For years I wondered what was going on here, way above our heads as we prepared to end the 2004 season of archaeological excavations at Quoygrew, Orkney.
Then I saw this.
orkney
Nobody Expects The Orkney Haar
Surely my eyes have blown a fuse. The world is blank – not a hole (because holes are *in* something) but a total absence, a blackness filled with light.
Vertigo sweeps over me. And…that strange muddled sense of depth, like when you’re drifting off to sleep in a darkened room and suddenly you can’t tell if the ceiling is a million miles away or pressed against your face.
If I look down, the illusion is broken by the ship’s side-wake, curling outwards like scraped butter, but if I tilt my gaze so everything disappears from my peripheral vision, I’m floating once more. The view is a featureless aether lit by a coin of light wan enough to stare at. I drift, spiritually untethered, a sense of peace filling my entire….
…!!!!
Dear god.
Obviously. Obviously they would have…sounded the...fog-horn. Because we’re…in fog.
But…couldn’t they WARN us first?
Suddenly the horizon is back, in the time it takes you to read this sentence.
Behind us, the ship’s wake appears and lengthens. Are we picking up speed? No – it’s the fog we’re emerging from, revealing the mark of our passage like a meteorological magic trick.
Here in Orkney, a sea-fog or haar can descend at any time. In this case it’s in the middle of a sunny July day (2009).
This confuses me. Fog needs the kind of cool, damp air you’d find in Winter? But then I remembered the haar I met in August 2006 when I slept rough on the Orkney Mainland. Why fog in summer? The answer is wind, or rather a lack of it – during the Winter months, the incessant wind picks up enough to blow the fog away. It’s always around, developing wherever there’s a pronounced temperature difference between sea and sky …but Winter is more adept at moving it along, presumably to make room for some real weather.
A few days later, I emerge from my tent at Chalmersquoy on Westray after an afternoon nap to find everything smudged with haar. I watch (cursing at my camera’s inability to do it justice) as it rolls down from the hills and blankets the middle of Pierowall bay, a strip of cloud as discrete as a contrail – and as it dissipates, the buildings at the opposite side of the bay emerge, rising like the Golden Gate…
Images: Mike Sowden, 2009.
Why I Love Your Travel Writing
I love the way you write.
Seriously. Such a thrill. I’ve read a lot of travel writing online and offline, and it’s such a relief to read someone who truly gets it. I love your stuff.
And here’s three reasons why. (more…)
Orkney, via New York
A typically fickle-looking Orkney sky – 2009.
My thanks to Mike, Pam, Kim and everyone else working so hard this weekend at the 2nd Annual Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX) event in New York this weekend, for making a livestream session so fascinating that I was glued to my screen all afternoon despite glorious sunshine and England’s final, desperate and ultimately doomed attempt to stay in the World Cup…
…and for allowing me to be part of it (TBEX, I mean, not Germany stuffing England) – because as part of the Community Keynote this afternoon, this piece was read out to a packed auditorium. (And it was still packed afterwards! Well, maybe the doors were locked. I don’t want to get bigheaded by making wild assumptions – my ego deserves the facts).
The TBEX meet is an event where hundreds of clever, industrious, outgoing people converge on one spot from all over the world, chat about various things, learn some useful stuff, and then go out drinking heavily, spending the next day in a pain-laced fog of self-recrimination. At least, this is what I’ve been told by people who attended this year. I’m only going on word-of-mouth, mind.
TBEX ’11?
It’s in Vancouver.
And I’ll be turning up for that one.
How about you?
…………….
You may see a few changes in here. I’m tweaking, based on some sage advice from TBEX and also because it’s long overdue some tidying up.
If anything looks unbearably screwy, just holler.
That doesn’t apply to the writing, of course.
The Mystery of Lighthouse Corner
“Lighthouse Corner? Aaaaaahrr.”
This was the response I’d been hoping for. From deep within a creased, twinkly-eyed, wind-ruddied face looking like an elephant wearing blusher, the wheezing voice continued.
