Friday, September 09, 2011
BAY OF SKAILL AUGUST 18th 2011
Another trip with the Blide Trust is diverted. Twice. We are going to go on a walk that takes in Skara Brae and Quoyloo church, so I suggest the Brodgar road - just over the Black Hill of Warbuster a minor road goes above the top of the Loch of Stenness, past Lyking broch and through Voyatown, onto the B9056 then north by the Loch of Skaill with its 19thC fishing islet before reaching the Bay of Skaill. But Patrick turns at the Harray junction instead and onto Dounby. Okay, I thought, the B9057 runs through it and west into Sandwick onto the Kierfiold road then Skaill. But onward he goes and by the Loch of Boardhouse. Ah we all think, the scenic route to come upon Skaill from the heights. Except it becomes apparent Patrick is headed for Birsay. Turns out he thought today's walk was based there. So we turn left and take the back road to the Skaill kirk i.e. the B9056 by way of Marwick instead of the A967 down to the Kierfiold road - disappointed to learn the Kierfiold House gardens are under new owners and (Sheena thinks) no longer open for public viewing. It was a brilliantly sunny evening with a crystal clear sky letting us clearly see far hills on the horizon for miles in every direction, with neither haze nor mist casting a veil over land or sea.
We parked near the Skara Brae interpretation centre as per the itinerary but didn't visit the village, not wanting to fork out the £6 each. Instead of going all along the road we went down to the beach near the far end of the HS site's fence, passing over a band of water-worn stones onto the deep sandy beach. You can see how the sea walls built to preserve the Skara Brae site are heavily eroded, see where what was once a millstream comes down - in front of the mill is where leaves and bark from a now submerged forest came, relics of the time before Skerrabrae disappeared under the sands and the settlement still thrived. After reaching the toilet block we left the beach and crossed over road verges star studded with eyebright. An old farm track passes in front of what is now called the Castle of Snusgar (excavations shew it went out of use in mediaeval times but the castle seen from a 19thC coach going along the coastline had been a building still standing. Nothing unusual to have two castles near each other in Orkney though). At a junction we turned left and had the present Snusgar excavation on our right close by the ? Burn of Rin. As we only set off from Kirkwall at four the sight of diggers still on the site surprised me, especially as I hadn't realised it was still on (this must have been the final week or two of their season, with a Viking longhouse this year's highlight.). From this section of track we had the most perfect view of the Hole o' Row at the other end of the Bay of Skaill, the whole hole fully side on. As we continued up they started leaving the hillock for their transport at Netherstove, Between here and there another track went right at a junction, and I made the mistake of thinking it not part of the itinerary [because it is even more overgrown than where we trod]. As at this point everyone took my lead it wasn't until after we turned left and hit the main road that the time discrepancy became obvious.
Going down to the parish kirk a small building on the other side of the road from this used to be a stable, unlikely though it seems. The rest of the group went by the kirkyard but I brought them back to see an unusual ornament I had seen on my last visit there, a small carved block of stone resembling a deep heart-shaped jewellery casket about a foot long. By coincidence Heart is the name of a friend of the team leader who had only just gone back to New Zealand [or Australia perhaps]. It made me think of two detached architectural pieces not dissimilarly placed at the edge of the Stenness kirkyard, though the heart-shaped box could be sepulchral instead. From here we carefully climbed down to the beach once more.
Now we changed the route and followed another member's suggestion, a walk to the modern cairn on Ward Hill. Approaching Hellia Gibb we looked up and saw the labradoodle cross that had come with us walking the narrow piece between fence and cliff-edge up above. My memory said I had taken the same route myself once, but now I think vegetation hides the way which could have also be straiter since then. Past Hellia Gibb there is now a metal rail to help you come up from the rocky taing onto the cliffs more safely. The clifftops are mostly shattered stone and Patrick decided to walk near the edge of the first bite in the cliffs, Yettna Geo, until someone called him back from what they saw as danger - actually the worst parts of Orkney's coastline are the unnoticed overhangs, and in East Holm the huge circular Hole of The Ness is many metres back from the cliff-edge and disguised until you are almost on top of it ! Coming near myself, I was greeted by the shadowed sides of Yettna Geo gating a clear sky blazing in the light afternoon sun between them like the portal to a land of far away. This was high summer with twilight a long time coming. So we were grateful to finally reach the solace of the modern cairn. Even the labradoodle rested.
