Tues - pooh, what a blustery day
Some 'orrible weather overnight Monday and still heavy rain on Tuesday morning. Not a good day for going out. So we decided on a housekeeping morning. 2 loads of washing, empty the loo, that sort of stuff.
Only one minor mishap, the weather slowly started to clear as the morning went on but the very strong wind did not abate at all. So whilst pouring a measured 20ml of bright blue, highly staining loo fluid the few inches from the bottle into the loo the wind suddenly gusted. It was so strong it could take a 6" stream of liquid and fly it horizontally, all across the top of the loo. Impressive and a right, ruddy mess.
Eventually the rain cleared and late lunchtime we ventured into Kirkwall. Our walk takes us past the town's boating lake, a circular pond with white water rollers and breakers, splashing over its concrete edge. Of course we barely noticed as most of our effort was into walking in the intended direction. Some wind!
Two museums. Firstly the Orkney Wireless Museum who has an interesting collection of vintage domestic radios and some good WWII material, all lovingly restored. Part of our interest was that we have both spoken on several occasions to GB2OWM, which is an amateur callsign the museum uses for special events. Worth a visit even if radio isn't your prime interest. Much nostalgia and some very interesting wartime stories.
Next the Kirkwall Museum which is a museum of the islands from prehistory to the 20th century. It's one of those tardis museums where you think you've entered a little parochial collection and then there's yet another corner with material. Mind you I hope they take their archiving a little more seriously after Liz reported a few of the newspaper clippings she had been reading were dated Aug 2016. Perhaps my tardis analogy was more accurate than I realised! We could easily have spent a day here just reading the clippings of all the digs over the last decade or so and it made us want to go visit several of the other islands. The mediaeval onwards was interesting, but the islands' fabulously preserved pre-history is just amazing. It was a special display commemorating the centenary of the Battle Of Jutland which seemed to command the most interest of other visitors.
On to St Magnus Cathedral. Oh no, it's closed. So a quick trip to the library where they were bound to have decent WiFi, and didn't disappoint. We mentioned this and apparently the island has fibre to the cab but the last mile is atrocious. Most advertised free Wi-Fi either doesn't work or is so slow 3g is a better alternative, in those rare venues where 3g is an alternative. The library had a book sale, moth to flame, I now have another reading book. This one Francis Spufford's Red Plenty about Soviet economics was started last night, proved interesting, and hence the blog is a day late.