Orkney 2008
Orcadian highlights 8-25 June 2008.
Wednesday 11 June.
Stronsay, the Vat of Kirbister is a gloup north of Odin Bay. A gloup (‘throat’ in Old Norse) is formed by the sea widening a geological fault line, creating a cave whose roof eventually collapses, to form a cauldron connected to the sea . Sea water pours beneath a fine arch into the great vat and sunlight reflects off the water and warms and illuminates shelving strata, rock colourful with lichen and algae, and the ooze, trickle and seepage of mineral wash on old red sandstone. On the opposite curve of the vat, a flank of gloomy cliff plunges into an inky black sea. These cliffs are the spring-into-summer tenancy of nesting seabirds.
Shag sentinels at the mouth of the Vat. A colony dispersed on cliff-face nests. A coin of vantage, an angle of rock, daubed white with shag shit, brownish nests of a loose weave and black shag brooding. A nest is woven with green bailer twine. Bright green algae stains the rocks where guano splash does not reach. We can see the breeding crest on the males, that startling green eye, the yellow gape and dark bill, the grey webbed feet and the green sheen on their scale-like feathers. A creature of myth, a familiar for Loki the shape changer. Yellow gape and yellow lore: the skin where bill meets facial plumage. Shag preen each other and sit on their nests brooding their young.Their deep grunts resonate about the Vat of Kirbister. Storms gnaw away at the rock and have taken a bite out of the fine arch, to wear a groove and channel that in time will give way. It’s dynamic architecture, constantly fretted by wind and waves.
The cliff top is a layer of grassy and floral turf and we lean out and peer at the water far below where a flotilla of black guillemot in the throat of the Vat of Kirbister bobs on water rippling like beaten pewter that catches and relects sunlight , water so metallic-opaque in a trick of the light that there is merely a hint of those paddling red webbed feet. Two white crescents mantle the dark plumage of each bird and a wake of ripples charts their course through the water. The wind has dropped else we could not have picked up their whistling call. The geo is the habitat of the black guillemot, a deep and narrow rock fissure where light filters to the depths with rock shelf of algae and lush vegetation, dank and dark. Black guillemot. sombre birds for the shadowy geos, until they fly with a flash of pure white scapular markings, or in a shift of posture give a glimpse of scarlet feet, or scarlet gape.
You beckon me, urging me to come to you and make no sound. A pair of birds shelters under an overhanging mass of pink- flowering thrift on a rock shelf below us. Black eyes, black bill with scarlet gape and scarlet galoshes with claws. We settle down amongst thrift and plantains to watch. If we reached out over the kink in the cliff, over the void, we could almost touch them. So close. We look down into that startling scarlet gape in a sombre face and it’s the proximity, the detail, and the intimate family life all about this beautiful place that makes it such a heady mix. There are fulmar often amidst flowers. Guillemot and razorbill too.
The cliff top is scattered with broken egg shells , some inscribed with dark patterns, some dribbled with blood. Debris from predation by skuas and black backed gulls. A life and death struggle on cliffs of breeding seabirds. Flora enhances the scene: squill, northern marsh orchid , fading primroses, thrift, sea campion. In fresh water runnels that tumble the cliff edge there are marsh marigolds and butter wort. And scurvy grass has a particular fragrance.
I love the architecture of sea-stacks. Tilted toward the sea, with the stratification of a pack of well-thumbed cards, a rock platform supports a mass of rock through which we see daylight: a delicate column with entablature of lichened rock topped with sea-pink, flowers set against the sea. The plant is abundant in this maritime heath. Sea stacks appear to be the location of choice for early Christian hermits, rubbing shoulders with all things Norse and mythic.
The Vat of Kirbister casts its spell over us.
Wednesday 11 June.