Far to the south I saw a distant high cliff headland with a single upright pillar just offshore. I found myself in two minds because though I knew it to be one end of Hoy the name that came to me for the rock stack was the Castle of Yesnaby. Of course as soon as I spoke my identification out loud to great laughter this was corrected to the Old Man of Hoy. Which meant it took a long time before they accepted where the Yesnaby car park lay, and it can't have helped that I referred to the Brough of Bigging with its promontory fort as the Noust of Bigging (the boat naust back of its neck). Between us and the Broch of Borwick lies the long thin chasm of Ramna Geo and the Ness of Ramnageo. Between Ramna Geo and the Broch of Borwick ( a few hundred metres to the north of the latter) an Irish visitor to Orkney told me he saw what appeared to be a monastic beehive cell like those of early mediaeval Ireland. The same (or something surely related) in a 1964 newspaper account is reported as bowl-shaped with an opening at the stone-built side. It would be nice if this had been what I at first mistook fror the broch. At high mag it looks like an upturned terraced quarry or a multi-tiered cake stand. Matching the exposed rock about it I am reminded on the polystyrene landscapes we made in geography, the piled tiles cut to the map contours before we smoothed them out. But this feature by the cliff-edge is hard by the southern side of Ramna Geo, so unless the proximity is a trick of perspective this cannot be that cell. Shoot !
Eventually came the time to head off back, for despite the light by the clock eventide had indeed turned. I had been hoping to go via Skaill Home Farm (The Mount in 1882) to look at the several old foundations along the way, but the kie were everywhere. Skaill House shone ghostly below, a place much haunted by the denizens of an olden graveyard now buried beneath the house. I forgot to mention that between taing and our climb up on land again we did walk alongside the fence before the way narrowed too far. Between us and the shore we pass by the remains of some old structure, still feeling like a building but to official reports only a wall of several courses and a midden. When I finally get off the shore I'm so hot my hair is sweating and I have to go topless in order to cool down (over the next week several folk at the trust feel hotter than the rest at different times, so something going around is my guess). I am told that it is wrong to say that my hair is sweating because hair is dead. Technically true. But the sebaceous glands at the roots of your hair are alive and my hair becomes saturated by sweat. So all I am guilty of is not using the phrase "my hair is sweaty", which is nit-picking rather. Rant over ! Of course now that seatbelts are compulsory you don't have the option of leaning forward to stay cool so I perforce have to put my T-shirt back on. Much too late for a joint meal so we head back to Kirkwall. We arrive after eight, having been gone four hours.
Another trip with the Blide Trust is diverted. Twice. We are going to go on a walk that takes in Skara Brae and Quoyloo church, so I suggest the Brodgar road - just over the Black Hill of Warbuster a minor road goes above the top of the Loch of Stenness, past Lyking broch and through Voyatown, onto the B9056 then north by the Loch of Skaill with its 19thC fishing islet before reaching the Bay of Skaill. But Patrick turns at the Harray junction instead and onto Dounby. Okay, I thought, the B9057 runs through it and west into Sandwick onto the Kierfiold road then Skaill. But onward he goes and by the Loch of Boardhouse. Ah we all think, the scenic route to come upon Skaill from the heights. Except it becomes apparent Patrick is headed for Birsay. Turns out he thought today's walk was based there. So we turn left and take the back road to the Skaill kirk i.e. the B9056 by way of Marwick instead of the A967 down to the Kierfiold road - disappointed to learn the Kierfiold House gardens are under new owners and (Sheena thinks) no longer open for public viewing. It was a brilliantly sunny evening with a crystal clear sky letting us clearly see far hills on the horizon for miles in every direction, with neither haze nor mist casting a veil over land or sea.
