Thursday

Other guests at breakfast were glad of the information on bike hire on Rousay. Some of the dogs broke free and invaded the breakfast room. Dawn does all sorts of charity work for ex-farm puppies who have been badly treated.  She walks for charity and makes bandanas to sell on their behalf. They’d cleared the garage for the tandem which was above the call of duty. All this when Dawn is seriously ill herself and going to see specialists- here it entails a flight to the mainland. They were a lovely couple.

 

 

 

 

 

Though fresh the weather was good today so we wandered the town taking photos and looking in the shops. The huge ferry arrived at 10.10. It runs from Stromness to Scrabster. The cars and pedestrians came off. A whisky tanker went on. Then a jobsworth official told me I couldn’t walk on to the car deck with the tandem but would have to go with the foot-passengers. I went where directed. A panic started when they couldn’t see me and they thought I was lost. Someone came to tell me to go through, which I did and I saw Bob with Mrs’ Jobsworth. Satisfied that I wasn’t lost she sent me back again to wait with the others. What a fiasco! As we walked onboard I shouted I’d meet Bob at reception- the boat looked like a cruise ship and we would rattle in its size. When he found me, he said the men on the car deck wanted to know where I was and that we should have been together. We were understandably annoyed. We could have taken the bike apart and had a wheel each that would have flummoxed them!

The boat was nicely furnished but all over the decks were hand sanitisers- more than in hospital. We had a lunch of macaroni cheese and me yet another crab sandwich. Looking through the windows of the dining area there seemed to be gigantic waves until we saw the windows were bevelled. We were lucky the sea was calm after the wild weather 2 days before. The tables and chairs were chained to the floor for rough times.

The first island we passed was Graeholm, then the cragginess of Hoy. We sailed down its length and fairly close to the “Old Man” sticking up like a rebellious finger.

 

 In all the journey took 1 ½ hours. Dunnets Head projecting out from the mainland looked like another island. It took a while to manoeuvre through Scrabster Harbour, as a large boat it had to go slowly. The bikes were almost last off. We had a 20 mile ride back to Gill’s Bay and the car. The wind was against us but the sun was shining. The café was open back at the other ferry port, with staff outnumbering the clients-just us. After a short rest with bike in the back of the Corsa we drove on to Tain where we stayed before arriving home Friday after another day’s driving. We decided that Orkney wasn’t a very good place for cycling but we enjoyed seeing some of it and our island count is now up to 75!