Blown Away on Orkney

I remembered the Irish saying, "May the wind always be at your back" as I was nearly blown off the cliffs in Orkney, Scotland. I guess it just depends on the view you want on the way down into the drink. Calling it "windy" in Orkney doesn't come close. All the locals kept saying, "Oh you should be here in the winter. This isn't bad." Hmmmph (Scottish sound)! Isn't bad? It was a consistent 70 mph wind with higher gusts that really made you feel like you were going to be knocked over. Where walking progress was in spurts -- literally one step up and three back, or six steps up and one back, depending on the wind direction. You could literally jump up and catch wind. For those that don't know, that's on the same level as a Cat1 hurricane/F1 tornado... on a sustained basis (I looked it up).

I pulled into one parking lot where the owner of the store ran out and shouted at me over the wind to park my car the other direction so my door wouldn't fly off when I opened it. Huh? Took a second for that one to sink in. This was the stuff of legend on the island. As the story goes, a guy took his rental car out for a day of sightseeing and came back with not one, but BOTH doors gone. Went out with a coupe and came back with a Jeep. Good luck 'splaining that one to Hertz. And after trying to get my door open, even the other direction, I can see that there was truth to this legend. The only thing missing was a witch on a bicycle going by with a dog in its basket.

Orkney is one of a set of islands off the northern coast of Scotland that includes the Shetlands -- which everyone knows because of the "ponies." Billy Connolly, one of Scotland's great comedians once said of performing on the Shetlands that the people attach bits of string to their little kids, not to keep them from running away, but from blowing away. So you'll see them floating their kids down the street like balloons at the Macy's Day parade. He also said there's no trees in Shetland (or Orkney). "All Shetland's trees are in Norway." I so get it all now.

I've had friends comment on my holiday photos saying they were surprised I got a tan there when they had always heard about the rain and not the sun. It's not a suntan, it's windburn. The locals call it a Scottish tan.

The wind affects everything... the horses on these islands are not ponies. They are full-sized horses but the wind has made 'em short. The cows are short. The sheep are short. And depending on the strain of heritage you have, you're either tall and Nordic or short and square Orkadian. At 5' tall I felt I was amongst my people.

The "wee bit o'breeze" even affected the housing... for millenia. There are have been settlements, yes many of them, found on the Orkneys that date back 5,000+ years. As Americans, with a short history, we can't even fathom what 5,000 years is. If you're a creationist that's only 1,000 after God made the Earth... I guess just after those pesky dinosaurs died out.

All over Orkney archaeological digs are unearthing entire settlements on various parts of the island. And we're not just talking about a couple of walls here and there. We are talking about full housing developments and cairns (structures made of rock and covered with turf - the true use of which is still a mystery). In Skara Brae a storm in 1850 eroded the beachline and uncovered an entire village 5,000 years old that had been covered for thousands of years They built thick house walls and hearths and beds of rock that wouldn't blow down and gave them some buffet zone from the relentless winds.

I took an ecotour with Malcolm Handoll, of All Five Senses on Orkney for a local's perspective on the area. Our first stop was Rennister. It's on a farm, or more precisely, under it. As with most ancient places it was found when a large piece of farm equipment suddenly broke through the ground, the underlying structure entrance giving way. Malcom and I walked up to a fenced area about 10 feet around that had a manhole cover in it. So here I am looking around for a mound of earth that shows a cairn, like I've seen in other locations, and he point down... to the manhole cover.

Me: "Yea, what's that about?"

Malcolm: "That's where we're going."

Me: "Right!"

Malcolm: "Really, that's where we are going."

And he proceeds to life the grate and tell me to climb down. Ok, I'm game and feeling very Alice in Wonderland, down the chute I go... trying not to think of the MANY Law & Order SVU and CSI episodes I've seen where they've found women in such remote "tourist sites (only after they had started to smell). Once I got down the ladder and turned around I found that I was in a room. An actual room about 4 feet tall and 8 feet wide with pillars to hold up the roof, storage spaces for supplies and gain a break from that wind. Easy to see someone living here, if not permanently at least to use for storage. Hmmm, down the rabbit hole see what you find from several thousand years ago! I was stunned. But the surprises weren't over.

We pulled ourselves out of there and went to Cuween Cairn where the heads of 24 dogs and 3 humans were found in 1901 when it was opened. Obviously the dog people - there are eagle people on other parts of the island. This time there was a mound and we climbed a steep hill to get to it, braced hard against the wind. We got to the top and Malcolm told me to take everything out of my back pockets and then proceeded to Nestea plunge backward into the surrounding heather. I tried it and was shocked to find how soft and springy it was, not to mention a perfect windbreak. Hmmm, again, all about the wind. We laid there on the hillside watching the clouds zip over and could hear nothing.

When we finally dusted the heather flowers off our clothes and approached the cairn again, he said, "You go first. You'll get dirty on this one because you have to crawl through." Rain trousers in place, no problemo mate. I crawled into the pitch black and kept asking, "Am I getting closer?" Ok, I was squeamish that I was going to put my hand on a large varmint or squirming spider on each placement. And have I mentioned that I have a bit of claustrophobia? Never mind that.

After ducking through the entryway he told me to stand up. Thinking I was going to crack my noggin on that previous four foot roof at Rennister I stood up slowly and kept going. In the pitch black I could hear him but couldn't see a thing. So imagine my surprise when I took a picture of 6' tall Malcom and saw several feet of available space between him and the rock ceiling. It was tall, with three ante-rooms that were just as tall once you got through the openings. I was able to see these after he let me use the torch (flashlight). They don't know what these cairns were for. They are sound proof but have good acoustics for chanting and drumming. They're also a whole lot of fun when you turn off the torch when you hear people about to come in who don't know you're there... get it? Hours of fun there.

The stone work is so precise it's lasted thousands of years and will likely last as long going forward barring overuse by the current crop of humans. One of the best things I found was that these areas were open to anyone to come into and there wasn't one bit of damage, or graffiti, or trash left behind. And no restrictions because of insurance worries. It was refreshing. The new visitors had much respect for the ancient owners. And maybe because of that they will let us discover a new ruin that gives a further glimpse into their world. They have much to tell us if we will let our ears open to their stories.