The North Our Home – A Week in Orkney, Part Two

If you read last week’s blog, you’ll know that we recently spent a week exploring the Orkney Islands in Scotland (and if you didn’t know, go back and read last week’s post!). We managed to squeeze so much into our visit that I’ve broken the blog into two parts – and even then, I’m still probably only sharing 75% of the things we got up to (but I have lots of other stuff to share about other places too, so the rest will just have to wait for a quiet week when I don’t have anything new to post). This second part of my Orkney blog will focus on what we got up to during the later half of the week, which was spent exploring some of Orkney’s less well known (and therefore quieter) hidden gems.

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Rousay

The Orkney archipelago is made up of more than 70 islands, and while the majority of the places we wanted to visit were on the Mainland, I did want to squeeze in at least one island hopping excursion into our trip. Plan A was to go to Hoy to walk up to the Old Man of Hoy and visit the beach at Rackwick. Unfortunately however, we quite literally ‘missed the boat’ as we couldn’t get ferry tickets which would allow us enough time on the island to do the walk, even looking five days ahead. It’s definitely something to bear in mind if you’re planning to visit Orkney and want to visit any of the islands.

Instead, we decided on a visit to Rousay, just a twenty five minute ferry journey from the mainland jetty at Tingwall. With a population of around two hundred, Rousay is certainly very quiet compared to the relative hustle and bustle of the Mainland. Despite this, it has (according to Wikipedia) attracted the moniker of “Egypt of the North” due to the density of historic sites to be explored on the island.

Midhowe Chambered Cairn and Broch

The main visitor attraction on Rousay is its collection of neolithic monuments, especially Midhowe Chambered Cairn. There’s a small parking area just off the road, then a walk down a steep grassy slope to the bottom of the hill. This enormous cairn is fragile, and a walkway has been constructed over the top so that you can look down into the chamber without damaging the monument. Protected from the elements by a specially constructed hangar, at first we almost missed it and thought it was a farm building!

Looked after by Historic Environment Scotland, the cairn is free to visit and one of the most impressive Neolithic sites I’ve ever visited. Leaving the hangar through the opposite door we entered, just behind the cairn is an Iron Age broch which (like the cairn) free to enter and explore.

Not quite as big or impressive as the Broch of Gurness, Midhowe Broch is nevertheless still very worth a visit. It’s in a somewhat dramatic setting perched on the coast, and on a clear day you’re supposed to be able to see Gurness across the water – although it was a bit too misty for us to test that theory!

Dog friendly rating – 4/5. The dogs were able to explore both sites with us, on leads as the whole area is grazed by sheep. Watch your dog on the walkway at the cairn as there’s quite a big drop off the side!

Hole of the Horses

Our main reason for visiting Rousay was because Sam had come across the Hole of the Horses somewhere on the internet – an impressive duo of natural arches on Rousay’s coast. We walked here from the broch at Midhowe, following a rough trail (not really a path) north along the coast to the natural arches. A bit of a rough trek at times and I was definitely glad I’d put my walking boots on!

The arches themselves are really impressive and definitely something you’ll want your camera for – sadly, my photos didn’t come out very well (I don’t think my camera is a fan of sea air). We did actually walk past the point where you can view the arches first time around, doubling back and only then noticing the rocky promontory which you can walk onto to view them.

Dog friendly rating – 2/5. While there were no stiles to worry about, there were cliff edges all the way, and livestock (including cows) in the fields we walked through. Probably not somewhere I’d pick if I was just looking for a dog walk, but definitely worth it to see the amazing natural arches.

Saviskaill Bay

We had pretty much the whole day to explore Rousay (which is not that big an island), so we drove up to Saviskaill Bay to sit and enjoy the view for a while. There’s a small parking area with space for a few cars off the road near the beach. When we arrived the tide was mostly in and there was a seal bobbing around in the water, so we didn’t go far along the beach, but the water was a beautiful shade of turquoise and blue which made for a lovely spot to sit and relax.

Dog friendly rating – 4/5. This lovely dog friendly beach is the perfect stop to let your dog stretch its legs on Rousay – the beach is easy to reach from the parking area with no stiles, and perfect for a quick swim. Just make sure to check for seals before you let them go wild!