Stronsay, the Vat of Kirbister is a gloup north of Odin Bay. A gloup (‘throat’ in Old Norse) is formed by the sea widening a geological fault line, creating a cave whose roof eventually collapses, to form a cauldron connected to the sea . Sea water pours beneath a fine arch into the great vat and sunlight reflects off the water and warms and illuminates shelving strata, rock colourful with lichen and algae, and the ooze, trickle and seepage of mineral wash on old red sandstone. On the opposite curve of the vat, a flank of gloomy cliff plunges into an inky black sea. These cliffs are the spring-into-summer tenancy of nesting seabirds.
Shag sentinels at the mouth of the Vat. A colony dispersed on cliff-face nests. A coin of vantage, an angle of rock, daubed white with shag shit, brownish nests of a loose weave and black shag brooding. A nest is woven with green bailer twine. Bright green algae stains the rocks where guano splash does not reach. We can see the breeding crest on the males, that startling green eye, the yellow gape and dark bill, the grey webbed feet and the green sheen on their scale-like feathers. A creature of myth, a familiar for Loki the shape changer. Yellow gape and yellow lore: the skin where bill meets facial plumage. Shag preen each other and sit on their nests brooding their young.Their deep grunts resonate about the Vat of Kirbister. Storms gnaw away at the rock and have taken a bite out of the fine arch, to wear a groove and channel that in time will give way. It’s dynamic architecture, constantly fretted by wind and waves.
The cliff top is a layer of grassy and floral turf and we lean out and peer at the water far below where a flotilla of black guillemot in the throat of the Vat of Kirbister bobs on water rippling like beaten pewter that catches and relects sunlight , water so metallic-opaque in a trick of the light that there is merely a hint of those paddling red webbed feet. Two white crescents mantle the dark plumage of each bird and a wake of ripples charts their course through the water. The wind has dropped else we could not have picked up their whistling call. The geo is the habitat of the black guillemot, a deep and narrow rock fissure where light filters to the depths with rock shelf of algae and lush vegetation, dank and dark. Black guillemot. sombre birds for the shadowy geos, until they fly with a flash of pure white scapular markings, or in a shift of posture give a glimpse of scarlet feet, or scarlet gape.
You beckon me, urging me to come to you and make no sound. A pair of birds shelters under an overhanging mass of pink- flowering thrift on a rock shelf below us. Black eyes, black bill with scarlet gape and scarlet galoshes with claws. We settle down amongst thrift and plantains to watch. If we reached out over the kink in the cliff, over the void, we could almost touch them. So close. We look down into that startling scarlet gape in a sombre face and it’s the proximity, the detail, and the intimate family life all about this beautiful place that makes it such a heady mix. There are fulmar often amidst flowers. Guillemot and razorbill too.
The cliff top is scattered with broken egg shells , some inscribed with dark patterns, some dribbled with blood. Debris from predation by skuas and black backed gulls. A life and death struggle on cliffs of breeding seabirds. Flora enhances the scene: squill, northern marsh orchid , fading primroses, thrift, sea campion. In fresh water runnels that tumble the cliff edge there are marsh marigolds and butter wort. And scurvy grass has a particular fragrance.
I love the architecture of sea-stacks. Tilted toward the sea, with the stratification of a pack of well-thumbed cards, a rock platform supports a mass of rock through which we see daylight: a delicate column with entablature of lichened rock topped with sea-pink, flowers set against the sea. The plant is abundant in this maritime heath. Sea stacks appear to be the location of choice for early Christian hermits, rubbing shoulders with all things Norse and mythic.
The Vat of Kirbister casts its spell over us.
Sanday 14 June
Sunset walk from White Mill Bay along the beach, with rollers across the north of Ronaldsay Firth, to Wind Mill Point along the dunes as the tide is up close. Saltings over the dunes. To the mound of Heelie How. ‘Cows with calves can be aggressive’, reads a notice at the start of our route! Beyond the headland, darkness closed in as a squall approaches and suddenly cows loom and it is impossible to see that they are beyond an electric fence. After the squall, a rainbow over Otter’s Wick and wonderful light toward the setting sun, cast onto the brackish water of the saltings. Grunted at and dived at by arctic terns defending their nests- our hoods are up because of the wind and rain. Birds are still flying as the light fades but after the squall it grows lighter again. Hot drinks back at the car with the setting sun and the moon both up over the dunes. It is 11 pm when we return.
