Our first island
09 May 2017
We packed up late on Thursday morning, and headed for Stromness, via the southern road through Houton and Orphir. We noticed a Historic Scotland site down by the water, so we went to investigate, and discovered a lovely coastal walk. Once we arrived in Stromness we checked out the campsite and Ju booked us in online to one of the free pitches on hard standing by the edge of the pier. We left our little wooden reserved sign on the electrical outlet, together with our long cable. We carry two ever since we toured Ireland a couple of years ago, and noticed that on some campsites the electrical outlets are far from the pitches. I reckon if we plugged our two together we could manage over thirty metres, maybe even forty.
We found the address of 'All4Paws' dog grooming centre, and abandoned Jack to his fate, for a remarkable three hours. Then we drove to the ferry terminal and parked, paid our pound for a few hours' parking, and headed for the Ferry Inn, of which we had many fond memories on former trips to this lovely town. After a pint of lager shandy, which we enjoyed at a table set outside in the alleyway, We strolled along the main street and went into the Stromness Museum, which was much as I remembered it.
The custodian was a very chatty,woman, and I asked her about the new publication, which made no mention of that other Stromness, in South Georgia. I knew I had drawn a blank when she admitted she didn't know why it had been named after the town.
We walked back in search of a fish shop, in vain, and instead went to the butcher's shop we had made much use of in 2011 on our voyage on Little Else. We found that it stocked crabmeat, so bought some for tomorrow's lunch.
Later we drove round the top of the bay to the industrial estate ner the new secondary school, and came upon a real fish shop, which was unfortunately closed. Our three hours were up, so we went to pick Jack up and he was looking fantastic, and smelling even better. You do wonder what they use to shampoo dogs with, that smells so pungently on their fur for days!
Back to the campsite, where we reclaimed our pitch, beside a nice couple, real kindred spirits, in a similar van to ours. As we had dinner later we watched the local boat club race their dinghies round the cans in the harbour, only nudging over a bit when the Hamnavoe had to have space to reach her berth for the night.
It was a perfectly calm night, hardly any wind, and in the morning we woke to a dense mist over everything. Two yachts crept out of the harbour round Point of Ness, almost invisibly.
As time went by it slowly cleared, and became a wonderfully sunny day. We packed up and left for Dounby, where the Coop sells petrol cheaper than elsewhere. And we stocked up on dinners for a few days, as we were unsure how easy it would be to shop on Rousay. We drove then over the gently rolling hills to the north of mainland, at Evie, then drove down to the ferry at Tingwall.
I noticed that vehicles have to reverse on to this ferry, and was not looking forward to that in the slightest. The queue was funny to look at, as we were first and all the other vehicles had to reverse towards us and park. Then suddenly I thought I saw a familiar face. A man in a red sweater was walking around the end of the queue talking into a mobile phone. Ju made some comment about him being lucky he had a signal, because we had the dreaded 'no service' on ours. I asked her for the binoculars and had a discreet look. Yes, it was our second sighting of an Orcadian Lib Dem politician in a few days (Jim Wallace on Sunday). Alastair Carmichael himself! And he was about to travel on our ferry to Rousay! I stopped myself from leaping out of the van and delivering a few suggestions as to his chances in the GE being fairly slim, but reckoned that enough people are probably doing that already, without some random tourist like me joining in!
On Rousay we soon found the hostel/campsite, but not the hard standing with power we had prebooked. It is a lovely site, overlooking Eynhallow Sound, where the ferry plies by all day to Egilsay and Wyre, two nearby islands, as well as Rousay. Finally Ju went and found the campsite manager, who simply pointed over the wall into a corner of the next field, which was the spot we wanted! Excellent.
After a few minor problems with the power supply which the manager came and fixed, we were set for the night.
We decided however before setting up camp properly, that we would do a circuit of the island in the van to see where the various attractions are, and to get a general impression of its overall size.
Around nine miles altogether, with great views from the high land at the north end, over to Westray.
Let's do the chicken in the Cobb, Ju suggested, when we got back. We have recently bought an extension for the dome, and she was eager to try it out, with a pyrex dish full of sweet potatoes, onion, carrot and green pepper in there as well, effectively under the chicken. I lit the cobblestone with the usual flourish of the blowtorch, and we set up the Cobb to do the business. We weren't happy about the temperature of the dome however, it was cool enough to put hands on, when ideally during cooking it should be too warm to touch. Sure enough, at the end of the allotted cooking time the chicken wasn't looking nearly brown enough. So Ju set off to the hostel and put on the oven to 200 degrees. Some little time later we sat down at the hostel table to a fine chicken dinner. There were no other occupants, so for one evening it was all ours. It is a really fine hostel, with all kinds of crockery, pans, coffee percolators, fridge, cooker, books, cds and player. Fantastic!
Saturday dawned with dense mist, again. We are getting used to this. Once the sun gets up the mist burns off and a lovely day ensues.
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