Over the water

By the morning we'd realised that the location of our hotel, in the middle of Thurso, might have been a mistake. All the youths of the area gathered in the town on Friday night, and as a consequence we didn't get much sleep. The sound of breaking glass at 2am was particularly disturbing!

Having driven through Scotland in perfect weather on Friday, we awoke to grey skies and rain. The forecast had unfortunately been correct, and Pete was worried that the rest of the week would be similar, making entomological survey difficult.

We had a couple of hours before the ferry, so occupied our time buying food, waterproof trousers (to try and ward off the rain) and still managed a walk along the coast to Holborn Head. I was quite excited to find Scot's lovage and roseroot on the rocky outcrops. There was also a lot of kidney vetch, which supports the most northerly colony of small blue butterflies in the UK. And we couldn't believe our eyes when we spotted the fin of a killer whale in the Pentland Firth!

Although the weather was dull, there was little wind, so our crossing on the MV Hamnavoe was smooth - and we had the excitement of spotting the fin of a dolphin, as well as range of seabirds. Hoy looked particularly forbidding under the grey skies, with cloud swirling around the top of the high cliffs of St. John's head. We arrived in Stromness ahead of most of the tall ships, although there was one in the harbour.

It was only a short drive to our cottage at Stenness, which had fantastic views over Loch Stenness, Loch Harray, the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness - ideally positioned in the Neolithic heart of Orkney.

After unpacking we went down to the Ring of Brodgar. With a diameter of 103.6 metres (340 ft), the Brodgar ring is the third largest stone circle in the British Isles. The stone circle is practically in the centre of a massive natural "cauldron" formed by the hills of the surrounding landscape. Today, the site is accentuated by the water of the lochs, but that was not always the case. In fact, when the ring was erected, between 2500BC and 200BC, the Stenness loch didn't exist. Instead the area was wet, marshy bog, surrounding pools of water or lochans.

The ring is now surrounded by an RSPB reserve, with areas of arable weeds (for wintering twite and great yellow bumble-bees), machair-type grassland (which has breeding corncrake) and areas of heathland. The photograph aims to show both the machair-type grassland, with its red clover, yellow rattle and meadowsweet and two of the stones - wildlife and archaeology in perfect harmony.

There are more views from Brodgar in my Blipfolio.