Italian Chapel, Orkney

The original plan had been to go to the Italian Chapel the day before, but bad weather and inconvenient bus times meant that I postponed it to the next day. On Friday 5th November the weather in Orkney was fantastic. Beautiful sunny skies in the morning. I got the bus out there and the driver told me about two leaflets from the tourist info that he thought I'd find useful. He then went and got them for me while we were waiting for the bus to leave. Then on the way to the Italian Chapel, he stopped the bus, came down to see me, and showed me the marker buoy in Scapa Flow where the Royal Oak had sunk. The sinking of the Royal Oak, led to the decision to build the Churchill Barriers to prevent further U-boats entering Scapa Flow. Building the Churchill Barriers required a strong, healthy workforce, so Italian POWs were taken to Orkney to build the barriers. The one thing missing in their PoW camp was a place of worship, so they asked for two more nissan huts and built the chapel.
Being somewhere so beautiful, built by men who had been taken as prisoners of war, in a cold remote, isolated location was amazing. It reminded me of the importance of hope when things don't feel very hopeful.