We parked near the Skara Brae interpretation centre as per the itinerary but didn't visit the village, not wanting to fork out the £6 each. Instead of going all along the road we went down to the beach near the far end of the HS site's fence, passing over a band of water-worn stones onto the deep sandy beach. You can see how the sea walls built to preserve the Skara Brae site are heavily eroded, see where what was once a millstream comes down - in front of the mill is where leaves and bark from a now submerged forest came, relics of the time before Skerrabrae disappeared under the sands and the settlement still thrived. After reaching the toilet block we left the beach and crossed over road verges star studded with eyebright. An old farm track passes in front of what is now called the Castle of Snusgar (excavations shew it went out of use in mediaeval times but the castle seen from a 19thC coach going along the coastline had been a building still standing. Nothing unusual to have two castles near each other in Orkney though). At a junction we turned left and had the present Snusgar excavation on our right close by the ? Burn of Rin. As we only set off from Kirkwall at four the sight of diggers still on the site surprised me, especially as I hadn't realised it was still on (this must have been the final week or two of their season, with a Viking longhouse this year's highlight.). From this section of track we had the most perfect view of the Hole o' Row at the other end of the Bay of Skaill, the whole hole fully side on. As we continued up they started leaving the hillock for their transport at Netherstove, Between here and there another track went right at a junction, and I made the mistake of thinking it not part of the itinerary [because it is even more overgrown than where we trod]. As at this point everyone took my lead it wasn't until after we turned left and hit the main road that the time discrepancy became obvious.
Going down to the parish kirk a small building on the other side of the road from this used to be a stable, unlikely though it seems. The rest of the group went by the kirkyard but I brought them back to see an unusual ornament I had seen on my last visit there, a small carved block of stone resembling a deep heart-shaped jewellery casket about a foot long. By coincidence Heart is the name of a friend of the team leader who had only just gone back to New Zealand [or Australia perhaps]. It made me think of two detached architectural pieces not dissimilarly placed at the edge of the Stenness kirkyard, though the heart-shaped box could be sepulchral instead. From here we carefully climbed down to the beach once more.
Now we changed the route and followed another member's suggestion, a walk to the modern cairn on Ward Hill. Approaching Hellia Gibb we looked up and saw the labradoodle cross that had come with us walking the narrow piece between fence and cliff-edge up above. My memory said I had taken the same route myself once, but now I think vegetation hides the way which could have also be straiter since then. Past Hellia Gibb there is now a metal rail to help you come up from the rocky taing onto the cliffs more safely. The clifftops are mostly shattered stone and Patrick decided to walk near the edge of the first bite in the cliffs, Yettna Geo, until someone called him back from what they saw as danger - actually the worst parts of Orkney's coastline are the unnoticed overhangs, and in East Holm the huge circular Hole of The Ness is many metres back from the cliff-edge and disguised until you are almost on top of it ! Coming near myself, I was greeted by the shadowed sides of Yettna Geo gating a clear sky blazing in the light afternoon sun between them like the portal to a land of far away. This was high summer with twilight a long time coming. So we were grateful to finally reach the solace of the modern cairn. Even the labradoodle rested.
Far to the south I saw a distant high cliff headland with a single upright pillar just offshore. I found myself in two minds because though I knew it to be one end of Hoy the name that came to me for the rock stack was the Castle of Yesnaby. Of course as soon as I spoke my identification out loud to great laughter this was corrected to the Old Man of Hoy. Which meant it took a long time before they accepted where the Yesnaby car park lay, and it can't have helped that I referred to the Brough of Bigging with its promontory fort as the Noust of Bigging (the boat naust back of its neck). Between us and the Broch of Borwick lies the long thin chasm of Ramna Geo and the Ness of Ramnageo. Between Ramna Geo and the Broch of Borwick ( a few hundred metres to the north of the latter) an Irish visitor to Orkney told me he saw what appeared to be a monastic beehive cell like those of early mediaeval Ireland. The same (or something surely related) in a 1964 newspaper account is reported as bowl-shaped with an opening at the stone-built side. It would be nice if this had been what I at first mistook fror the broch. At high mag it looks like an upturned terraced quarry or a multi-tiered cake stand. Matching the exposed rock about it I am reminded on the polystyrene landscapes we made in geography, the piled tiles cut to the map contours before we smoothed them out. But this feature by the cliff-edge is hard by the southern side of Ramna Geo, so unless the proximity is a trick of perspective this cannot be that cell. Shoot !
