The SR holiday edition

The Orkney ferry

North to the 'simmer dim'

R D Kernohan

Aberdeen
Sailing from Aberdeen to the Northern Isles in the 'simmer dim' is a next best thing, but it still beats flying. Ideally we should have gone leisurely from Leith, as Sir Walter Scott did as convivial companion on the  inspection by the commissioners of Northern Light Houses, planning research for 'The Lord of the Isles' and coming up with 'The Pirate'. But it's good to sail from a crowded port, and Aberdeen's cold granite warms the heart even on a passing visit. I just wish they would agree about Union Terrace Gardens and secure a dignified future for one of Scotland's great buildings, Marischal College, seen through the porthole as we settle for the night on the Finnish-built Hjaltland.

North Mainland
Except maybe in Aberdeen, car-ferries have destroyed the old integration of towns and their main harbours. We're unloaded far out of Lerwick town and head away to a brighter and more beautiful Shetland than the one encountered by business visitors on the dull road from Sumburgh airport to Lerwick. In villages and hamlets it also becomes a land of flags, mainly Shetland's Nordic cross but with a surprising scattering of St George's red and white, for England are not yet out of the World Cup. The Saltire is nowhere to be seen, except at Historic Scotland properties. But I long ago learned that Shetlanders regard themselves as associated with Scotland, not part of it.
     We have skipped the Sullom Voe oil and natural gas terminal, secluded source of Shetland prosperity and prospects and, more regretfully, the long road with two ferries through Yell to Unst. When I was last there this most northerly British island was thriving, thanks to its native toughness and the Saxa Vord radar station, now closed. I hope its resilience sustains the schemes for regeneration. Instead we head for the lighthouse at Eshaness, the last to be built by the Stevenson dynasty, one of whom (grandfather of R.L.S.)  was on Scott's trip. Even on a fine summer day the wind blows freshly, with the seas battering the cliffs and slowly reshaping them.

Scalloway
Going into Scalloway we pass a lively-looking school, with signs of end-of-term high spirits. But I read in the Shetland Times, an excellent paper, that 'after a fairly even-tempered debate' (in which one member appeared to suggest certain people ought 'to be lined up and shot') the council seeks to close this junior high school along with some primary schools in remoter parts. Just as Shetland has always feared control from alien Edinburgh, so the outer parts of the islands are suspicious of centralisation in Lerwick. 
 
Sumburgh
The last time I was at Sumburgh I was hanging around to see whether my flight would take off in dense August fog. It didn't. This time we nod to the airport in driving across the runway, as you must to get to Sumburgh's headland and good hotel, the puffin colonies on the cliffs, and Jarlshof, a prehistoric and Norse jewel in Historic Scotland's crown. But it was Scott who named it when he set the opening chapters of 'The Pirate' there after his 1814 visit, imagining what the site might have been like in the last habitable days of the fortified manor-house.
     Next morning we leave the main road to take in the greenest, gentlest corner of Shetland and look across the golden sandbar to St Ninian's Isle: what my wife calls 'the loveliest view she has ever seen'. I think she said much the same the day before at the rocks and seascapes of Eshaness.
 
Lerwick
The Shetland capital is a bustling, thriving, sprawling place with a couple of picturesque streets and its old fort. But it's not a town of lovely views and not yet in the market for gourmet city breaks. I should have been warned by the high proportion of the population lunching on sandwiches or takeaway fish and chips. The few cafes that seem inviting are cramped and crowded.
     Away from the town centre they are building a vast 'music venue and cinema' whose exterior looks unpromising. It's next door to the modern museum, externally presentable and internally remarkable, not just for its displays but as an assertion of Shetland identity. But I'd have preferred a fuller and kinder presentation of Shetland religion, including recognition of a 19th-century Methodist impact unlike anything in Scotland.

 

The open sea
To the terminal to catch the afternoon boat to Kirkwall. I haven't had a chance to buy a daily paper to supplement the view of the world from the Shetland Times but the ship's shop stocks the Press and Journal. It's a Highland and Islands edition rich in misdemeanours around Inverness but with only one Shetland story that I can find and no Orkney one. However I have bought the Orcadian, which like the Shetland Times has the feel of a real local newspaper about it, protected by distance and distinctive community identity from the loss of character often apparent elsewhere.
     I also catch up with television, dominated by the football World Cup. England are scraping through on the way to later disaster but the English voices around me aren't pleased. A unanimous vote of no confidence is passed on team and coach. One or two passengers also seem to have no confidence in their digestion as we reach the 50 miles of open water (apart from the Fair Isle) between Sumburgh Head and North Ronaldsay, but the mild swell settles long before Kirkwall Bay.   
 
