Travelling the UK in 2008

Orkney Islands…
Getting in touch with my inner Viking.

Getting to the Orkney’s is a pain in the bum. From Inverness it’s a four hour train trip, then a thirty minute bus ride and then a 40 minute ferry and then another twenty-five minute bus. This will get you to Kirkwall the capital of the Orkney Islands.

This route will also take you past John o’Groats, which I was delighted to find was as disappointing as I’d hoped. Let’s face it JoG is famous but for absolutely no reason. It is neither the furtherest point north or west on mainland Britian. I didn’t have very high expectations when I went there but had to go because I’d been to Lands End, which at least is the most easterly point on Mainland Britian.

The SYHA in Kirkwall was weird, it reminded me of being in an episode of Get Smart. You know in the credits Maxwell has to pass through all those doors in a straight corridor, that was the Kirkwall hostel. A bit disconcerting if you need to get up in the middle of the night. I was surprised when I got to Kirkwall to find that a girl I’d meet in Newcastle was there with a Haggis tour it was nice to see someone friendly in such a remote place. And she got my Haggis tour leader too.

It was really difficult to get any information on buses in the Orkney’s until I actually got there. In fact the only timetables I did get, from the very unhelpful woman at the Tourist Information who was too busy having a private phone conversation to actually help at JoG, were two years old. So I got there, and found out that if I wanted to see all the great sites on the Orkney’s I needed to do a tour. I booked into two days of tours with Wild About Orkney – run by a guy called Mike and his wife Christie.

That gave me a day to look around Kirkwall, which was frankly too long. There’s only three attractions the Cathedral and the Earl’s and Bishop’s Palaces. Despite everything telling me how great the Cathedral was, I didn’t rate it against Canterbury, York or even Newcastle. The Earl’s and Bishop’s Palaces were interesting though.

Kirkwall is quite claustrophobic. The streets are the same colour as the houses and they’re very close together. After I while I just wanted to get out of there, which I did. I moved to another town called Stromness, which was a lot nicer.

The next day I got picked up for my tour by Mike who was really nice. He told me he was 70 but seemed way younger. We picked up the other people on our tour and headed off to see the Orkneys. The tour started by seeing the Churchill Barriers – basically concrete barriers that have been used to block the passage through four of the islands in the Orkneys. This formed a causeway that allowed traffic to get around with ease.

The highlight of the day, was the Italian Chapel. In World War II, the Italian P.O.Ws were allowed to create the Italian Chapel, as part of the work they did on the Churchill Barriers. They used two Nissen huts and by using the things they could get around them (laterns out of Corned beef tins) created a church equal in beauty to anything I’ve seen anywhere. One POW in particular painted the walls with frescoes and without plaster, the paint work looks like it’s in 3D. It’s really amazing. Probably the highlight out of everything I saw in the Orkneys.

The tour went on to the Tomb of the Eagles, which was found completely at random by a farmer, who noticed that some of the rocks he was seeing were placed together quite regularly. He dug a little bit around the area and found himself staring into a tomb with over 300 human skulls. It was a tomb from the neolithic age, containing lots and lots of eagles talons, as well as the bodies. The farmer told the authorities but they didn’t come and excavate the site, so after 20 years he did it himself. It was a remarkable discovery and story.

On the following day, I did another tour with Mike, who had with him the new boy Chris who was about to start doing tours as well. This tour took you to all the neolithic and bronze age sites on the Orkneys. It started a Maes Howe, a “tomb” although they don’t really know if that’s what it was. The most interesting thing about the site was the runes, carved into the rocks by norsemen who broke into it in the 1200s. Most of them were just graffiti – Thor woz ‘ere and that sort of thing. Seeing those runes I thought that somewhere there could be one from my very long distant relation. No doubt his would be something witty and intelligent – like me.

There were so many neolithic sites on that tour, from Maes Howe you go to the standing stones of Stenness and then the Ring of Brodgar. Both of which are a lot like Stonehenge, although a lot older. Big stones stuck in the ground that no one really has any idea what they were for. There was some idea that maybe the stones at the ring of Brodgar formed a place where the different tribes met, as the stones were grouped in fives but there is no way we’ll ever know.

The tour went onto Skara Brae, a neolithic village that was uncovered when a severe storm hit the Orkneys in the 1860s. It was interesting to see how the neolithic people lived. They had running water through their houses about 2000 years before the Roman’s did. Pretty remarkable.

Frankly after Skara Brae, I kind of tuned out. There was just so much that it all become a bit lost on me after that. We went to the Broch of Gurness, which is a round tour from the early ADs, built they believe as a defensive measure but I’d lost the time line by here. We’d moved about 5000 years forward in history in the space of a 5 mile drive. We’d gone from the Neolithic through to the Vikings and Picts.

