A 'bitty' day.

Apart from Dounby show we toured round a bit and explored some more coastline.

Warebeth, near Stomness.

Unstan chambered cairn.

Walking west from the Breck near Houton - a good walk - strange to come across anti - submarine netting on the shore. 

Dounby Show 2017

Off to Dounby Show today - not as much was made of stock as at our local show in Cumbria and there were a lot more trade stands. Disappointingly, there wasn't an industrial tent of any kind. The rain held off though.

Houton to Hoy ...

Setting off on the ferry this morning was great - a lovely day on Hoy. Having been to the Scapa Flow and Visitor Centre kind of puts the view in context! Two very different views from Houton.

The Scapa Flow museum was excellent and well deserved of the funding that has been gained for a complete overhaul over the next couple of years.

The Scapa Flow museum - free - on Hoy.

Hoy! - The Old Man ..

A gorgeous day and a spectacular walk - staying at the bothy in Rackwick..or camping, is now on my list of things to do! ...together with, slightly unrealistically, climbing the old man!

Bearberry

Great Skua - a very obliging one at that!

Hoy!.....Red-throated divers and the Dwarfie Stane.

Another glorious day after an inauspicious start...and we were on our way to Hoy. This time we took the car so that we could do as much of the island as we wished. It's advisable to book a couple of days in advance for the ferry.

Red-throated divers on 'The Water of Hoy' .

The Dwarfie Stone,  a chambered tomb carved out of a glacial erratic.
Visitors to the Dwarfie Stane included a British spy in 1850, Major William Mounsey, who carved in Persian script ‘I have sat two nights and have learned patience.’ ..some think this was a reference to the midges!

Rousay - three chambered cairns: Blackhammer and Taversoe Tuick

Our second chambered cairn was Blackhammer, which like the Knowe of Yarso had a main subdivided chamber. Unlike the previous cairn access was through the newly constructed roof!

The flora beside the road was pretty spectacular too....

The third chambered cairn, Taversoe Tuick, has the unusual arrangement of two chambers being set above each other, with a third smaller chamber lying outside the main cairn. The only other similar on Orkney is on Eday. At the time of use the two chambers were accessed independently from the hillside, today you can climb down into the lower chamber.

..and then a lovey ferry journey back to the Mainland.

Rousay - three chambered cairns: the Knowe of Yarso.

On the most glorious of days we caught the ferry, as foot passengers, across to Rousay and walked along the road to the three chambered cairns. All very different in their own way. 

The ferry arriving at Tingwall - today it was the Shapinsay
 - not the usual one but it was Shapinsay show day,
 so there had been a swap around. 

Not a bad view from the road!

The first cairn was Knowe of Yarso - The modern roof had been added for protection but the inside shows evidence of a double skin - a feature of many cairns on Orkney.Inside the chamber is divided into stalls by upright stones. Due to the roof it's a damp tomb - hence the algae and green haze! Which made for a more colourful sketch! The bones of 29 adults were found when it was excavated.