Beaches

Most of the coast around the main island group is cliff, but there are a few lovely beaches, some sandy, some rock. The Sands of Wright bay is beautiful and when the sun shines there is no finer place on earth. It’s a warm, soft, very fine sand and perfect for walking barefoot. Unfortunately this year it has been too cold for paddling and playing footsie with the flatfish.



Scapa has a sandy bay fit for building castles and also has lots of flat, sea washed pebbles that will make lovely buttons for knitted bags. This is where Pat starts worrying about his drills!

Waulkmill bay is gorgeous and you have to climb down a 100 foot cliff stairway to get to it. It’s the one place where I would consider swimming (if it was warm enough). It’s boxed in on both sides by the cliffs and the tide goes out leaving a huge expanse of sand. It’s been so cold and windy this year we didn’t even get a walk down to it.

Evie has a nice beach and in previous years we’ve found the odd Cowrie shell but this year there weren’t any. It’s only a narrow sandy beach because when the tide is out there are patches of seaweed and rocks.

Birsay has a beach and according to the paperwork it is a fantastic place for members of the shell appreciation society. Cowrie’s can be found and also a rare "Poached Egg Shell" that is sometimes washed up from the ocean bed by Atlantic storms. Needless to say we didn’t any find any and this year the Cowrie’s were missing too. It’s a popular spot with tourists because of the causeway over to the Brough and talking to a local fisherman (originally from West Midlands) it seems many of them get caught out by the tide and some have actually called the lifeboat.

Brough in Norse means ’defendable’ and this is certainly one of the most defendable places I’ve seen. The Brough of Birsay is the island in the distance.



Our favourite bay has got to be Skaill. It’s where we park up for the night. It’s on the West coast and has a bit of everything, sand, pebbles, stones, rock pools and Cowrie’s!


Penny (another local, this time from Kent, although she married an Orcadian) walks her dogs twice a day along the beach, we reckon it’s a good mile long and we can see all of it from the van window, well she told us that she nearly always finds a cowrie on every walk and when she gets enough she’s going to make something. Apparently she has a big jar full and still hasn’t got enough, I know what she means. We found 26 over the holiday, 15 on one walk so I’m chuffed and now I’ve got to find a way to drill a little hole in them, Pat’s gone into panic mode again! Seems I’ll have to take him to B&Q when we’re home.

Talking of drilling shells has just reminded me of ‘Fluke’s’(jewellery company) latest necklace and earrings. The necklace is a silver Cowrie shell, absolute gorgeous and definitely a ‘got to have one‘, but they are so expensive, but I’m not prepared to pay the price. I’ll have more fun trying to make jewellery with the real thing. So if anyone knows of a good way to drill holes in shells please let me into the secret.


There are also lots of birds at Skaill, we’ve seen 36 species from the van window and watched Bonksies prowl the skies looking for unattended Eider ducklings, I’m glad to report that we didn’t witness any murders. The bird that caused us the most trouble to identify, was believe it or not the ‘Linnet’. We don’t associate it with the beach terrain, it should be on farmland with other finches, but here it grubs about amongst the seaweed along with the Starlings, Hooded Crows as well as the normal waders found on beaches, Dunlin, Redshank and Ringed Plover. A pair of Red Breasted Merganser spent a few nights resting on the rocks and we enjoyed watching a family of Raven fly by some mornings. They did a low flypast of the van and then turned sharp left to follow the cliffs out along the headland.

Of course we had the usual Gulls, Black Headed and Great and Lesser Black Backed gulls, and then we had the uncommon, Common Gull, not normally found in our area but definitely the most abundant gull here. Gulls can be quite difficult to identify but over the years I’ve managed to get a simple system that enables me to identify our usual gulls in this country, that’s as long as I can see their legs!

Despite checking the skyline frequently we didn’t see any Wales but we got one Seal who came to investigate us, an Atlantic one I think, the one with the Roman nose and freckles.

Another interesting feature of this beach are the ‘sandcastles’! there aren’t any, you see, Orkney has ancient monuments like The Ring of Brodgar’ and standing stones all over the island, that mini stone monuments are built on the beach, mimicking the real thing. We think that either a school trip or a one day monument building workshop took place, to account for the number in the photo.

The sea was very calm for a lot of the time and so quiet that the changes in the tide took place without you noticing it. It sort of crept in stealthily and then dropped slowly away again. It was a matter of sitting and watching a rock until it was either covered or uncovered. A note from my log book ;

''9.30 pm - the wind has dropped, the sea is dead still, the birds are quiet and the bay is empty - as one incomer we met described it 'Orkney is the nearest to Utopia on this planet' tonight I agree with him.''

At times it was eerie, no waves just a gentle lapping along the beach. Then the wind would get up and next day it was alive. The surf was running and a brisk walk along the beach certainly got rid of any cobwebs. We did notice a wonderful spectacle, have you ever watched a wave break along a beach, it breaks along it’s length almost at the same time. On the central part of Skaill it starts to break at one end and then the break runs quickly along it’s length. The noise is reminiscent of a train heading towards you.

During one of the windier periods the surf was running high and we were watching it crash into the 60 feet high cliffs and spray over the top, when a surfer came to chat. He’d spent some time at Thurso, where the surf is some of the best in the world and decided to check out Orkney. We couldn’t understand it, where he was planning to surf, the waves were heading for the cliffs and there were rocks beneath the water. Admittedly there was another surfer already in the water but it looked very dangerous to us. On his way back he showed us the cut in his leg and wetsuit from where he’d connected with underwater rocks, so our cowardly feelings were vindicated, it was dangerous.

I know I've tiltled this beaches but I just can't leave out Yesnaby cliffs. They are fantastic. You drive along a single carriageway road with passing places through the hills. After about 2 miles you arrive at a desolate spot 200 feet above the waves. The remains of a WW2 building are still here with the concrete foundations of others providing some car parking. Thankfully the wind is almost always blowing from the atlantic onshore and as you carefully walk around the cliff top the devastation is all too obvious. The turf has been ripped from the rocks and thrown back, the place is littered with pieces of rock broken up by wind and wave in the winter storms and we can only imagine the ferocity of the weather that can cause such mutilation of the cliff top. The day we visited it was quite calm and we enjoyed a good walk along the cliff top and even dared to walk towards the edge. It's a bit scary because the cliffs slope down towards the sea and it would be only too easy to start sliding and end up as one of the lifeboat casualties. Very gently we worked our way along to a cliff arch and managed to get a good view through it at close quarters.


From this grand viewpoint you can see The Old Man of Hoy. He is a majestic pinnacle of rock about 300 feet high and stands just off the coast of Hoy. The cliffs of Hoy are some of the highest in the UK and dwarf the fishing boats bobbing around in their shadow. In the 1960's they were the scene of some interesting filming........watch out for the next installment.