Eventually came the time to head off back, for despite the light by the clock eventide had indeed turned. I had been hoping to go via Skaill Home Farm (The Mount in 1882) to look at the several old foundations along the way, but the kie were everywhere. Skaill House shone ghostly below, a place much haunted by the denizens of an olden graveyard now buried beneath the house. I forgot to mention that between taing and our climb up on land again we did walk alongside the fence before the way narrowed too far. Between us and the shore we pass by the remains of some old structure, still feeling like a building but to official reports only a wall of several courses and a midden. When I finally get off the shore I'm so hot my hair is sweating and I have to go topless in order to cool down (over the next week several folk at the trust feel hotter than the rest at different times, so something going around is my guess). I am told that it is wrong to say that my hair is sweating because hair is dead. Technically true. But the sebaceous glands at the roots of your hair are alive and my hair becomes saturated by sweat. So all I am guilty of is not using the phrase "my hair is sweaty", which is nit-picking rather. Rant over ! Of course now that seatbelts are compulsory you don't have the option of leaning forward to stay cool so I perforce have to put my T-shirt back on. Much too late for a joint meal so we head back to Kirkwall. We arrive after eight, having been gone four hours.
Labels: Bay of Skaill, Castle of Snusgar, Ramna Geo, Sandwick, Skara Brae, Yettna Geo
Sunday, July 03, 2011
HAPPY VALLEY TO SCALE June 28th 2011
Finished my work at the Blide Trust with time to spare for the camera club trip, led by someone who turned out to be called Claire. And fortunately there was still space on the eight-seater Caravelle.
We were going to visit Happy Valley in Stenness parish, which I had always intended to visit - like many ferryloupers I need the green, and on occasion graminiferae (grasses) just won't do ;-) . Actually as an archaeophile I would love to have gone to the end of the Bigswell road itself. On midsummer eve a fire was lit on the ridge of Bigswell Hill, possibly the mound shown west of Mid Bigswell. And in this area is a holy well - children bathed here as part of ceremonies that continued at the Stone of Odin, and kneeling lovers drank the waters prior to taking the vow of Odin at said stone. This was also a healing well. At Beltane patients circled the sacred well deosil (clockwise) before taking a drink from the waters. Those who were epileptic or unsound of mind were plunged into it before being left overnight tied to a post beside the well (I am reminded of the stake left to mark the position of the Kethesgeo stone in Stenness' Clouston district). Presuming that the traditions do indeed relate to one particular well there are differing opinions as to which.it is. Moderns prefer a well at HY3345810462, fifty yards from the Mid Bigswell on a slope over the road. Antiquarians preferred one (HY3362110813) in the Moss of Bigswald below Nether Bigswell with alignments to the Standing Stones on the
Beltane and Midwinter lines, though the wellspring shown SE of Lower/Nether Bigswell, with 'drain', is an even better fit to the description. Here an underground passage of several yards length streamed water to a high-capacity spring with a well (once several yards across) having one or two steps into it.
It also holds interest for the historian as the last battle on Orkney soil took place mostly on the Moss of Bigswald (i.e. Bigswell) in Symmerdale 'springs valley'. A 1599 Scottish invasion [sorry, "expedition"] was decisively repelled at the Battle of Summerdale - possibly after a failed pincer movement as though the main body of Scots landed at Houton others are said to have come via Wasdale in Firth. The battle started at the Hole o' Pow [pow 'pool'] and the Earl of Caithness and most of the Scots were killed here in the Moss of Bigswald. The two Scottish leaders were buried seperately, Lord Sinclair near the moss with a stone marker [? HY34831058] and the earl on the other side of the Burn of Skaill from the traditional Oback site for the Orphir palace and church of the earls, especially earls Harold and Paul (certainly wherever this was Sweyn Asleifarson escaped from the palace up the Dale of Oback to make for Damsay) . The earl's slab memorial was later broken up for domestic use, sometime before 1898, but back in place by 1927. A group of Bronze Age mounds on the west side of the '50-50' road before reaching the Oback-South Fea crossroads are the "heaps of earth" tradition places over the Scottish slain, just by my choice for his lordship's marker. Some Caithness refugees are said to have retreated and sought asylum at the kirk on the Loch of Wasdale after throwing their arms into the Loch of Lummagen by Kebro (the lochan disappeared overnight last century with no finds reported despite many stones having been been removed previously). Aft gang aglae, hey.
