Betty's Reading Room

We started this morning with a walk right along the main street in Stromness. We like to walk along and look at all the buildings which are closely packed on either side and in the little piers that jut out into the harbour.

We walked back along the way we had walked and went into the Pier Arts Centre for a visit. I am very fond of the small collection of works they have by Alfred Wallace of St Ives. There are also paintings by Ben Nicholson, and sculptures by Barbara Hepworth.

We decided to head all the way over to South Ronaldsay for lunch. As we passed through St Margaret's Hope on the way to Hoxa we saw Poppy in her car. There was frantic waving. We stopped and had a short chat before continuing on our way and Poppy headed home. We had lunch at the Hoxa tearoom, then called in at the Hoxa Tapestry gallery. Back in St Margaret's Hope we visited the craft cooperative Workshop and Loft Gallery. Apothecary7 got some hand knitted woolly socks :-)

We headed back North and spent a while in Kirkwall. We had a wander along the main shopping street and found the shop my second cousin had told me stocked silk scarves designed and made by her granddaughter. The designs are based on the plants recorded by James Sinclair the Botanist from the Bu on his botanical explorations of Orkney. In his time James was also Curator of the Herbarium in Singapore where he spent many years. In his time there he sent many thousands of plant specimens back to the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. He returned to his home Orkney in later life and lived at the Bu until his death. James Sinclair was my second cousin's uncle (or to put it another way he was my great grandmother's nephew).
We chose the colours we liked best and bought one of the scarves for Apothecary7.

A stop for tea and cake was required. Suitably refreshed we visited St Magnus Cathedral. The red sandstone is very dramatic and there are the most wonderful decorative tiles on areas of the floor. It is quite an amazing building.

As we drove back through towards Stromness we remembered hearing about Betty's Reading Room at Tingwall Pier, so we went that way to have a look. Betty's Reading Room is in one of the outbuildings of the old farm at Tingwall pier. It is dedicated to the memory of Betty Prictor, a teacher who loved books and reading. When she died, her friends decided that the best way to celebrate her life would be to restore the old building and set it up as a place for books and reading and for people to come and sit and borrow a book for a while ... or a long while. It is a lovely space. Full of books arranged on the shelves haphazardly just for the fun of it. There are Tilley lamps hanging from the ceiling and a wood burning stove for winter days. We stayed a while.

Another notion took us as we drove back towards Finstown, so we went to visit the Cuween Hill Chambered Cairn.

Another busy day :-)