Ancient Orkney
Kirkwall, unlike Lerwick, is quite a venerable place but we head inland (if that applies in a land of lochs and voes), still dazzled by the brightness of Orkney's green pastures after the rocks and roughness of Shetland.
     There are two wonderful things about Orkney, one ancient, one modern. It's astonishing that such a small community, cultured but remote from 'centres of culture' should have inspired the contribution to Scottish life, English literature, and the arts of Edwin Muir, Eric Linklater, George Mackay Brown, Stanley Cursiter, and the Lancastrian Orcadian, Peter Maxwell Davies. But far more remarkable is the concentration within easy reach of historic Kirkwall of some of Europe's greatest prehistoric remains: the standing-stones at Stenness and in the Ring of Brodgar, the chambered cairn-tomb at Maes Howe, and the Neolithic village at Skara Brae. They draw far more cars and buses than I saw on previous visits but they are not yet spoiled, overwhelmed, and fenced off like Stonehenge.

The view from Skara Brae
 

Scapa Flow
Scapa Flow is one of the key places in 20th-century naval history. But you have to know where to look for the buoy that marks H.M.S. Royal Oak's war grave and there is no marker for the unsalvaged remnants of the German High Seas Fleet.
     For most visitors, some rushed on day trips from as far south as Inverness, the most spectacular attraction is the Italian Chapel built from huts and scrap by the P.O.W.s working on the 'Churchill Barriers' which now carry the road to South Ronaldsay. It's a thing of beauty created by accidents of history and deserves to survive wind, rain, and tourists. It's best seen quietly on a bright day out of season but we have the next best thing, for most of the visitors are from an Italian coach party. 
 
Stromness
I expected more bustle than Stromness offers. Maybe the pace of life is dictated by ferry times. At 4.50 in the afternoon the travel centre appeared closed and across the road an inviting-looking cafe had its chairs already stacked away. I was unenthusiastically served – 'we close at five' – and at two minutes past was sorry for a teenager trying to get in. I needn't have bothered. He wasn't there for his tea but for amorous dalliance. The clock-watching waitress perked up, unsnibbed the door, and came out for hugs and kisses. 

Table of distances from Stromness

 
Kirkwall
The Kirkwall Hotel, where I also stayed in expenses-paid days of auld lang syne, is probably the best hotel in the Northern Isles. It has character, history, and some eccentricity. It served as the wartime H.M.S. Pyramus and its lift, still in excellent order, is reputedly a forthcoming addition to Orkney's schedule of ancient monuments. In a land of large portions it annoys some guests with tiny cheese platters and others grumble at the contrast between the splendour of its à la carte and the limited tour-party menus. But our room is fine. 
     The obvious place to go next morning is St Magnus Cathedral but it's accommodating a school service. That provides time to gasp at the prices for the new-season Rangers strips in the sports-shop – can there be a supporters' longship to Ibrox? – and wander round the Orkney Museum in Tankerness House, less grand and convenient than the Shetland one but with a good Second World War exhibition and a fine Cursiter painting.
     And so to a reopened Saint Magnus. The congregation passes my rough and ready weekday test, which is to assess the number of hymn-books stacked at the back and showing signs of use, but the Kirk doesn't own this great building. I used to wonder about its civic ownership but now I'm glad these glorious stones are secure from the destructive tendency within the General Assembly which sees the Kirk's historic buildings and its share of Scotland's architectural inheritance as a burden. It should be a joy and a duty, as it is for Orkney. 
 
On the Hrossey
Even though the Aberdeen boat is a late-night departure and early-morning arrival, I berth down eagerly on the Hrossey with more Sir Walter Scott. I've discovered the secret of a rediscovery which lets us recapture the excitement he created not only among contemporaries but in the Victorian age of self-education and self-improvement. It's to read him while stimulated by places, legends, and history that inspired him. When I was on the unpaid Ancient Monuments Board I never got a freebie matching his seven weeks' wining, dining, and lairdly hospitality ashore between Leith and Greenock, the long way round. But I'm glad the Bar's old-boy network got him to the Northern Isles.
     I'm glad too I sailed back in this year's hazy 'simmer dim'. Both groups of islands have problems beyond winds and weather. Even near oilfields money is tight and sometimes oddly spent from the public purse. These are not isles of ease – nor are they always isles of bliss, for I recall nasty murders on both. But they have some of the most remarkable traditions in the British Isles, with a balanced sense of local identity and wider connection that the rest of the United Kingdom should envy and emulate.  

R D Kernohan is a writer and broadcaster

All photographs by Islay McLeod

SR returns on Tuesday 3 August