Tern Sees off Gull

This morning was spent looking for the opticians to get the classes mended again. The only practitioners on the island have been very good at finding a new screw and fixing up the glasses each time. Understand that Specsavers do come to the island, but only once a month and then they are only here for a day in one of the hotels.

In many ways the island business are like the Terns of the shoreline, they came and multiplied and are not given to giving up their space to others easily. Like Tesco, Lidl, Co-Op, and Specsaver are all national businesses, the Great-Black Back Gulls of the skies that seem to sore higher than anyone else and with a high turnover and buying power to boot. However, the little independent shops and businesses are not massive, but they are the predominant part of the way of life on these islands. Making them a force to not so much deal with, but work along side with in the partnership of the spirituality of life in these very much individual island communities. Singular shop and business and community co-operative work well here. Yes money and commerce is important in order to make ends meet. Yet what is pivotal in a place like this is the working together to make a better community, a vibrate spirituality that I have not found else where. The togetherness is unparalleled and is not found elsewhere in my experience so far.

This afternoon was a lazy start with lunch over at Straigona on the pretense of seeing the new hens. I saw them, I counted them out of the hutch and I counted them back in and none were missing. My visit that I thought would only be for an hour turned from just popping in for coffee and the hens, to lunch and three hours drifted by without a moments thought, this is the way of life here: there is always tomorrow.

I decided after yet another dram of Scapa that this afternoon was going to be equally lazy as this morning, but it lunch was a one dram only, so I was saved by host, thankfully. I left there, promising to do Trip Advisor for them (at the time of writing this is still outstanding).

Went to Deerness and walked along the foreshore and did a spot of beachcombing of a an inland bay, then walk across the dunes and found the North Sea. It was while I was searching the inland bay that I found a most unusual bottle, with various marking on the side letting you know how much you have drunk from the bottle, (I brought it home with me...).

From here I drove to the Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm via the first of four Churchill Barriers. Moving onto Glimps Holm, which is connected by two Churchill Barriers and Burray via Churchill Barrier Number Four to South Ronaldsay. It was on Glimps Holm the pictures of the Artic Tern and the Great Black-Backed Gull were taken. The Tern saw off many intruders, I just tried to keep my distance as I walked around it’s nestling place. Many of the Barriers still have sunken ships that are often used these days as a place for those wishing to scuba dive around old ships in a reasonable safe environment.

Two of the people that I meet at the St Andrew’s Community Hall Ceilidh came for Burray Village. I was making for St Margaret’s Hope, just a dry-run to the Ferry terminal for my return ferry trip to Scotland. From here I took the School Road and drove to Hoxa, hoping to see the Tapestry, but I had just missed them by 30 minutes. so drove onto the Uppertown and the Tea Rooms had just closed too, it was one of those days...

However, to be rewarded by a sitting Arctic Tern and so capture a huge gull being chased off by a little tern for mr me made up for not seeing the Hoxa Tapestry and having yet another cuppa...