We sail in the afternoon for mainland. And our farm cottage at Grimbister where Orkney cheese is made from the milk of their fine herd of Holstein Friesians.
Sandquoy beach: intense colour, wind and sun. There are fulmar close concealed amongst tussocks of grass in a ridge of dune. We watch two gannets in perfectly synchronized dive and marvel at it. Amethyst jellyfish and mounds of weed. And foraging amongst the seaweed are sanderling and turnstone and their prints pattern the firm, wet sand. We sit on a rock to watch and then I creep closer and closer to take photographs until they fly.
Crow Taing headland is utterly lovely. Bright sunlight renders colours intense. Ringed plover fly calling over the rocks and come down to forage. We come upon a grey seal pup which might be only a week old. The pup is alone and when it begins to yelp I thought we were distressing it so suggest we move off, but it begins to slither over the rocks in pursuit of us with that strange, haunting cry. It is sleek and plump but has not yet put on enough blubber to lose its shape, as the adults do. There are slabs of flagstone with the patterns that form when mud dries and cracks into tile-like form, and an in-fill of fine gravel between the rocks. Rock pools, bright green weed and orange tangles that resemble kitchen mops. The collection of cottages where we begin and end our walk, at Tofts, looks a fine place to stay.
To Cata Sands. A long stretch of beautiful sandy beach where Cumulus cloud and sunlight enhance the sweep of it.
Sunset walk from White Mill Bay along the beach, with rollers across the north of Ronaldsay Firth, to Wind Mill Point along the dunes as the tide is up close. Saltings over the dunes. To the mound of Heelie How. ‘Cows with calves can be aggressive’, reads a notice at the start of our route! Beyond the headland, darkness closed in as a squall approaches and suddenly cows loom and it is impossible to see that they are beyond an electric fence. After the squall, a rainbow over Otter’s Wick and wonderful light toward the setting sun, cast onto the brackish water of the saltings. Grunted at and dived at by arctic terns defending their nests- our hoods are up because of the wind and rain. Birds are still flying as the light fades but after the squall it grows lighter again. Hot drinks back at the car with the setting sun and the moon both up over the dunes. It is 11 pm when we return.
We sail in the afternoon for mainland. And our farm cottage at Grimbister where Orkney cheese is made from the milk of their fine herd of Holstein Friesians.
Sandquoy beach: intense colour, wind and sun. There are fulmar close concealed amongst tussocks of grass in a ridge of dune. We watch two gannets in perfectly synchronized dive and marvel at it. Amethyst jellyfish and mounds of weed. And foraging amongst the seaweed are sanderling and turnstone and their prints pattern the firm, wet sand. We sit on a rock to watch and then I creep closer and closer to take photographs until they fly.
Crow Taing headland is utterly lovely. Bright sunlight renders colours intense. Ringed plover fly calling over the rocks and come down to forage. We come upon a grey seal pup which might be only a week old. The pup is alone and when it begins to yelp I thought we were distressing it so suggest we move off, but it begins to slither over the rocks in pursuit of us with that strange, haunting cry. It is sleek and plump but has not yet put on enough blubber to lose its shape, as the adults do. There are slabs of flagstone with the patterns that form when mud dries and cracks into tile-like form, and an in-fill of fine gravel between the rocks. Rock pools, bright green weed and orange tangles that resemble kitchen mops. The collection of cottages where we begin and end our walk, at Tofts, looks a fine place to stay.
To Cata Sands. A long stretch of beautiful sandy beach where Cumulus cloud and sunlight enhance the sweep of it.