I liked the Orkneys but found it a long way to go. The landscape is fairly barren, as the roaring winds make it difficult for the trees to grow. Mike who ran the tours was amazing and if it wasn’t for him, I doubt I would have enjoyed it quite so much. It’s perhaps interesting to note, that everyone who seemed to be involved in the tourist industry were Orcadians by choice rather than by birth. I got the feeling that the Orcadians would just as soon you not be there -they weren’t overly friendly, except in tourist areas.

Again, there has been a problem with internet access…. so here’s a summary of the last weeks events.

Glasgow.
A city of contradictions.

Ah Glasgow, what can you say about it? The city centre isn’t pretty but the west end is. There isn’t much tourist wise but it has one of the most popular museums in the UK. It has a vibrant nightlife, where you have to dress up to get into a club but a problem with public drunkeness. Its a somewhat crumbling city that is overshadowed by Edinburgh but it’s bigger and louder. For these reasons it has a bit of a PR problem but it is a real city where people go to work, go out, drink and live.

I got to experience all these parts of Glasgow in the two days I was there. A group of people from the hostel went out and because we couldn’t get into a club, we stood on the street listening to this amazing busker with some of the more dodgy Glaswegians. There were lots of police around (about 8 in about 40 minutes), we were offered alcohol and while the police were two metres away a drag on a spliff (an marajuana cigarette for the uninitiated), which we declined. One of the people standing there listening was fined by the police for being drunk and disorderly.

There are however, a few interesting things to do. I did this self guided walking tour of Glasgow, that took you past some of the more notable buildings from the glory days. Most interesting was the Necropolis, where huge crumbling remains of monuments to the dead stood. It’s a bit of a metaphor for the city, as most of them had seen better days. There is also this odd but sort of cool museum called St Mungo’s Museum for Religious Life which had icons and information about the worlds major religions. It was interesting to see how Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Hindis viewed life, marriage, death and the universe.

The most popular thing to do in Glasgow is the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery. Like most museums it has in it’s collection stuffed animals that were so popular in the Victorian era. Instead of showing them as here’s an elephant, they use them in a display of the best in the animal kingdom and as information on conservation. The single best thing in the museum though, is Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross. It’s an amazing painting showing Jesus on the cross from the perspective of him looking down on us. It uses dark colours for the sky and Jesus hanging on the cross makes a semi-circular shape with his arms and body. (I’m not that good at describing it so everyone should just google it) Despite it being Dali, it’s one of the most amazing paintings I’ve ever seen.

Walking in Glencoe.
Climb every mountain, forde every stream (btw finally get what fording every stream in that song means).

I was so excited by this walking holiday in the Scottish highlands. It was going to be the highlight of my trip. That part of Scotland is so beautiful, lochs and mountains everywhere you look. It should have been spectacular… Instead it was lots of hard work and a bit stressful. When it comes to Scotland, I think they need to remove the whole holiday thing from the title because walking (read hiking and sometimes climbing) isn’t wonderful and relaxing.

All the walks in that area are quite hard, even the easy walks are considered at an immediate level in other places in England. The first day was easy enough. Tammy and I were in the front for most of the way. Coming down it was harder because it was wet and we were walking on scree. One of the ladies with us nearly fell down the side of the mountain because of the slippery conditions. Luckily she wasn’t hurt. But we got to the bottom, with me only slipping over three times.

Both Tammy and I decided to try something more challenging the next day. So I went on the intermediate walk. It was the hardest walk I’ve ever done in my whole life. It was, I was told, harder in the first part than the hard walk.

It all started well for me, a nice steep climb uphill, just to clean the lungs out, which left me sweating and gasping for air but this wasn’t the hard bit… We had to cross a stream on a wooden bridge. The leader of the walk told me that I should walk on the balls of my feet and lean forward. Absolutely the best advice ever. Next thing I knew I was toppling forward… Going, going, gone. I was just grateful that I didn’t break my Calvin Kleins (who ever thought I’d use those words in a sentence). It also earned me a couple of stunning bruises on my hands and wrist. Shaken but relatively unharmed. But this still wasn’t the hard bit…

We then walked for a while and came to a river, one had a bridge (no slipping) the other we had to forde. This meant that I had to find rocks that weren’t slippery to get across to the other side. Even with the leader John going put your foot here, I was still shitting myself (sorry couldn’t think of a polite way of putting that). This still wasn’t the hard bit…

No the hard bit was after we crossed the river. We had what seemed like a vertical climb uphill on springy heather and tussock ground. You put your foot down but the springyness made you sink, which then meant you needed twice as much effort to pull it up again and take the next step. Added to this was the steepness of the mountain and it went on and on for what seemed like forever. I’m somewhat embarassed to say (because I was the youngest person on the holiday) that I needed help to get up there. I was struggling.

After what seemed like a lifetime, but was about two hours we got to the top of this hill with a cairn. The views were spectacular. There was still snow on most of the hills and you could even see the peak of Ben Nevis. All around you were lochs and mountains, it was beautiful. You could see almost to the isle of Skye. It was almost worth the effort to get there.

