Diary w/e 21 Jul 2018

Sun 15 Jul

Awoke to a wet morning in Plockton. Grace Church Kyle our local IPC congregation. A good word on worship, Ps 35 by Fred Macfarland. We then drove to our Kinlochewe hotel as the poor weather ruled out the scenic route via Applecross. Our hotel offers 106 different malts. I sampled two.

Mon 16 Jul

Drove about 150 miles Kinlochewe to Bettyhill. Mainly sunny. Much busier than I remembered it in 1970. The hotel is the best yet. Helped in with cases. Great views from the restaurants but the wifi is rubbish. Good post prandial conversation with a man from Essex.

Tue 17 Jul

Visited Strathnaver on the trail of the brutal clearances. Drove to Gills Bay for the Orkney ferry. Good conversation with a St Andrews Scot on the boat. Met by David, Katy's cousin in the rain. He directed us to tea with his wife Pam in their Burra home then showed us the way to our B&B.

Wed 18 Jul

A neolithic day visiting standing stones at Steness and the Ness of Brodgar with a huge archaeological dig, mainly neolithic but Mesolithic beneath. I was cold in the wind on the lecture tour and departed for the shelter of the car but Katy, the enthusiast stayed to the end. Then Scara Brae and the nearby Skail House, that of the laird who discovered the neolithic village. We dined at the Kirkwall Hotel with David, katy's cousin and wife Pam who extolled the attractions of life on Orkney,

Thu 19 jul

The only boat we came across offering a top on Scapa For was £80 per hour so we declined that and went on the ferry to Hoy. We would have taken the car but the ferry was fully booked. We had a beautiful day at Lyness the former navy base with a then population of 20,000 - twice that of Kirkwall. We walked round including the cemetery of navy graves and the temporary exhibition in the Hoy Hotel as the museum is being renovated for the centenary of the scuttling of the German surrendered fleet - 52 ships sunk, One could imagine Scapa Flow with the 92 ships o Jellicoe's fleet anchored there before Jutland. Now we saw five oil tankers at anchor. Next we dined in Stromness, a delightfully quaint old port linked with the Hudson Bay Company and whaling.

Fri 20 Jul

The Italian Chapel on Lambs Holm is wonderful. Built by Italian WW2 POWs the art is astonishing. It is linked to the other island by the Churchill barriers, built to keep U boats out of the Flow after one sunk HMS Royal Oak in 1939 with hundreds of sailors killed. Coffee with Dad and Pam then ferry to the mainland and a rainy run to Invergordon for B&B.

Sat 21 Jul.

Drive to Inverness Airport and return the hire car and fly to Heathrow. Hot and humid as soon as we exited the plane. Not a drop of rain here in two weeks we were away. They could have had our Scottish rain. We would have preferred their drought on holiday. But I will miss the pleasures of fairly empty roads. Our minicab was somewhat late. Communication with a Bangladeshi driver was the problem.