The minibus side-door is a bit of a three bears when you are on the inside as when you try to shut it mostly it either does not catch or else bounces back. Fortunately the front seat passenger did the deed from ouside, a grizzled pyramid of a man even taller than Claire. Alongside me sat a mature student nurse on secondment to Orkney. In the back a quiet man sat quietly. Turned out our guide had never been to Happy Valley before and had little idea how to get there - coming from Kirkwall, after you pass the road to the rings and Knowes of Broidgar on your right and then on your left is a branch road with a 'no through road' symbol, which is where you need to go. Then past the Stoursdale farmroad turning [if I remember correctly mysen ;-) ] is another near the southern end of the Happy Valley plantation. There is a kind of rough car parking space, in a tight squeeze you might fit in as many cars as the minibus sat people. This keeps traffic small and light, preserving the tranquility and saving the roads from unbudgeted 'wear and tear'.
A babbling brook runs through it, and we could have done with more talk less hurry. This is part of the Burn of Russadale that runs below the west flank of Brown Hill from Mid Hill and eventually comes past Dams and nigh the main road - there is a Millhouse east of the school. It were nice to see two lads with strimmers doing the cottage lawn. Claire pointed out several rusty pieces of ironmongery sitting against the end wall but nobody bit - wrong shade of rust for me ! The old boy who created the place made plenty of nooks and crannies with many walls of varied stone and aspect, you wonder what might have been before him if anything. By the ford the rectangular structure that looks to be the remains of a mill is the electricity generator, the deteriorating plywood water-wheel perhap a recycled SWA cable drum. Further down the burn has a pair of sweeping curves, a double cutting walled along one bank like that along the millstream in Binscarth plantation - upstream there is another cutting slightly east of a line from (Upper) Bigswell to Dow(a)scarth/Dowsgarth. Signs of restoration are evident in the multifarious kinds of stone used. One rectangular red block near the base catches my eye, having two semi-circular cuts along the bottom edge like half a pair of stocks upside-down. Strange. It is at this point that Claire has to go back for the quiet man, who has obviously made the most of his time here for photography. After a while he is found and we wend our way froward once more. Eventually the path comes to the western end of the plantation and you either go up to the Bigswell road or return whence you came - I don't think we did the full trail ourselves. Nobody slowed to look at the orchids. I know they are over-common this year, still...
Despite the hiatus the trip is well up on time. So as the nurse is only here until Friday it is decided to take her up into Sandwick for a "brilliant" view of Skaill bay. Unfortunately it is a while since the driver had been this way and we missed a nearer road to Skaill and ended up going by one further along the way to Birsay. We stopped at the parish church[? Mobisyard] and got out.
East of the road near the Burn of Rin (Ringan=Ninian) is the recently excavated Viking longhouse mound next to Castle of Snusgar - except that the excavators found that the latter went out of use in mediaeval times and there is a 19thC reference to seeing the building near the coast from a coach. My bet for the site of that building is the Lenahowe/Linnahowe mound with a top to bottom rectangular cut next the high southern end. Today the mound is camouflaged by innumerable clumps of herbage. In front of the church a small circular road runs round a high enclosure [? Mobhisland/Moarisland], close to whose south end Viking graves were found - if it were not for the fact that the Skaill Hoard is reported as found on the Castle of Snusgar by the Burn of Rin then I would have placed its findspot about here.
A 'drain' runs beside the west side of the kirkyard, and after the kirkyard corner there is above the west bank a long wall of bonnie white stone stones and blocks. From here I can see the Knowe of Verron on the horizon. This is a broch that (?later) found use for iron-making. If not here then abouthands going back to a streamlet is the traditional site for St Lawrence stook [stouk 'prebend'] and monastery, with large stones covering an acre almost of which some were used in building Lenahowe farmhouse. There are the most glorious waves bedazzled with sun on both sides of the Bay of Skaill. Some climb up the Hole o' Row only to fall back upon themselves. I head over to the kirk to try once more to find the well. Still no luck. Making my way oot the kirkyard I see by the gate a heart-shaped box. No, no. Block carved into a large heart. Surprised this hasn't gone the way of the broch's furnace base, half-inched in the middle of the excavations !!