I didn’t feel any satisfaction at my achievement, mostly I wish I’d gone to a nice sunny beach where they have drinks with umbrellas. But actually I’m glad I got up that hill because I had to tell myself that I was going to keep going no matter what. I mean, I either had to go up or down, go on, go back but standing still wasn’t an option and being a philosophical kind of gal I took all sorts of lessons from the whole day.

There were three highlights that day for me, the view, since I need to take some comfort out of the whole thing but seriously if I had of known it would be that hard I’d have just brought the postcard; gunning the last 2.5km (down hill on a proper surface) in about 20 minutes and the help both emotionally and physically from my fellow walkers.

The third day of the walking tour, everyone except for four of us wanted to go up Ben Nevis. Tammy really wanted me to go with her but I realised that I could have made it but not in the time frame they had set out to do it in. With no other options available I had to go on the easy walk. It was sort of nice. A bit boring but we did get to see two birds of prey circling each other protecting their territory. We could see at various times the other group up on mountain and when they started walking in the snow we were glad we could look over Fort William instead.

I did find the whole walking thing stressful; keeping pace and not trying to look like a total loser who couldn’t keep up, in front of people who were on the most part well older than me. All the other parts of the holiday were great though. Everyone was really nice and I made friends with three really nice people. The whole setup of the holiday was cool too. You just decided the night before what you wanted for lunch and dinner and volia, there it was when you turned up. They gave you a massive array of snacks to take with you on the walks that grew expedentially over the three days I was there. And I had a room of my own, with a shower I know had been cleaned in the last month, after coming from a 12 bed dorm in Glasgow it was heaven.

Oh and I wowed everyone with my knowledge of Scottish history. One night we did this quiz where I outgunned the English people because I knew that the Stone of Scone is reputedly a toilet seat and the whisky translated from Gaelic means the water of life. Everyone was seriously impressed. At least we know that something goes into that vacant space in my head that apparently doesn’t come out the other side that easily.

Oban, Mull, Iona.

I’d been to Oban once before really hadn’t seen that much of it, alas it was going to be the same this time as I didn’t get there until nearly 8.00pm. Oh and I know hold the world record for time spent in Ballachulish. I watched the sun set over the harbour though, which was nice. Mostly I went to Oban to go out to Mull.

I don’t actually know where Mull got it’s name from but it’s a pretty island about forty minutes by ferry from Oban. I ended up getting to the capital Tobermory at around lunch but there’s literally nothing to do that doesn’t require travelling (and the buses aren’t that frequent), so basically I looked in all the shops and sat by the harbour in the sun. Tobermory is really pretty. The main street faces the harbour and the houses are all painted in bright colours.

The next day I had to get up really early to get the bus to Iona. Nothing is simple when you have infrequent public transport and single track roads. It was a two hour bus ride and a ten minute ferry ride to Iona.

Iona is lovely. You can stay on Iona but mostly you just go there for the Abbey started by St Columba in around 700 AD. There is also a nunnery that was started in the 13th century. It is believed that the Book of Kells was written there, before being transferred for safety, to Ireland. The abbey is small but it’s been rebuilt and you can now live there for a while if you want. There is also pilgrimages every Tuesday.

The highlight of the Abbey is the burial stones and crosses one of which has been standing in front of the Abbey for 1200 years. There is something about idea that makes me all warm and fuzzy. Think of all the people who have seen it, all the millions of people in 1200 years that have seen that cross. Pilgrams, tourists, kings. The Viking raiders couldn’t remove it, nor wars, nor any of the kings of England, or even the weather. It’s just stood there, lighting the path of people, without us having to do any conservation work on it. It is a wonderful thing.

There is also a graveyard, where they are reasonably certain that Duncan and MacBeth (not just characters from a Shakespeare play – they’re actually early kings of Scotland) are both buried there but they’re not sure where and if any of the fantastic burial stones in the museum are theirs. It was the burial place of all the early Scottish Kings. It was a lovely day, even if the promised sunshine didn’t eventuate.

On the trip back from Iona there was a traffic jam, there were five cars and a bus going one way and one car coming the other way. It takes a very long time to sort out this on a single track road, especially for the oncoming driver who usually has to reverse and find a passing place before they can move on. Although the scenery at that end of Mull was really lovely, it does make a tedious journey when your stopping every two minutes to let some pass you.

After Oban, which I still haven’t seen properly, I travelled onto Inverness, where I have absolutely nothing to tell you. Seriously, unless you have a car you can’t get around on public transport on a Sunday. And now I’m in… Well the whole place I’m in now is so cool, it deserves its own blog when I leave.

I've so forgotten what day I'm up too.... And because I've had so much trouble with getting internet access this is more of a summary of the last week. Northern England. When I left you last, I was in the ... [Continue reading this entry]