accepted. I offered to show some pictures both of the World Jamboree and of my troop. Monday, August 20, 2007 Two Italian fellows from the hostel and I shared a taxi to the Scrabster ferry terminal. Our ferry, the “Hamnavoe,” (Norse) is only four years old, and looks very new inside. The trip to the town of Stromness on Orkney only takes a couple of hours. The sea was not too rough, but I could definitely feel the ferry roll. I spent most of the crossing talking to Mario, an English fellow who had also stayed at the hostel in Thurso. We had a long conversation about his travels. He is a cycling enthusiast, and has cycled about 300 miles despite the rainy weather. He brought his bike on the ferry, and it was chained in the car parking area. He told me his bike had 14 gears internal to the rear wheel hub. It reminded me of the old “Sturmey Archer” three gear bikes of my youth, but of course, his bike is new technology and quite expensive. In Stromness, the car I had reserved was waiting for me at the dock; I signed the papers and took off to the “metropolis” of Kirkwall, about 15 miles away. The car is a Renault “Scenic.” It’s sort of a small minivan with four doors and a rear lift up door. My hostel is about a ten minute walk from the center of the town. Kirkwall has a famous old cathedral, St. Magnus. It dates back to the start of the 12th century, almost a thousand years ago. The cathedral is built of yellow and red sandstone, and is an impressive structure. St. Magnus was a Norse nobleman, an Earl. The cathedral has a plaque with a prayer to St. Magnus that reads, “Magnus of fame, on the barque of the heroes, on the crest of the waves, on the sea, on the land, aid and preserve us, Amen.” In the evening, I walked around Kirkwall after visiting the cathedral. The fellow sharing my room at the hostel, Alan Podber, is an American from Brooklyn. He’s a retired social worker whose avocation is traditional music. Before coming to Orkney, he visited Ireland and Northern Scotland attending many musical events. He had been part of an American “old time” music and blues band called The Delaware Water Gap, and he plays mandolin. I think I actually heard of his band many years ago, but I am not sure. Alan shared many stories with me about musicians and music, and best of all gave me some leads on where to go to hear more traditional music while I’m here. Alan also let me rip several of his CD’s to my computer. Tuesday, August 21, 2007 Orkney has an amazing history, and it has the oldest human built settlement on the planet. About five thousand years ago, long before the Egyptians built the pyramids, people built a settlement here on Orkney now called Skara Brae. A storm in the 1980’s washed away some of the soil and uncovered a stone village with about eight homes. Archaeologists have excavated the site, and now an amazing World Heritage Site exists on former farmland. The people who lived here during the Neolithic period were part of a stone-age civilization that grew wheat and other crops, hunted wild game including deer, and fished both in the ocean and in the lakes and rivers. What’s so amazing is the sophistication of their houses. Each of the almost identical eight houses that have been uncovered is shaped like an igloo. A circular wall of stone formed the sides of the houses, and stone extensions formed the entrances. The roofs were most likely teepee shaped timbers covered with animal hides. Inside each house is a set of stone shelves next to the wall opposite the entrance, a fireplace in the center of the room on the ground. The sleeping boxes, made of stone slabs, form a border around the sides of the igloo. The shelves held food, and valuable objects like bone jewelry, and the sleeping boxes were filled with soft materials like grass and covered with animal skins. In addition to the houses, these people built large circular areas with stone pillars, like the ones at Stonehenge, only these are older by almost three thousand years!  Unlike
Stonehenge, you can walk right up to the pillars here in Orkney. I visited
two sites: one site had only about eight pillars, but the other site was
massive with at least 25 pillars. The first site is called Stenness, and the
second site is called the Ring of Brodgar. These are truly incredible
places.Another aspect of this civilization was the absence of weapons. Archaeologists think the people at Skara Brae were quite isolated, and they simply were not threatened by anyone. Based on what has been found at Skara Brae, scientists conclude the land was more fertile, and the climate milder than it is now. While the Orkney Islands are basically treeless today, there were forests and abundant game here five thousand years ago. No one really knows where these people came from, but it is thought they may have come from what is today Northern Scotland. It’s also suggested that as sea levels rose, much of the fertility of the land around Skara Brae was lost, the forests gave way to shrub and grass lands, and the animals became scarce, and the population dwindled as people moved away. Amazingly, there’s nothing else like this on Earth. It would be another two thousand years before the Bronze Age, and the introduction of metal. Here on Orkney, the oldest human settlement is preserved for us to see. Philip Sternberg Scoutmaster, Troop 1131 |