On to the Orkneys
No Trains, but Neat Town
started my day by checking out of a rather
grumpy hotel, and catching a not-so grumpy taxi to Scrabster. This, of course,
meant skipping breakfast, but then again, I'd discovered the awful secret about
black pudding, and wasn't really feeling like eating breakfast. As strange as
it might sound, there are some things that are more frightening to me than
haggis.
Scrabster is a small town that's so close to Thurso that it's hard to tell them apart on the map. They seem to be separated by one narrow road about two or three miles long.
While I found Thurso to be a pleasant little homey town, Scrabster seemed a lot more... industrial. As close as I could tell Thurso exists mainly to give people a place to live so they don't have to live in Scrabster.
This is not to say that it was an unpleasant place to catch a ferry, because it seemed pleasant enough. Then again, I was tired and disoriented, and even though my ferry didn't leave until noon, it still felt like an unreasonably early hour to be knocking around in an awake state. My compulsiveness only made it worse, because where the guide suggested that I show up an hour before the ferry was due to leave, I felt the need to add another half an hour or so, just to be on the safe side.
This probably explains why I got to spend about an hour alone in an
empty ferry terminal.
I entertained myself by walking around in circles, taking the same pictures of Scrabster, over and over again. Most people who've seen my stack of pictures from the trip assume they're duplicate prints, but I've gone back to the negatives, and it's for real: I really did wander around taking the same pictures over and over again.
The only way I'd really know this is by going back to the negatives, because as I said, I really was pretty foggy at the time. This is ironic, because it was the first time I'd been in Scotland that it wasn't foggy outside. I guess there's some sort of "fog parity" that requires something to be foggy.
To tell the truth, I just wasn't feeling so good. I don't know if
it was jet lag, train lag, exhaustion from not having much time off in the years
preceding the vacation, the onset of E.Coli or BSE (I know people are supposed
to get something other than BSE, but people also call me a "cow" so
it seems appropriate in this case), or just haggis deprivation. And, I had to
be feeling just a little crazy to be paying so much money for a round trip
ticket on a ferry to a place where I'd only be able to spend about 12
hours.
Oh yeah, I suppose I should mention that. Realizing, of course, that the whole point of this trip was to find my way up to the Orkneys, it seems natural to ask why it is that I'd get there just in time to turn around and come back. The short answer was that I was already running out of time: It was already Friday, there weren't going to be any ferries back on Sunday, so that meant coming back on Saturday or Monday. Monday was sort of out of the question, because it'd leave me ill equipped to get back to Reading (England) on Monday to meet an ex-coworker.
If you had any doubts as to how far north I was, and/or how soon after the solstice I was touring the area, please note that the picture to the left was taken at about 11:30 AM.
So, that left me with the incredibly stupid option of
showing up in Stromness on Friday afternoon, only to leave again at 8:45 the
next morning. And all of this was going to leave me with too much time to get
to Reading by Monday, and not enough time to do anything really interesting on
the way (like going to Tywyn, Wales). Then again, my definition of
"interesting" does involve a lot of sleeping and sitting around, so I
do guess I could have done that anywhere. And, getting to the Orkneys, just to
be able to say I'd been there, had become something of a moral imperative to
me. God knows that I don't have enough morals in my life.
But, the ferry did show up on time. A big ferry; awful big for a lousy 1:45 crossing. From the name on the side of the boat, I could see that it was one of the ones that normally does the overnight trip from the Shetlands to Aberdeen. I will also note that this reminded me how much I also wanted to go to the Shetlands (even farther north than the Orkneys), but the ferries ran so infrequently during the winter, going to the Shetlands would have meant being so delayed that it'd be halfway to spring break before I could get home.
For the life of me, I can't figure out why I didn't go to the Shetlands, if for no other reason than to not be able to get home before spring break.
Whatever. I got on the ferry, seated myself in the bar, and made a note of my sorrow that we weren't allowed to go out onto the deck during the crossing, and that the windows in the bar were too streaked with water and scratches to be taking any really good pictures.
This did, however, give me the perfect excuse to do what I did best, namely to sit around watching TV. Which is where things got really weird. And, people who know me know that my definition of "weird" has a pretty stringent set of criteria.