Sunday 21 June. Westray
The Castle of Burrian, in particularly strong NE winds, is a delight. There are white horses and a flotilla of puffin on the sea. The cliffs are lush with sea plantain, thrift, thyme, white clover and bird’s foot trefoil. En route for the castle, a sea stack which was an early Christian hermitage, we spy puffin high on the cliff and below our narrow footpath bordered with flowers. We creep close, closer, to see a pair of puffin beside their burrow- seen through a fine screen of flowers and with a backdrop of a sea of intense blue.
To the headland, where the castle-stack is home from May to mid-July to fulmar and a colony of puffin. One flies in with a beak full of sand eels and kicks up soil at the entrance to its burrow. We sit in a depression as close to the cliff edge as we might, and with the best shelter we can find- which is little. A group of puffin bobs on the sea and others fly about the stack. Cold and windswept, we return glowing and drive to Skelwick Bay in lashing rain and wind, breakers impressive and a feeding frenzy of black headed gulls dipping in the waves close to the shore where a mass of seaweed is washed up and starling forage in the thick debris.
We learnt about the kelp industry and see old photographs of women out on the shore gathering tangles and drying and burning them to make kelp. What inordinately hard physical work it was.
Noup Cliffs nature reserve on the west coast of Westray holds Orkney’s largest seabird colony. With maritime grassland habitat along the cliff tops. We drive to the lighthouse on Noup Head in strong winds and we go up to the trig point to see the guillemot, kittiwakes, razorbills, puffins, black guillemots which breed there. Gannets are, uniquely, a success story here. They first nested here in 2003 and a couple of RSPB wardens are staying at Bis Geos and they go out to Noup Head to count them and record 45 nesting pairs. Arctic tern, being sand eel dependent, are in trouble. Kittiwake, a call I have loved from childhood, are hardest hit being shallow feeders. Black guillemot, on a diet of butter fish, fare better. With no more than half a degree of warming sand eels migrate north in pursuit of plankton. Pipe fish, a substitute, have no nutritional value. Razorbill in Norway are in poor breeding condition, finding no food during winter.
A squall takes me unawares and soaks through my winter paramos. Comforting to be offered a duvet gilet and a pair of dry gloves.
Monday 22 June.
Inga Ness is our destination for to-day.The white horses have galloped away and there is a rainbow over the bay as we breakfast in the conservatory and take in the view. So that we might explore as much of the coast as possible, you drive to Inga Ness and run back along the cliff-top path. I set out for the geos and talk with a farmer who is erecting a new fence ( paid for by FWAG) and parallel to his neighbour’s fence paid for by the council. Our experience of the coastal path is different from what I remember in 1993. Now a designated and fenced path follows the cliff top and protects walkers from stock and stock from walkers. He farms Limousin beef cattle, with two bulls of a different breed. As an islander, he is allowed to collect and eat puffin, guillemot and razorbill - we may not- he tells us with a smile. He last ate them five years ago with the plentiful mushrooms from the field he stands in. He is involved with the Viking Heath project: the conservation of maritime grassland- a cliff-edge rare, wind-clipped environment that forms a crucial component of Orkney’s cultural history and bio-diversity. Over 10% of the UK’s maritime grassland exists in Orkney and west coast Westray is a prime site. Viking Heath: what a grand name for the flora about the coastal path. I recall that story, from the Orkneyinga Saga of a manhunt and Paul? fleeing and hiding out in a cave. Given place names, islands claimed by Vikings, they seem not far off.
Our Bis Geos to Inga Ness walk is one we will remember. An inspirational day. A long, slow, wondrous exploration of cliffs architecture with indentations and geos and a series of noisy, raucous bird-cliffs and maritime grassland rich in thrift, squill and mountain everlasting: the Viking Heath habitat. The cliffs are stunning. There are noisy colonies of kittiwake and sometimes the reek of guano hits us with the pounding of the waves breaking on rocks and echoing deep in a gloup. The fine spray of a waterfall scintillates in sunlight as it blows back up the cliff face upon us. We have a long, slow walk along the cliff top admiring the architecture of the cliffs: geos, stacks, caves. There is much to see and I conjure all that might be hidden from view by the steep pitch of the cliffs. Our focus is the face of this cliff which is where the action is. A great diving platform of smooth red sandstone, lapped with bright green algae. Cliff-top, a raft of sandstone flags- some with an inset banding that suggests kitchen tiles in haphazard scatter.