“Hoos. Lighthoos. Road, blarg, garb oot crossflarp. FLARP”.
Now, I’m part Scottish. You’d think I’d have a smattering of understanding at a genetic level about how to translate accents like this into English. But this isn’t Scotland, it’s Orkney – and I’d be better equipped having Norwegian ancestors. No luck there, sadly.
“Lighthoos – uhhr!”
I didn’t really need to ask for directions – the map was clear and the road didn’t deviate. It led unambiguously away from the spectacular archaeological excavation taking place at the sea-stack called the Brough of Deerness (official website here), through a few turns, over a couple of low hills and theoretically deposited me somewhere called Lighthouse Corner. Wherever the hell that was.
But the golden rule is Always Chat To The Locals.
Actually, there’s an important rule to obey before that one, which is Make Sure You And The Locals Speak The Same Language Before You Attempt Conversation. But this is Orkney – and I thought I had that one covered.
“Coonah! You wirru clart ooonan gurble blivey Lighthoos.”
With this, he gesticulated in a wildly uphelpful 180-degree arc, covering both the road ahead and the road behind. Now at least I could be sure that my destination wasn’t in the sea, or in Shetland.
He noticed my arm. “Flees! Arglbarglelaaaarpfaggras!”, at which he broke into a cough that started somewhere near his knees and threatened to propel his hat down the road. What had interested him – as it would anyone – was the exciting rivulet of blood running down to my elbow. The day was baking and sticky, and the horse-flies were out in force. One had formed a temporary yet meaningful attachment to my arm, which would spend the next two days swollen and itchy.
I was getting nowhere – and with just twenty minutes before my bus arrived, the only bus that afternoon, I couldn’t afford to. I tried to wrap things up.
“I’m heading down this road now. The bus will be along soon”.
“Boos. Aye, BOOS.”
Now we were talking.
“Yes – uh, ‘BOOS‘.”
Triumphantly, with the air of a wise, friendly old salt who knows every scrap of local knowledge and has the goodwill to bestow it on hapless tourists, he pointed down the way I’d just come. Or possibly out to sea. It was hard to tell, because he used both arms, moving in opposite directions.
“Oh bugger it. Look! The map says…well, actually the map says very little, frankly. There’s no ‘Lighthouse Corner’. The bus timetable says Lighthouse Corner, yes, but it’s not on the map. I wish someone from Ordinance Survey was here right now, trying to take notes as the flies sent arterial sprays fountaining off them like the gardens of Versailles. But they’re not, and I’m pretty damn sure it’s down this road because I’ve just been down the other one, and all that’s down there are some holes in the ground and archaeologists and tea and biscuits and filth. That’s all. No booses. I’d have noticed, trust me”.
He stared at me pityingly as I hauled my rucksack onto my shoulders again, yelping as my wind-cooled sweaty shirt met my skin, and extended the arm of my wheeled suitcase. (It was getting noisy – and I discovered why later, when I noticed that one wheel had locked solid and been ground down to a semicircle by days of dragging). Waving my free arm convulsively at the flies, I strode off. This had to be the way to Lighthouse Corner.
And so it was.
The thing is – and this is so very, very Orcadian – Lighthouse Corner isn’t really a corner, and it doesn’t have a lighthouse. This is understandable, since it’s inland. It’s entirely unannounced. There’s no sign that says “Lighthouse Corner” in large friendly letters. And being a crossroads, there are lots of corners, where all you want is a nice reassuring right-angle of flyblown tarmac. Or an “s”, tacked on the end of the name. Not this perfect marriage of ambiguities.
(Luckily, when I got there, the name of this self-catering cottage was a massive clue).
As I headed up the road for my thankfully destined appointment with Lighthouse Corner and the X-4 service to Kirkwall, I looked back – but he’d gone inside, probably to load up a WordPress blog and tell the world how stupid and ungrateful English tourists are.
