Orkney Islands: Rousay

Thursday 22 July 2010



We had booked a day-trip to Rousay and found our way to yet another ferry terminal early in the morning. To our suprise, all the cars already there were backed into the car lanes. Sure enough, Bill had to reverse onto the ferry. This was the smallest of the ferries we had taken so far and we didn't bother to get out of the car for the short trip. It was another nice day and we were very excited about all the various sites packed on the small island.

Our first stop was the Knowe of Yarso – a chambered cairn more than 4500 years old. It was up a hill overlooking the Eynhallow Sound and the Mainland. The location was stunning and the cairn itself had a special atmosphere.

Next we went to Blackhammer Cairn next – another chambered tomb of about the same age. It had a retractable roof over the top and it was quite humid and mossy inside. The views back towards the Mainland were stunning and we were enjoying our lesuirely exploration with hardly another soul in sight.

Our next stop was a walk down to the beach to see the Midhowe Tomb (housed inside a barn) and the Mid Howe Broch. We visited the cairn first – it was stunning despite its slightly surreal setting. It is the longest and largest cairn in the Orkneys and dates back to 3500 BC. Because it wasn't grassed over like the others, we could see the designs of the stones that made up the outer walls. The roof was missing and there were walkways above it so we could look down into the cairn (access into the cairn itself wasn't allowed). The walled “boxes” along the side were similar to what we had seen at the two other cairns – just a lot more of them.

Very close by, overlooking the beach, was the ruins of the Mid Howe Broch – an iron age building for people to live in. I was particularly impressed by this – there were hearths still on the floor, cupboards built into the walls and you could really imagine families living there.

On the other side of the cairn were a set of ruins from the times of the clearances. All of the village was just a set of ruined buildings stretched out next to the beach. With the sun shinning it was becoming one of our nicest days of our holiday.

We continued our drive around the island, passing many more deserted houses from the clearances. We stopped at Saviskaill Beach to see if we could see and seals and to our delight, soon spotted a group of the spotted Common Seals on the rocks with their pups. We stayed to watch for a bit and walked along the beach but decided to keep going before having lunch.

We had lunch on the side of the road with a stunning view out to sea. There was a large marble block sculpture in the field, but it was way too windy there for us to have our picnic outside.

Afterwards we drove to the Faraclett Peninsula to do the walk around the head of it. We were particularly looking for the standing stone called Yetnasteen which apparently goes walking for a drink every New Year. We were wondering if had gone walking and not come back as we couldn't see it anywhere and we'd virtually completed the walk before we spotted it in the local farmer's field. The walk itself was great with skuas dive bombing us repeatedly as we walked around the cliffs. The walk was longer and a bit more strenuous than what we'd anticipated, so when we got back to the car we simply chilled in the sun until it was time to back the car onto the ferry for the return trip.

We finsihed our day by having a rather mediocre curry in Kirkwall and then checking out the Ring of Brodgar again around sunset.