Birsay

Before we visited Orkney back in September, I’d asked around for any recommendations of places to see and go. Generally, they were pretty thin on the ground, as the majority of people had never been to Orkney (and what a shame, as it’s great!). There was one person who came up trumps though with an excellent list of things to do, and included several alternatives to the more well-known, touristy hotspots on Orkney, including a suggestion to visit the Brough of Birsay.

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Birsay is best known for its small tidal island, accessible via a causeway for a few hours each day, which is home to puffins in the summer and the ruins of an ancient broch all year round. In the village of Birsay itself you can find the ruins of the Earl’s Palace, a 16th century building constructed by the then earl of Orkney, today just a shell of its former glory but still extremely impressive.

Unfortunately, as the tide times are determined by nature and not by human convenience, we weren’t able to walk across the causeway to visit the island during the week we visited (not without getting up at 4am, and I didn’t want to visit it that much!). Even without a trip to the island though you can still enjoy a lovely walk along the coast here, and we picked up a short linear walk along the cliffs from our Pocket Mountains guide to Orkney.

There’s a free parking area with space for a few cars opposite the causeway (or where the causeway would be if the tide’s in). When we visited Birsay it was blowing an absolute hoolie and I have to say watching other people stagger into the wind to get from their cars to the coast, I wasn’t feeling massively enthusiastic about going for a walk! I did want to see the Birsay whalebone though, a 150 year old monument to Orkney’s maritime past, and therefore I put on all of my layers and we ventured out into the wind.

The walk along the cliffs was very flat, with some good views back to the Brough of Birsay and Marwick Head. We spotted a few seals bobbing about in the water, which I was surprised by as the waves were getting a bit wild! We walked past the place where the whalebone was supposed to be on the way out and didn’t see it, so we kept our eyes properly peeled on the way back. Again, we didn’t see it – not even when I dragged Sam and the dogs repeatedly up and down the same stretch of path in search of it.

After 15 minutes of questioning my own sanity and becoming increasingly annoyed with myself for not being able to find something which I was sure was right in front of me, I realised I had 4G and decided to Google the whalebone to see if anyone else had struggled to find it and had any helpful directions. Turns out, the Birsay Whalebone actually blew down in strong winds just a few months before our visit, and therefore wasn’t there at all. It’s currently being kept safe in a museum on the island, with no clear timescale as to when (or if) it might be restored to its original location.

Defeated in our quest to see the whalebone, we did still have a surprisingly nice walk considering the weather. On getting back to the car we decided to treat ourselves to lunch and a hot drink, and drove up to the Birsay Bay Tearoom. The tearoom is extremely popular and we were lucky to get a table without pre-booking – we arrived just as another table was leaving (note that Birsay Bay Tearoom is not dog friendly – they do have a secure car park, and both of our dogs were quite happy to nap in the car while we ate).

Dog friendly rating – 3.5/5. While we didn’t encounter any livestock or stiles on this walk, we did choose to keep leads on all the way as there were either steep drops or accessible runs down to the sea – which was wild.

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