Another Visit Remembered

I had thought about going to Scara Brae today, but the wind was too strong for a safe walk along the cliffs to Yesnaby, via Knowe of Geoso. So, I stayed in Kirkwall.

I met several people today, a former Methodist who first came here in 2001 for a holiday, loved it and kept coming back for holidays. Moved here in 2009 and had lived here for 5 years and is loving it.

The another person who was 76, and moved up from Cambridge, had been here for ten years and loved it so much that, he now feels that he has found a living peace here. A lady walking her dog who had come for two years, but had stayed here for 10 years over in Sandy, Orkney. I got the feeling that she thought me mad to come here for a holiday and for three week at that! They, like myself, thought walking yesterday had been a good idea, because the weather had been so ideal. Fraser had been here as a minister of the Cathedral for ten years and had become a locally renowned historical buff on Orkney’s pre-Christianisation, so, a good man to talk to. The Café we were in closed at 5pm, they closed around us and we walked out at 5.45pm!

I walked back to Fraser’s Manse and rediscovered the school that I and number of others had stayed in 2-3 years ago Papdale Secondary School. They’ve rebuilt it now, but the walk through the school grounds to Willow Road, where you can still find a little green glen of trees and blue-bells still in flower, since the flowering seasons are later this far north. As I walked I remembered that there was a Fish and Chip shop that was serviced out of the kitchen of an outhouse and the counter was over a stable-door, this had change to a newly built little shop in the back garden! I then walked on further and took this image of this old pair of garages and stone flight stairs leading to accommodation above. Clearly change was good, but some things were the same...