Owing to the time lost being lost Claire didn't take us via Twatt kirk to give the nurse that c**p photo-op. Back in Kirkwall, expecting a final 'word', we wait on our guide. No to hanging on she says. I think of folIowing the others inside but I feel tremendously hot and sticky. Would love to socialise except I feel as if I would slip clean out of my claes into a pile on the floor.
Finished my work at the Blide Trust with time to spare for the camera club trip, led by someone who turned out to be called Claire. And fortunately there was still space on the eight-seater Caravelle.
We were going to visit Happy Valley in Stenness parish, which I had always intended to visit - like many ferryloupers I need the green, and on occasion graminiferae (grasses) just won't do ;-) . Actually as an archaeophile I would love to have gone to the end of the Bigswell road itself. On midsummer eve a fire was lit on the ridge of Bigswell Hill, possibly the mound shown west of Mid Bigswell. And in this area is a holy well - children bathed here as part of ceremonies that continued at the Stone of Odin, and kneeling lovers drank the waters prior to taking the vow of Odin at said stone. This was also a healing well. At Beltane patients circled the sacred well deosil (clockwise) before taking a drink from the waters. Those who were epileptic or unsound of mind were plunged into it before being left overnight tied to a post beside the well (I am reminded of the stake left to mark the position of the Kethesgeo stone in Stenness' Clouston district). Presuming that the traditions do indeed relate to one particular well there are differing opinions as to which.it is. Moderns prefer a well at HY3345810462, fifty yards from the Mid Bigswell on a slope over the road. Antiquarians preferred one (HY3362110813) in the Moss of Bigswald below Nether Bigswell with alignments to the Standing Stones on the
Beltane and Midwinter lines, though the wellspring shown SE of Lower/Nether Bigswell, with 'drain', is an even better fit to the description. Here an underground passage of several yards length streamed water to a high-capacity spring with a well (once several yards across) having one or two steps into it.
It also holds interest for the historian as the last battle on Orkney soil took place mostly on the Moss of Bigswald (i.e. Bigswell) in Symmerdale 'springs valley'. A 1599 Scottish invasion [sorry, "expedition"] was decisively repelled at the Battle of Summerdale - possibly after a failed pincer movement as though the main body of Scots landed at Houton others are said to have come via Wasdale in Firth. The battle started at the Hole o' Pow [pow 'pool'] and the Earl of Caithness and most of the Scots were killed here in the Moss of Bigswald. The two Scottish leaders were buried seperately, Lord Sinclair near the moss with a stone marker [? HY34831058] and the earl on the other side of the Burn of Skaill from the traditional Oback site for the Orphir palace and church of the earls, especially earls Harold and Paul (certainly wherever this was Sweyn Asleifarson escaped from the palace up the Dale of Oback to make for Damsay) . The earl's slab memorial was later broken up for domestic use, sometime before 1898, but back in place by 1927. A group of Bronze Age mounds on the west side of the '50-50' road before reaching the Oback-South Fea crossroads are the "heaps of earth" tradition places over the Scottish slain, just by my choice for his lordship's marker. Some Caithness refugees are said to have retreated and sought asylum at the kirk on the Loch of Wasdale after throwing their arms into the Loch of Lummagen by Kebro (the lochan disappeared overnight last century with no finds reported despite many stones having been been removed previously). Aft gang aglae, hey.
The minibus side-door is a bit of a three bears when you are on the inside as when you try to shut it mostly it either does not catch or else bounces back. Fortunately the front seat passenger did the deed from ouside, a grizzled pyramid of a man even taller than Claire. Alongside me sat a mature student nurse on secondment to Orkney. In the back a quiet man sat quietly. Turned out our guide had never been to Happy Valley before and had little idea how to get there - coming from Kirkwall, after you pass the road to the rings and Knowes of Broidgar on your right and then on your left is a branch road with a 'no through road' symbol, which is where you need to go. Then past the Stoursdale farmroad turning [if I remember correctly mysen ;-) ] is another near the southern end of the Happy Valley plantation. There is a kind of rough car parking space, in a tight squeeze you might fit in as many cars as the minibus sat people. This keeps traffic small and light, preserving the tranquility and saving the roads from unbudgeted 'wear and tear'.