But I am grateful. Can’t you tell?
Useful link: if you’re going to Orkney, print this off (pdf) at least 20 times and duct-tape it to books, camping equipment, items of luggage or even your body. Because you *will* need it. To survive in Orkney you need 3 things: food, shelter and a bus timetable. (And with a bus timetable, you have access to the other two. ‘Nuff said).
Orkney: What Do You Do?
What can you actually do in Orkney?
No, forget the sightseeing. Forget the daytrips, the beach walks, the clambering up sea-stacks to watch intrepid archaeologists braving the elements while hugging filthy mugs of tea (more on that topic another time). Forget visiting. We’re talking living up there.
I know of a number of people who are intending to move up there – and they intend for their jobs to follow them, either via remote working (a slow but steady trend) or self-employment. They’re transplanting their careers, not going in seek of an Orcadian vocation – and they’re moving there because of the place, not the economy. (Everyone falls in love with Orkney. Well, nearly everyone).
So what is the local economy?
Building work is at the start of everything. I chatted to a couple of Scottish guys who had landed a building contract in Kirkwall, arranged elsewhere – and they had enough work to last them until 2011, at least. Not just housing, mind: Orkney is expanding at an impressive lick, thanks to being a renewable energy powerhouse. When I visited Westray – where I worked as an archaeologist for a few summers – plans were afoot to build two new wind turbines, weaning the island off the national grid and presumably allowing it to sell excess electricity to the likes of Scottish Power. (If it follows the model adopted by neighbouring island Sanday, the turbines are paid for by a community fund).
And that’s just the wind, which is nothing compared with the potential offered by the sea. Take the Oyster project, featured today on Click Green. Every day, two oceans push back and forth across the Pentland Firth, creating some of the most excited water around Britain. Once modern engineers find a way to ward off the Orcadian winter storms – no small feat – the small abandoned islands around Mainland Orkney (such as Stroma) are going to start filling up.
Despite all that, Orkney’s is still an agricultural economy. The soil is bursting with fertility. Farming is the most important activity on the islands – if you’re going to get run over while in Orkney, it’ll probably be a tractor. Forget forestry – there aren’t any trees apart from a few timid examples cowering behind wind-breaks or crawling along the ground. There are so few that in the whole of the island chain, there’s only one Tree Preservation Order in place.
Fish. Beef. Lobster. Fish. Whisky (Highland Park). Cheese. Fish. Seafood, generally. Fish. I should also mention the fish, which is worth repeating because it appears to be uniformly superb quality. All the service-based jobs you’d expect from a gently popular tourist attraction – and if the oft-mentioned Orkney Tunnel gets built, these industries will boom.
(I’m not forgetting the arts and crafts industries here, as impressive as you’d expect from a place with such an extraordinary heritage. But on those, I’ll write another time).
Half a century ago, of course, Orkney had a somewhat different major employer…
Images: M. Sowden, 2009.
Blog, Interrupted
It’ll be quiet in here for a bit.
Departing at 12:50am on Friday morning, the train will carry me north, depositing me ignominiously in Newcastle where I have to hang around for hours before riding in the belly of another iron beastie to Edinburgh, leaping off once more, waiting for a few heartbeats and then flinging myself and all my accoutrements onto another rail-worm that drags me up to Inverness, at which point I cower from the rain for an hour until the Orkney Bus eats me whole and takes me to its lair in Kirkwall.
Then I’m camping for 10 days. You heard me. Camping. In Orkney. In this weather. Yes.
(Well, mostly).
I’ll see you around the 20th. Toodle-pip for now.
Previously on “Orkney”…
I’m heading up to Orkney in a little over a week – a place I worked as an archaeologist for a couple of months, a place that’s in my blood enough to wish I’d been born there.
It’s a place where spectacles creep up on you.
(No, the other kind).
Every day is a different palette.
But archaeology is terribly hard work.
