We will rock you

Lots of reading tonight, because you will probably see that Oliver has written as well. His entry is very different to mine. He is in the middle of a busy boarding school.

We are at the end of the world.

It is truly the end of the world, truly.

We have just come into the camper van, exhausted and ready for bed. It felt like the middle of the night but when we turned the lights on we discovered that it was only half past six.

It has been dark for ages and ages, because this is the frozen north, and the days are short at this time of year. It does not go dark here at all when it is midsummer.

We are on Shapinsay. Shapinsay is an island at the end of the world with almost nothing on it except a castle, some cliffs, some seals, a couple of farms and a house I built once.

It was many, many years ago, and lots of things have changed.

We crossed from Scotland this morning.

The ferry sailing was cancelled yesterday, and then was late even today. This was because the weather had been awful and the sea had been too rough. By eleven this morning it was deemed suitable for the ferry, and so we were allowed to board.

If ever you have been to France you will know what ferries are like.

It was not like that at all.

Nobody seemed to be very worried about anything much. We wandered around the docks ignoring all of the signs telling us where we could walk, and nobody noticed. The dogs charged about, and we gazed out to sea, and in the end we stood by the sea wall and watched the boat coming in

When I lived here the boat from Scrabster was called the St. Ola, but this was a different one. It was faster, and more modern, and was called Hamnavoe, which is the old name for Stromness. I do not know why they changed, not the ferry nor the name, but the ferry crossing is a whole hour shorter than it was. Obviously they have not moved the islands, so the new boat must be much better.

There were about six cars waiting to cross, one of which was full of Frenchmen. They had been waiting in their car since the middle of the night and were cold, and tired, and very cross about something. I do not know what it was, because of being asleep when they were bellowing about it in the middle of the night, but it was something related to a lorry.

The lady at the port told us that it was the very last sailing for weeks and weeks. After us the boat was being taken off the water for refurbishment, and there would not be another.

We worried a little about that, in a polite English way, because obviously we would like to go home before weeks and weeks have passed. The lady explained that there would be a freight boat that we could catch next week. She said that it was not very comfortable, but she supposed, with a glance at us, that we would not mind that.

We didn’t.

We got on the boat, and were mildly un-nerved to notice the boat crew anchoring everything down with great enthusiasm.

We found a place in a lounge area where you were not supposed to go unless you had an upgraded ticket, which we didn’t, but we sat there anyway. Nobody cared in the least, which is the way I remember things being in this part of the world.

We did not take the dogs up into the passenger area, and they repaid us by being sick under the table in the camper van during the crossing.

We did not exactly blame them. It was not as bad as we had thought that it might be, but it was bad enough. There was a substantial swell, and the captain warned us that it would pitch and roll. This meant that as well as going up and down it rocked from side to side as well.

We lay on the benches and pretended we were being rocked to sleep. We had slept ten hours the night before, but it was not very long before we had actually been rocked to sleep, and woke up to see the Old Man Of Hoy gliding past the portholes.

It was more exciting than I can begin to tell you.

Shortly after that we saw Stromness, a cluster of grey houses on the steep seashore, and then we were circling into land.

This is the land of the Gods, probably because there isn’t anything much to disturb them.

There is sky. There is so much sky. Because you are on an island it soars above you like a great dome, and stretches right down to your feet. There are no words to describe the massive expanse of the sky, and the muddy green islands below.

We drove to Kirkwall, which is the capital city of Orkney. There is a road, and a dock, and an enormous red stone cathedral.

We walked along the street, which we thought was pedestrianised, but it turned out that it wasn’t, it was just very quiet. It was so quiet that you could hear your footsteps. We looked in a few of the shops, most of which were selling optimistic Orcadian crafts that might be bought by passengers from cruise ships. We did not buy anything, because I am not short of hand knitted puffins, but they were interesting anyway. The dogs were allowed in all of them, and given dog treats in some of them. They liked this so much that they wanted to go in all of the shops, but we ran out of time.

The ferry across to Shapinsay was not the MV Shapinsay, which goes away for servicing at this time of year, but a substitute called Thorsvoe. Everybody  hates this because the passenger areas are two narrow corridors with plastic chairs, and not the lovely wide seating area in the front of the lovely Shapinsay.

We did not go into the passenger area anyway. We stayed in the camper van. You are allowed to do this on the Shapinsay crossing as long as nobody important from the ferry company is on board.

The crew must have decided that we were not important, because they left the volume turned down on the safety announcement. In the summer when there are visitors on the islands this is turned up, but in the winter they just play it very quietly so as not to disturb anybody’s conversation.  If the ferry sinks everybody dies anyway, because the water is too cold to survive longer than a few minutes.

Mark talked to a chap from the islands as we crossed, and he told us how things were going. He was a recent immigrant from Sooth, and told us that the pub on the island had closed, and the population was now mostly English immigrants. He said that the true islanders do not like this, and do not talk to the newcomers.

This was not the way I remember it. When I was here everybody lived together, wherever they had come from.

There is only one shop on the island now, run by Sheena at the post office, and there are real petrol pumps, not the sort that I remembered, which had a glass ball on the top and had to be pumped by hand. The castle is still there, but nobody lives there any more.

It was very strange to be back. We pulled off the ferry and on to the dock, and the ferry men told us sternly that the camper van was too big, and we could not come back at a low tide, only a high one.

The island has not changed.

We are going to explore it tomorrow.

We drove to Ness, which is the far northern point on the island, and where I lived once, briefly. I had forgotten what the house looked like, and stared curiously as we passed. It has a conservatory that I had utterly omitted from my memories, although it had been very handy for wet dogs and wellies.

We parked beside the beach, and walked.

We walked for miles along the coast. We climbed over rocks and paddled through muddy fields and stared at distant islands and listened to the birds and the wind.

The grass by the shore had frozen into the shapes of waves, like a little inland ocean. We watched the sea splashing into the narrow inlets and listened to it glug through little caves.

We walked until the sun set.

We made our way back to the camper van by moonlight.

Mark had brought a fire log with us, with chainsaw cuts down half of its length, and we lit it and sat outside, warm by the little fire in the freezing dark.

The skies were enormous above us. Geese called to one another as they flew overhead.

Mark took a picture of me by the fire which you can see below. There is a bright light next to me that was not there in the not-picture world, so probably it is the Gods.

When we came in we were exhausted and ready for bed, but it was only half past six.

Have some photographs.