Day11- Birsay Bay

Today our rather snazzy red car took us up to Birsay. The first stop was the tearoom where I broke my scone embargo by indulging in a beautifully light cheese one, only because my favoured Barony biscuits made with bere flour were still in the oven.

Because the tide was in, the causeway to the Brough of Birsay was under water and so we walked along the headland to the iconic Whale bone, which appears in so many photos of Birsay Bay. I think it is part of the jawbone of a whale stranded on the shore about 150 years ago, but the weather has taken its toll on the structure.

On the return walk we found the ideal accommodation for His Lordship while on holiday. On the track was an old, somewhat collapsed fishermen's noust at the top of a geo, where, in the past, the men pulled their boats up out of the sea in winter. It even sported the sign favoured by HL.

We drove home on back roads so quiet it was quite an event to pass a car, but it gave ample opportunity to marvel at the wide Orkney skies busy with white clouds on a blue backdrop and the farmers cutting the silage, turning fields from deep green to pale yellow.