Day 6 More Orkney

A bit darker and wild and woolly this morning so we rose later for breakfast, but not too late for Wendy, this time, to try the Westray smoked haddock. We were served such large pieces!

We changed our plans from a nature day to a morning in Kirkwall. The Aurora jewellery workshop caught Wendy's eye on the way in and we stopped to chat. We were sure there must be more art and craft here on Orkney than we had seen so far. We found more in Kirkwall itself.

At last we are at a distillery and time to visit. Wendy should be writing this as there was little new the guide could tell her, but the tour was a first for me. The barley dampened and spread over the floors to begin germination, flavour added at a later stage by gentle heat from peat fires, made sense to me and explained the smokey flavour. 

Wendy confirmed that the cattle feed we had seen at Scara Brae yesterday was the waste produced after the ground barley has been heated in water and the undissolved matter extracted.

I loved the notice beside the furnace that the swallows had left. Why wouldn't birds find their way into breweries and distilleries (we found corn crake nesting boxes outside the Orkney Brewery yesterday) with so much grain around and warm places to roost!
Highland Park said they make and supply barrels to sherry makers in the south of Spain who return them, after bottling, impregnated with sherry flavour and it is this that gives the brand it's particular flavour.

Ian Rankin had bought a barrel for the proceeds to go to charity and this Rebus bottle sells for £11000. It is a fifty year old whiskey called Rebus (after the detective character in his books).

St Magnus Church's distinctive mix of red and cream sandstone should not have been so hard to find and we visited a much more austere St Magnus later in the day in Birsay, the first burial place of St Magnus the plaque said. The Kirkwall St Magnus had such long and deep galleries and beautiful stained glass. 

Though relatively new I loved the altar inlaid with a Celtic design and we found another example of local carpentry in the Orkney chair in the Highland Park reception area. The curved back functions as a kind of snug.

We returned to Marwick Head for another chance to see puffins but the wind became a little stronger and a squall was coming over so we decided to drive on to Brough of Birsay. This is another puffin nesting site but the walkway across to this island was under repair and access prohibited. We could see across to the archaeological sites and the Stevenson lighthouse. Quite a lot of preservation of significant sites was underway in Birsay which was good to see. 

At a distance among the rock pools it looked as if up to a dozen mute swans were feeding on seaweed It was a rather strange and beautiful sight.

Wendy has found yet another puffin site so maybe we'll be lucky tomorrow!