Maeshowe, Ring of Brodgar

In Lerwick our car very quickly became named Ugly, not said with malice, it was not her fault. The  car we have now is a Ford fiesta, not much liked by today's driver, not me. I think she will be called  OSH ( oh shut up) said by driver on numerous occasions when a door was opened and a loud noise came or when backing, more bipping notes. When backing,   Ugly had a nice picture of square boxes behind the car that noel had just mastered,  but not this car.

Maeshowe is a large neolithic chamber 7m  high accessed by a 10 m long by 1 m high tunnel. About 20 people including us listened for an hour to the guides description of how it was made,  as much as archaeologists can work out, and all sorts of other interesting info,  . Inside on the walls are lots of scratched in runic writing from some later norsemen ( they are not called Vikings here)

We drove to Stromness but unfortunately today's navigator directed the driver (still not me)  down a narrow , mainly pedestrian street. This caused some angst, compounded by, a few minutes later, an oncoming driver going to fast. The driver was all for leaving this town. The navigator, however, quickly realised that food would be a bit hard to come by anywhere other than major towns, and she needed food,  so we parked in a supermarkets car park on the edge of town, walked back into town and had lunch.

Next we stopped at the Ring of Brodgar., a henge, I. E a circle of stones.  There were originally 60, now about 20 standing.  The diameter of the circle is 100m. The area was covered with heather in flower.  On the way back to Kirkwall we looked at the Stones of Stenness,  the remains of another henge.

The countryside seems a little less harsh than the Shetlands. The houses are bigger, still brown, brown or grey, but more monotonous in shape than in the shetlands.  There seem to be more cows here in the orkneys, sometimes in a mob of about 30 cows, there appear to be about 25 different colours or breeds. Motley groups. There seems more emphasis on wind  power here.

There is a quiet bar attached to this hotel.  For the second day in a row, we have tried a different whiskey. One must sample the local produce so as not to appear rude.

Ring of Brodgar