In a cathedral, the eye soars upward toward high tracery and light-gathering windows. In St Magnus cathedral we admire the work of masons from 850 years ago when Earl Rognvald came back from his crusade to Jerusalem to build a cathedral and dedicate it to his martyred uncle Magnus. A Viking enterprise built of red sandstone chequered with yellow, from the Orkney islands.
Cliff architecture enthralls. The magic is to be found far below, where sea pounds against rock. probing fissures. eating into the cliffs, constantly eroding with a mighty power . Caves punched out by storms, wind and waves carving windows and columns at the base of a stack, columns that look too slender to support such a mass of rock. The sea subverts and undermines. The elements pierce rock with windows that catch sunlight reflecting off the sea. Light thrills through windows, piercing rock with light. Wild, unruly architecture of the cliffs, strata tilting and crumpled by massive forces and attacked by storms. In this clash of the elements, stacks and promontories seem poised to crash. Sea a light- enthralled palette of blues: aquamarine, cobalt, indigo. So clear the submerged rocks show through, with seals, a flotilla of guillemot and razorbill. Wind and waves trap air under pressure so that it explodes in booming, belching note- in the dissonant rhythms of the organ. And sea birds hang on the wind seeking safe landing on cliff face. All force, all activity is concentrated on this indented coastline about Westray.
We stop to make out puffin on cliff ledges. Then we come across two cliff-top rocks bright with orange lichen. Puffins engross us for an endless, wonderful interlude as they come in to land and sit poised to take off- keeping us guessing and ever ready to press the camera button. We are so close, the scene so intimate. I sit comfortably behind clumps of thrift in a low revetement and we talk each other through the scene, whoever has the camera seeing only within the frame of the next shot. We talk confidingly to the puffins too. Of course they are aware of our presence, they just don’t mind us. The puffins were close to high, indented cliffs and other birds flew between cliff and the sea. Days ago, you became fascinated by the way fulmar hang on the stiff wind, wings outspread, legs down, trying to effect a safe landing. And we tried to capture the image.
We have these cliff walks to ourselves, except for today when Lukas and Wanda, the Czech couple at our hostel, take the same outward route. Lukas sits on the high cliffs with his feet dangling over the edge. Our RSPB man pointed out that he sometimes looks back on a perch of his to realise it is an overhang. Late that afternoon Lukas is back with his camera and you are amused to have three cameras with puffin images shoved under your nose and vying for your attention. We saw none feeding. This was not a place of burrows, like Castle of Burrian.
To Noup Head(after a late omelette, jacket potato and salad) with the evening sun strong on the cliff by the trig point where there are colonies of kittiwake on nests and fulmar drifting about the cliffs with gannet whose huge nests ( all 42 of them if we could count) are constructed amongst the guillemot and razorbill.
A calm and bright evening. Gannet sky- pointing and pair bonding. Good luck to them. A stunning cliff of breeding seabirds.
Organ music can make the stones sing. The cliffs toward Inga Ness have caves, stacks, and geos, fissures where wind and waves force air under pressure until it explodes in a bellowing, booming, crashing- rhythm as patterns of wave and wind, resonant. Wild music. The wildest unheard by all who seek shelter from the storm. Cry of sea birds contesting the wind to effect a safe landing.
We walk the cliff path, we visit St Magnus Cathedral for drama on life of St Rognvald( sp) who pondered building this cathedral and was off on crusade to Jerusalem. Listen to organ music, as the stones sing, vision soaring up red sandstone arches that resemble strata of cliff face- rock soaring to dizzy heights in a haven from the forces that batter the cliffs where we spent our day.
