Queuing (or cooing) for the phone

It's been another eventful day. This is what was planned:

1. Leave Hoy on our trusty tandem.
2. Visit Ness of Brodgar excavation.
3. Lunch in Kirkwall.
4. Visit the Italian chapel on Lamb Holm.
5. Catch the ferry from Burwick on South Ronaldsay to John O'Groats.
6. Drive from John O'Groats to Ullapool, calling in at Dingwall for supper.

This is what happened:

1. Left Hoy - with a degree of relief after three nights in a rather strange bed and breakfast (and a small issue with the bill too - we trust that the double charge for evening meals was not deliberate).
2. Visited Ness of Brodgar excavation.
3. Had lunch in Kirkwall, but this was much later than anticipated because the wind was against us the whole way as we cycled west to east across Mainland.
4. Abandoned the idea of visiting the Italian chapel because our journey south was slow due to difficulties battling the wind. (We have visited it before, so this was not a disaster.)
5. Reached the ferry terminal in good time after 45 miles of hard cycling. However, we became more and more anxious as we appeared to be the only ones waiting for the service, and with just 15 minutes to the departure time we couldn't see the boat coming across the firth.
6. We didn't have the phone number of the ferry company, and no Internet connection, so we rang my sister in West Sussex and asked her to find it for us online. She also checked the web site to see if there was any mention of ferry cancellations: there was none. 
7. We rang the ferry company. All services today had been cancelled! (Incidentally, we were told by our B&B hostess on Hoy this morning that these services were never cancelled and that there was no need for us to phone and check, despite the windy weather - grrrr). So now we were stranded at the far end of a sparsely populated island with no apparent means of getting back to our car on the mainland, and no accommodation for an extra night on Orkney. However, the woman on the phone at the ferry company in John O'Groats mentioned that if we could get to St Margaret's Hope by 18:00, there was a car ferry that would get us over to Gills Bay in Caithness for 19:00, from where we could cycle back to John O'Groats.
8. Guess what? We went for it, and made it, covering 7.3 miles (including 3 steep hills) in half an hour.
9. Cycled from Gills Bay to John O'Groats.
10. It was so late by this time that we had our supper in John O'Groats, then rang our hosts in Ullapool (who we know well) to warn them that we would arrive very late.
11. Arrived in Ullapool at 23:35 - at one of our favourite bed and breakfasts, so all turned out well in the end.

I photographed these cows queuing for the phone in South Ronaldsay on our way south, unaware that I would pass them again a couple of hours later on the manic race to the St Margaret's Hope ferry terminal. They had moved away from the phone by then, so I assume that they managed to make their call ;-)

Exercise today: about 56 miles of tandem riding.