Exiles Return

The best part of being a pessimist is getting a welcome surprise when things turn out not to be as bad as expected. Because I imagined the ferry crossing from Lerwick to Kirkwall might be as rough as the one from Aberdeen to Lerwick but without the the safety net of a cabin, I was already imagining how to deploy the use of the white sick bags so readily available on board. In the event, the passage was smooth and uneventful and with the use of the Magnus Lounge on board MV Hjaitland, we were fortified for the 6 hour trip by free G&T's, brandy, and tablet. Never at midnight, arriving in Kirkwall, has a bed seemed so appealing even while harbouring the risks of alcoholism and diabetes.

Today has dawned mild and calm, although the sun hasn't quite made its way through the clouds. There was a dander around Kirkwall, busy with tourists attending the St Magnus Festival, before another bus journey to our final destination of Stromness.

It felt like coming home as we journeyed through the much softer gentler countryside of Orkney where neat fields of differing hues of green are filled with swathes of bright yellow buttercups, where black cattle stand amidst a gathering of black crows, where lochs are edged with umber seaweed and where the blue black hills of Hoy in the distance, guard the scene like giant sentinels.

Now we are ensconced with a glass of wine in our holiday flat, looking out at the Hamnavoe ferry starting its journey back to the mainland, and at the least, I am glad not to be on it. I cannot speak for His Lordship, although at the moment he seems very mellow. Pass me the wine bottle again, please.

I have put on  extra images which I liked- the float on the quay at Kirkwall and the poppies in the museum garden in Kirkwall.