The Castle of Burrian, in particularly strong NE winds, is a delight. There are white horses and a flotilla of puffin on the sea. The cliffs are lush with sea plantain, thrift, thyme, white clover and bird’s foot trefoil. En route for the castle, a sea stack which was an early Christian hermitage, we spy puffin high on the cliff and below our narrow footpath bordered with flowers. We creep close, closer, to see a pair of puffin beside their burrow- seen through a fine screen of flowers and with a backdrop of a sea of intense blue.
To the headland, where the castle-stack is home from May to mid-July to fulmar and a colony of puffin. One flies in with a beak full of sand eels and kicks up soil at the entrance to its burrow. We sit in a depression as close to the cliff edge as we might, and with the best shelter we can find- which is little. A group of puffin bobs on the sea and others fly about the stack. Cold and windswept, we return glowing and drive to Skelwick Bay in lashing rain and wind, breakers impressive and a feeding frenzy of black headed gulls dipping in the waves close to the shore where a mass of seaweed is washed up and starling forage in the thick debris.
We learnt about the kelp industry and see old photographs of women out on the shore gathering tangles and drying and burning them to make kelp. What inordinately hard physical work it was.
Noup Cliffs nature reserve on the west coast of Westray holds Orkney’s largest seabird colony. With maritime grassland habitat along the cliff tops. We drive to the lighthouse on Noup Head in strong winds and we go up to the trig point to see the guillemot, kittiwakes, razorbills, puffins, black guillemots which breed there. Gannets are, uniquely, a success story here. They first nested here in 2003 and a couple of RSPB wardens are staying at Bis Geos and they go out to Noup Head to count them and record 45 nesting pairs. Arctic tern, being sand eel dependent, are in trouble. Kittiwake, a call I have loved from childhood, are hardest hit being shallow feeders. Black guillemot, on a diet of butter fish, fare better. With no more than half a degree of warming sand eels migrate north in pursuit of plankton. Pipe fish, a substitute, have no nutritional value. Razorbill in Norway are in poor breeding condition, finding no food during winter.
A squall takes me unawares and soaks through my winter paramos. Comforting to be offered a duvet gilet and a pair of dry gloves.
Monday 22 June.
Inga Ness is our destination for to-day.The white horses have galloped away and there is a rainbow over the bay as we breakfast in the conservatory and take in the view. So that we might explore as much of the coast as possible, you drive to Inga Ness and run back along the cliff-top path. I set out for the geos and talk with a farmer who is erecting a new fence ( paid for by FWAG) and parallel to his neighbour’s fence paid for by the council. Our experience of the coastal path is different from what I remember in 1993. Now a designated and fenced path follows the cliff top and protects walkers from stock and stock from walkers. He farms Limousin beef cattle, with two bulls of a different breed. As an islander, he is allowed to collect and eat puffin, guillemot and razorbill - we may not- he tells us with a smile. He last ate them five years ago with the plentiful mushrooms from the field he stands in. He is involved with the Viking Heath project: the conservation of maritime grassland- a cliff-edge rare, wind-clipped environment that forms a crucial component of Orkney’s cultural history and bio-diversity. Over 10% of the UK’s maritime grassland exists in Orkney and west coast Westray is a prime site. Viking Heath: what a grand name for the flora about the coastal path. I recall that story, from the Orkneyinga Saga of a manhunt and Paul? fleeing and hiding out in a cave. Given place names, islands claimed by Vikings, they seem not far off.
Our Bis Geos to Inga Ness walk is one we will remember. An inspirational day. A long, slow, wondrous exploration of cliffs architecture with indentations and geos and a series of noisy, raucous bird-cliffs and maritime grassland rich in thrift, squill and mountain everlasting: the Viking Heath habitat. The cliffs are stunning. There are noisy colonies of kittiwake and sometimes the reek of guano hits us with the pounding of the waves breaking on rocks and echoing deep in a gloup. The fine spray of a waterfall scintillates in sunlight as it blows back up the cliff face upon us. We have a long, slow walk along the cliff top admiring the architecture of the cliffs: geos, stacks, caves. There is much to see and I conjure all that might be hidden from view by the steep pitch of the cliffs. Our focus is the face of this cliff which is where the action is. A great diving platform of smooth red sandstone, lapped with bright green algae. Cliff-top, a raft of sandstone flags- some with an inset banding that suggests kitchen tiles in haphazard scatter.