A babbling brook runs through it, and we could have done with more talk less hurry. This is part of the Burn of Russadale that runs below the west flank of Brown Hill from Mid Hill and eventually comes past Dams and nigh the main road - there is a Millhouse east of the school. It were nice to see two lads with strimmers doing the cottage lawn. Claire pointed out several rusty pieces of ironmongery sitting against the end wall but nobody bit - wrong shade of rust for me ! The old boy who created the place made plenty of nooks and crannies with many walls of varied stone and aspect, you wonder what might have been before him if anything. By the ford the rectangular structure that looks to be the remains of a mill is the electricity generator, the deteriorating plywood water-wheel perhap a recycled SWA cable drum. Further down the burn has a pair of sweeping curves, a double cutting walled along one bank like that along the millstream in Binscarth plantation - upstream there is another cutting slightly east of a line from (Upper) Bigswell to Dow(a)scarth/Dowsgarth. Signs of restoration are evident in the multifarious kinds of stone used. One rectangular red block near the base catches my eye, having two semi-circular cuts along the bottom edge like half a pair of stocks upside-down. Strange. It is at this point that Claire has to go back for the quiet man, who has obviously made the most of his time here for photography. After a while he is found and we wend our way froward once more. Eventually the path comes to the western end of the plantation and you either go up to the Bigswell road or return whence you came - I don't think we did the full trail ourselves. Nobody slowed to look at the orchids. I know they are over-common this year, still...
Despite the hiatus the trip is well up on time. So as the nurse is only here until Friday it is decided to take her up into Sandwick for a "brilliant" view of Skaill bay. Unfortunately it is a while since the driver had been this way and we missed a nearer road to Skaill and ended up going by one further along the way to Birsay. We stopped at the parish church[? Mobisyard] and got out.
East of the road near the Burn of Rin (Ringan=Ninian) is the recently excavated Viking longhouse mound next to Castle of Snusgar - except that the excavators found that the latter went out of use in mediaeval times and there is a 19thC reference to seeing the building near the coast from a coach. My bet for the site of that building is the Lenahowe/Linnahowe mound with a top to bottom rectangular cut next the high southern end. Today the mound is camouflaged by innumerable clumps of herbage. In front of the church a small circular road runs round a high enclosure [? Mobhisland/Moarisland], close to whose south end Viking graves were found - if it were not for the fact that the Skaill Hoard is reported as found on the Castle of Snusgar by the Burn of Rin then I would have placed its findspot about here.
A 'drain' runs beside the west side of the kirkyard, and after the kirkyard corner there is above the west bank a long wall of bonnie white stone stones and blocks. From here I can see the Knowe of Verron on the horizon. This is a broch that (?later) found use for iron-making. If not here then abouthands going back to a streamlet is the traditional site for St Lawrence stook [stouk 'prebend'] and monastery, with large stones covering an acre almost of which some were used in building Lenahowe farmhouse. There are the most glorious waves bedazzled with sun on both sides of the Bay of Skaill. Some climb up the Hole o' Row only to fall back upon themselves. I head over to the kirk to try once more to find the well. Still no luck. Making my way oot the kirkyard I see by the gate a heart-shaped box. No, no. Block carved into a large heart. Surprised this hasn't gone the way of the broch's furnace base, half-inched in the middle of the excavations !!
Owing to the time lost being lost Claire didn't take us via Twatt kirk to give the nurse that c**p photo-op. Back in Kirkwall, expecting a final 'word', we wait on our guide. No to hanging on she says. I think of folIowing the others inside but I feel tremendously hot and sticky. Would love to socialise except I feel as if I would slip clean out of my claes into a pile on the floor.
Labels: Battle of Summerdale, Bigswell, Castle of Snusgar, Earl of Caithness, Happy Valley, Lord Sinclair, St Lawrence Stook, Stone of Odin
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Good to see on page 7 of this week's "The Orcadian" the continued excavation of a 10-12th century longhouse near the Bay of Skaill described simply as that. Having been covered over in the mediaeval period there is no way that this can have been the Castle of Snusgar still seen near the coast several centuries later. The head of land opposite the modern parish kirk might have been the castle (snusgar means a snout of projecting land) and the Knowe of Verron complex is also a good candidate, but my preference is still for the traditional Linnahowe site by Lenahowe(partly built with materials from the mound).
Labels: Castle of Snusgar, Lenahowe, Linnahowe, Snusgar
