Everybody look at me
'Cause I'm sailing on a boat (sailing on a boat)
I'm on a boat (I'm on a boat) I'm on a boat
Take a good hard look at the mother*ing boat (boat, yeah)"
~The Lonely Island (feat. T-Pain), I'm on a Boat
Distance driven: 242 miles
Boat time: 40 minutes each way
Tour bus: about 100 miles covered with 7 stops
We're officially Britain "end to enders"! That means we traveled from one end of "mainland" Britain--the Land's End area of Cornwall--to the other--John O'Groats in Scotland. Okay, we cheated a little bit by flying from London to Edinburgh, but I'm counting it anyway.
Historically, Orkney has more to do with its Viking/Norse history than with Scotland. In 1468, the King of Denmark, Norway and Sweden mortgaged the islands (along with the Shetlands) to Scotland as dowry payment for the Scottish King to marry Margaret of Denmark.
Scapa Flow is a sheltered area of water around Orkney used for shipping and a base for the British fleet. Ninety-two wrecked ships lay in Scapa Flow, 52 of them German vessels from World War I. At the end of the war, surrendered ships of the German fleet were held in Scapa Flow until the allied countries could decide how to divide them. The German commander in charge gave an order to deliberately sink the ships instead.
During World War II, old ships were deliberately sunk in the eastern approaches of Scapa Flow to prevent German U-Boats from getting among the ships at anchor. A German U-Boat DID get through, though, and sank a British battleship.
Winston Churchill ordered the construction of a series of causeways to block the eastern approaches to Scapa Flow. These causeways were built by Italian prisoners of war held in Orkney. The industrious (and artistically talented) POWs also built themselves a chapel, using salvaged materials.
More than half of the North Sea oil reserves have been extracted, so oil rigs like this one sit idle.
The next stop on our tour was the city of Kirkwall. St Magnus Cathedral was built by a Viking before Orkney belonged to Scotland. Parts of it are more than 800 years old.
While agriculture and tourism are now the biggest industries in Orkney, fishing is still a big deal.
I wanted to visit Orkney to see the stone age village of Skara Brae. Built before the Great Pyramids, Skara Brae was buried for 4,000 years until a storm stripped away some of the grass mound that covered it.
Eight houses have been excavated, all linked together by a series of low, covered passages.
Each house is made up of a large square room, with a central fireplace, bed on either side and a shelved dresser on the wall opposite the doorway.
Some of the beaches around Orkney are gorgeous, but I wouldn't think they'd be the kind for sun worshipers. Orkney doesn't get very warm even in the summer and the wind blows pretty strong.
The tour also stopped at the Ring of Brodgar
and the standing stones of Stennes.
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