galmc2Report

We feel so fortunate that we have had the time to see a good variety and different areas of Scotland. We certainly haven’t seen it all (by a long shot) but we are very glad we were able to head north of Inverness.

John O’Groats is a wee little town (little is an apt descriptor I think) that we first heard of in The Long Way Down, the starting point for Ewen and Charlie on their second motorcycle adventure. We stayed just minutes away from the centre where you will find THE SIGN, a few shops, cafés, a newer brewery and an even newer (2022) distillery. We only spent 1 night there but it was brilliant (and a perfect jumping off stop before heading to the Orkney Islands).

Our next stop was the Orkney Islands. In all honesty we hadn’t done a lot of research before hopping on a ferry from Gills Harbour (that may be an exaggeration; we hadn’t done ANY).

The Orkney and Shetland islands were Viking settlements from the 8-9th century. In the mid 1400s the king of Denmark gave both to Scotland as a wedding dowry when Margaret of Denmark married King James III of Scotland in 1472. The influence of the nordic culture is evident all over the island.

The history on the Orkneys is hard to wrap my head around. There’s the 5000 year old standing stones at the ceremonial site of Brodgar (older than the Stonehenge circle). A storm in the 1850s unearthed a Neolithic Village “Skara Brae”, that had been covered by a sand dune for years. “Radiocarbon dating suggests that people were living in Skara Brae for around 650 years between 3180 B.C.E and 2,500 B.C.E, making it older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza.” https://www.aexpeditions.co.uk/blog/the-story-of-skara-brae-who-used-to-live-there/#

And more recently there is a Canadian Settler historical connection to the Orkneys, as the hardy sailors from the Orkneys would join the exploration ships heading to North America and specifically Canada. John Rae, a surgeon and explorer from Stromness, is known as being the last HBC employee to be sent to search for the Northwest passage and find out what happened to the missing Franklin expedition (1845).

Postscript

For those of you who know and love Paul and wonder if all that pop cultural information he regales us with now and again is actually useful…. Well, It really is, (and not just at parties and gatherings). We wouldn’t have seen many of the cool things we have on this trip if not for the “useless” information tucked away in his wonderful brain. To name a few: Skellig Michael (Star Wars) John O’ Groats (Long Way Down), Dark Hedges (GOT).