Sunshine on Stromness

How much better can it get than to be woken before 6 am by sun streaming through the bedroom window, the sky a clear blue and the water below still as a millpond.

With no one overlooking us, we were free to sit around in our pyjamas and watch the harbour activity unfold beneath our windows.
At 8:45 the first black smoke from the funnels of the Hamnavoe ferry, berthed over night in the harbour, appeared, and then at 9am prompt, with a loud throb of engines, she backed out from her moorings to glide into deeper water and do a neat pirouette in front of our window to face forwards and begin her journey to the mainland.

There is for me something very emotive about watching a big ferry leave harbour.
There is the bustle of passengers arriving with luggage, cars and lorries standing in orderly lines before being marshalled into the cavernous interior, and the huddles of people standing on the quayside watching for friends and relatives to appear high up on deck to shout and wave down to them.

A loud tannoy announcement, the gangways are raised, the mooring ropes cast off and suddenly a space opens up between boat and quay.

There is a lump in my throat as I imagine being on board and seeing the shore disappear, leaving behind all that is near and dear, to start afresh somewhere very different. 'To discover new lands, we must first lose sight of the shore'.

I imagine the thousand of families who have left shores such as these because of necessity or force and wonder how they must have despaired seeing the stretch of water between them and all things familiar widen until no one could see their fluttering hankies and the tears in their eyes.

But today we are here and no ferry is taking us away for at least a week, so I can relax and enjoy island life. Birsay here we come.