Orkney

Hi all!

Had a really good evening last night. Had a quick walk around Fort Augustus and then had dinner at the hostel. Everyone else paid £8 for a lasagne while I paid £1 for soup that I cooked for myself and was delicious! Then we had a pub quiz night at the hostel. My team (Andrea, Shane, Kym, Rob, Tim and me) came 3rd. We got bonus points for best joke, I'm not repeating it! It was a disgusting joke that I learned in Ireland haha. 

This morning those of us on the ten day tour left at 6.45am and Jamie drove us to Inverness to meet our new guide Greg and the new 11 people replacing the ones we lost. We did a bus introduction and everyone seems really nice!! 

We then drove for a few hours up to the northeast of Scotland towards Orkney. On the way we stopped at Duncansby Head - the furthest point from Land's End down the bottom of England, it's 874 miles away. We were soooo lucky with the weather today - blue skies and absolutely stunning. 

We ran into a convoy of 18 Italian camper vans on the way who blocked the whole road. We had a good laugh!!!! I tried Scotland's soft drink 'Irn Bru' at the port. Scotland is one of three countries in the world where Coke isn't the best selling soft drink!

Then we went to get the ferry to the Orkney islands. They're made up of 70 islands, 20 of which are inhabited with a total of 20,000 people. We caught the ferry over for an hour in beautiful calm seas, we even sat outside without a coat on and were comfortable! We had fun playing with the people next to us' golden retrievers. 

When we arrived we drove to the Tomb of the Eagles - a 5000 year old gravesite from the Neolithic period that was discovered by a farmer when digging in a field. His daughter Kathleen gave us a talk and we even got to hold artefacts found their. We then went walking and looked at both sites - a 3000 year old one and 5000 year old one. You had to crawl into the last tomb on your hands and knees!! The cliffs had beautiful views too and we all enjoyed Orkney ice cream when we got back to the information centre. I had a raspberry one and toffee one - amaaaazing!

We kept driving to Scarpa Flow - the 'bay' in the middle of several of the Orkney islands. We could see some shipwrecks and Greg told us the barrier next to them is called the 'Churchill Barrier' which was built in WWII after a German U boat snuck in and sunk a British boat killing 843 sailors as the navy was based here. 

We had a quick stop on the island of Lambholm at the Italian chapel built by Italian POWs during WWII. Then we continued onto our hostel which is really nice! So happy we are staying here for two nights. I'm in a room with Lexi, Eunice, Cordelia, Rob and one of the new people. We are cooking dinner in the hostel this evening :)

Love to all
Claire
Xoxox