What was weird about this? Let's review:
- I was sitting in a ferry boat, heading from Scrabster to Stromness
- It was the middle of winter
- It was my vacation
- I was doing this voluntarily
- I was doing this enthusiastically
- I couldn't think of anything I'd rather be doing, other than watch TV
- I was also watching TV
- On TV, they were interviewing Marie Osmond.
I guess that last point was really what struck me as the weird
part. I can think of few things that I'd be less likely to run into while
sitting on a ferry heading from Nowhere, Scotland to Nowhere Else, Scotland,
than a TV interview (on one of the only four TV channels) with Marie Osmond.
Then again, I didn't expect Riki Lake, either.
I was really starting to feel ill. I sauntered down to the grill to find something to eat. I got a rather delightfully huge plate of beef stew and mashed potatoes. The chefs were so delighted to see me demonstrating such a huge appetite. They were so delighted that they dared me to eat a bowl of haggis, neeps and tatties. They were delighted that they'd suckered me. Little did they know that they had just satisfied one of my wildest dreams (and I do mean wild).
It made me feel much better, and it did give me some material for a really great web page background.
It made me feel better enough to finish the trip into Stromness without spewing anything.
And I must say, Stromness was a pretty neat looking little town. I
stopped into the hotel that was right across the street from the ferry
terminal, and immediately took to the streets to take a few pictures.
It was pretty necessary, too, because the sun was going to set about an hour after I arrived, and this was going to be my only chance to really see any part of the Orkneys (outside of the bar).
In case you haven't figured it out from the pictures, Stromness is a really cool looking place. The entire town (or what I saw of it) was as in these pictures: extremely narrow stone streets, with quaint stone buildings, and extremely grumpy people who apparently wished they could spend at least one winter in peace without tourists like me showing up to gawk at everything and act stupid.
Well, it's what I do, so there.
I stopped into a couple of shops, bought some Coca Cola, some candy, some film, and some tacky local brand of single-malt scotch to take home with me.
Here's a half bottle of single malt that I bought as a novelty item (as usual). As the label says, it's bottled in the Orkneys.
The same web wag as before says this stuff's supposed to be pretty good, too. Now I'm sorry that I didn't get a full bottle.
I tried to take a picture of the town hall, but the streets were so narrow that I couldn't back up far enough from the building to frame the whole thing into a single picture. This just got me more nasty stares from the locals, as I stood there, back plastered against the opposite building, trying to take wildly disproportionate pictures.
This was the best I could do.
There sure are a lot of rocks in northern Scotland and the Orkneys. More importantly, there sure aren't many trees (and for fuel purposes, I imagine most of the peat is destined for distilleries).
I really would have liked to spend more time around Stromness, particularly during daylight hours, but it was getting dark, and I was running out of quaint things to take pictures of within walking distance of the hotel.
I eventually gave up, and returned to the hotel, after stopping to buy another roll of film and a souvenir half bottle of single malt. More specifically, I returned to the hotel bar, where I sat and talked in halting sentences to the bartender. Believe it or not, I'd almost forgotten how to talk.
I was also a little tongue-tied because I had just made my second most disturbing observation concerning the UK.
The first most disturbing observation wasn't really specific to the UK, but it was close enough to be relevant, namely that Peugot is still making automobiles, and people are still apparently buying them. This alone would have been more than I could cope with, but before I could even digest this little factlet, I stumbled across something just as troubling:
Not only do they import Budweiser over there, but people actually drink the stuff.
Willingly.
Warm.
And some say they even like it.
The bartender said she understood my horror, but also pointed out
that it was good for business just to shut up and serve the stuff. Well, I guess
even in Scotland, there are worse things than haggis.
After an appropriate time to recover from this realization, and with a tasteful mourning period, I retired to the hotel restaurant (which was actually about five steps away from where I was sitting at the bar), and had a nice dinner of roast goose.
Curiously, there didn't seem to be as much structural damage to the hotel as I would expect of a place where goose had recently been cooked. Maybe that's why they make their buildings out of stone.
The goose was good, as was the fifteen pounds of overcooked vegetables it was served with. You know, for a place that hates fresh vegetables as much as they apparently do, they sure know how to serve up the overcooked variety by the trough. And, it was a pleasant dinner, sitting there in the combination bar and restaurant, watching the locals spending a winter evening out.
Not such a bad way to spend a day. Not such a bad way to end a day. It probably would have been a good way to end the day, but I went back to my room and watched some more British TV instead. Can't win them all, I guess.
On to Aberdeen, and other mistakes.
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