Things I'll Miss About Orkney

It's a long list, and given 36 hours to ponder would grow longer, but these are the off the top of the head things.

We're leaving a week on Friday, and life here is winding down. The anticipation of the next phase of life is winding up. It's an odd conjunction of up and down, stuck between two escalators.

I'll miss Trenabies. No trip to Kirkwall is complete without a decaff latte there.

I'll miss the cathedral, the most beautiful and the most atmospheric I've ever been in.

I'll miss the scenery: the beaches, cliffs, views, headlands; the soft roll of the land. The staggering views from the house: not a view we'd be able to afford anywhere else in the UK. I'll miss the big skies, their moods, the rolling in and out of weather, the stupendous sunsets.

I'm getting sentimental now and sentimentality is dangerous.

I'll miss the idea of isolation, though the practicalities of it were harder than I imagined. A 6 hours ferry journey and an overnight stay in Aberdeen to get shoes and underwear was expensive shopping.

I'll miss all the benefits that isolation brings, though. The complete safety of children to roam, to disappear off on bikes, knowing they're safe. The complete unlikelihood of anything remotely terrorist taking place here. The 1950s atmosphere and values. The fact that a lost cat makes the news and a road accident makes a headline.

I'll miss the idea of ferries being available to other islands, even though we rarely had the time to exploit them.

I'll miss the ice cream.

I'll miss the weekly visits to the cinema, and our party of five being five of the 8 people there.

I'll miss the midnight sun in summer.

And I'll miss the palpable sense of history here, the fact that if you scratch Orkney it bleeds archaeology, neolithic and viking, renaissance and herring, with the buildings and artefacts to match.

Now I'm very sentimental and sad. I must make a list of the things I won't miss next.