In a cathedral, the eye soars upward toward high tracery and light-gathering windows. In St Magnus cathedral we admire the work of masons from 850 years ago when Earl Rognvald came back from his crusade to Jerusalem to build a cathedral and dedicate it to his martyred uncle Magnus. A Viking enterprise built of red sandstone chequered with yellow, from the Orkney islands.
Cliff architecture enthralls. The magic is to be found far below, where sea pounds against rock. probing fissures. eating into the cliffs, constantly eroding with a mighty power . Caves punched out by storms, wind and waves carving windows and columns at the base of a stack, columns that look too slender to support such a mass of rock. The sea subverts and undermines. The elements pierce rock with windows that catch sunlight reflecting off the sea. Light thrills through windows, piercing rock with light. Wild, unruly architecture of the cliffs, strata tilting and crumpled by massive forces and attacked by storms. In this clash of the elements, stacks and promontories seem poised to crash. Sea a light- enthralled palette of blues: aquamarine, cobalt, indigo. So clear the submerged rocks show through, with seals, a flotilla of guillemot and razorbill. Wind and waves trap air under pressure so that it explodes in booming, belching note- in the dissonant rhythms of the organ. And sea birds hang on the wind seeking safe landing on cliff face. All force, all activity is concentrated on this indented coastline about Westray.
We stop to make out puffin on cliff ledges. Then we come across two cliff-top rocks bright with orange lichen. Puffins engross us for an endless, wonderful interlude as they come in to land and sit poised to take off- keeping us guessing and ever ready to press the camera button. We are so close, the scene so intimate. I sit comfortably behind clumps of thrift in a low revetement and we talk each other through the scene, whoever has the camera seeing only within the frame of the next shot. We talk confidingly to the puffins too. Of course they are aware of our presence, they just don’t mind us. The puffins were close to high, indented cliffs and other birds flew between cliff and the sea. Days ago, you became fascinated by the way fulmar hang on the stiff wind, wings outspread, legs down, trying to effect a safe landing. And we tried to capture the image.
We have these cliff walks to ourselves, except for today when Lukas and Wanda, the Czech couple at our hostel, take the same outward route. Lukas sits on the high cliffs with his feet dangling over the edge. Our RSPB man pointed out that he sometimes looks back on a perch of his to realise it is an overhang. Late that afternoon Lukas is back with his camera and you are amused to have three cameras with puffin images shoved under your nose and vying for your attention. We saw none feeding. This was not a place of burrows, like Castle of Burrian.
To Noup Head(after a late omelette, jacket potato and salad) with the evening sun strong on the cliff by the trig point where there are colonies of kittiwake on nests and fulmar drifting about the cliffs with gannet whose huge nests ( all 42 of them if we could count) are constructed amongst the guillemot and razorbill.
A calm and bright evening. Gannet sky- pointing and pair bonding. Good luck to them. A stunning cliff of breeding seabirds.
Organ music can make the stones sing. The cliffs toward Inga Ness have caves, stacks, and geos, fissures where wind and waves force air under pressure until it explodes in a bellowing, booming, crashing- rhythm as patterns of wave and wind, resonant. Wild music. The wildest unheard by all who seek shelter from the storm. Cry of sea birds contesting the wind to effect a safe landing.
We walk the cliff path, we visit St Magnus Cathedral for drama on life of St Rognvald( sp) who pondered building this cathedral and was off on crusade to Jerusalem. Listen to organ music, as the stones sing, vision soaring up red sandstone arches that resemble strata of cliff face- rock soaring to dizzy heights in a haven from the forces that batter the cliffs where we spent our day.