Yesnaby

After a day on Rousay, all too soon it was the last day of our trip. And what a day! The sun came out in full force – what was a heatwave for the rest of the UK was a beautiful sunny day of around 23 degrees celsius on Orkney. Even so, that’s still pretty warm when you’ve got two black dogs, and so I slightly tweaked our plans for the last day so that I wouldn’t be worrying about them overheating all day.

First stop of the day was Yesnaby, to do a walk along the Mainland’s impressive west coast. Originally I planned to do a walk from our Pocket Mountains guide which ran all the way down to the coast to North Gaulton Castle – as the guide says, the only sea stack to have ever been used as a car park when a landcover was helicoptered onto there for an advertising campaign a few decades ago.

In the end we didn’t walk all the way, as even arriving at 9am it was still warming up fast. With the dogs in mind we just walked as far as Yesnaby Castle, which ended up taking about an hour in total – including lots of time spent taking photos of the various sea stacks along the way.

There’s a reasonably large car park at the very end of the road after you drive through Yesnaby, next to an old WW2 gun battery. According to the information board next to it, it was used for target practice over the coast – pilots would fly past towing airborne targets for the gunners to shoot at. I’d rather them than me!

Navigation is straight forward, with the coast on your right on your way out and on your left on the way back. There’s an optional detour onto a headland near the start – it’s a bit more uphill than the rest of the walk (at least the part of it that we did), but we got a great view across to Hoy and the Old Man. So we still got to see it, despite not managing to get a ferry!

The views on this walk were outstanding, and it was one of my favourites from the trip – although I expect the beautiful weather helped significantly. It’s definitely worth finding some time among visits to Neolithic sites to put a trip to Yesnaby into your schedule.

Dog friendly rating – 3/5. While we kept leads on here due to the sheer drops, there are no stiles or roads to worry about. We also passed a few streams which our dogs were very grateful for on such a warm day, and which clearly tasted better than the bottled water we were carrying for them!

Waulkmill Beach

I love a trip to the beach, but mostly, it’s for the joy of a good dog walk where we can let the dogs have a good run off the lead without having to worry about being ambushed by a pheasant. We’ve visited so many beaches that they do all tend to blur into one generic ‘beach’: sea and sand. But Waulkmill beach was such a special place that I know it will stand out in my memory for a very long time.

While not the widest beach on Orkney, it’s certainly the deepest, with plenty of sand and space for everyone. Not that space was an issue, with us sharing the beach with only one other family while we were there. The water was crystal clear and ridiculously inviting – and for the first time ever, I actually took my shoes off and had a paddle. I never thought Orkney would be the place to get me into the sea!

There’s no dedicated car park as such, but there are several wider sections of road near the path down to the beach where you can park your car – look out for the toilet block which is opposite the path. Steps run down to the beach, and while there are a fair few steps to climb down they are well maintained and not that steep at all.

Dog friendly rating – 5/5. Our dogs absolutely loved it here, with acres of room for zoomies, and a whole beach pretty much to themselves. The water was nice and shallow and perfect for swimming – and no stiles or other obstacles to cross to get there.

Where we stayed

It took me a while to find somewhere I wanted to stay in Orkney – a lot of the self-catering accommodation is run independently, and often the website doesn’t have great photos of the inside of the cottages. Visit Scotland’s website is always a go-to when travelling up there, and searching through their listings I stumbled across Brecks self-catering, an independent provider on the island of South Ronaldsay (which is connected to the Mainland by the Churchill Barriers).

We stayed in Brecks Byre, the smaller of the two accommodation choices, which sleeps two people. As it was the smaller property I was expecting it to be tight on space, but when we arrived I couldn’t believe how spacious it was – you probably could easily fit four people in there if the bathroom wasn’t twice the size of our bathroom at home!

Brecks is in a great location, just a ten minute drive from the ferry terminal at St Margaret’s Hope, and with everywhere on the mainland reachable in no more than an hour’s drive. It’s also in a lovely quiet spot in the middle of fields – we couldn’t believe it when a hen harrier flew out of the hedge opposite the living room window! Turns out she’s a local resident and we saw her hunting in the field behind the garden quite a few times over the course of our stay.

Dog friendly rating – 4.5/5. The Byre has nearly everything I look for in a dog friendly property: spacious, no carpet in areas where the dogs go, no traffic passing and nice and quiet. The garden is enormous, but not fully enclosed, which is why I’ve knocked off half a point. Coal is fine in that kind of space but Merry can be trusted to take any opportunity to escape!

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