15 & 16 June; Wed & Thurs

I am back in Kirkwall (Orkney) – there was space on the 5 pm Wednesday crossing so I had a quiet day in Lerwick.  I had a wander around the places I went on the day I arrived, a bit more pleasant when it’s dry.  I also went to a very depressing museum,the knitting museum in Arthur Anderson’s birthplace (founder of P&O, I think).  It was difficult to find as the signposting ran out and there wasn’t a sign outside.  As usual I was the only person there, but there were 3 local women having a conversation about their knitting.  There wasn’t really anything to look at and the building had been extensively altered so you couldn’t work out what it would have been like in the C18th/C19th.  The most exciting thing was that you could buy, for £25, a beanie hat knitted to the same design as the one Simon King wore in his Shetland Diaries – apparently there is a great demand for them and they can’t knit them quickly enough

I arrived in Kirkwall at 11.30 pm and spent the night in a car park, booking into the camp site after I had had a strong cup of coffee and booked my place on the tour of the tower/spire of St Magnus Cathedral. 

And it wasn’t windy…

The tour of the tower was excellent.

 

There were lots of artefacts kept in the triforium. 

The Bishop condemned people to death and this is the Cathedral’s hangman’s ladder which has 13 rungs and the victim and the hangman would go up the ladder together, only the hangman would descend.

Some of these windows were still in situ

There are probably more stained glass windows in places where they can’t be seen than there are stained glass windows in places where they can be seen.  This is one of the former:

The west window – there was lots of detail there but I couldn’t get decent photos.

South transept Rose window

They were going to build towers at the west end but the whole building started to subside so they changed plans and managed to stabilise the building

The clock is wound every day – it is just like a huge grandfather clock so the longer you leave it the longer it takes to wind. There are 3 bells in the bell chamber and they are fixed. There are external clangers for the clock and the internal clappers are for the bell-ringing. The bell ringing is carried out by one person. I think this is a Norwegian nostrum.

Kirkwall has maintained a curfew toll, 4 minutes at 2 mins after 8 pm.  This used to be done manually but now is mechanical.  The origin of “curfew” is “cover the fire” i.e to keep it in until morning.

Yes, it was raining…

After having a lovely lunch of squid (10/10) I walked up to the Highland Park distillery and got very wet on the way.  I did take some photos but my camera wasn’t working properly – I must have pressed a button when I shouldn’t have and most of the pictures are out of focus. 

Uncheering

 

And it was raining.  Highland Park malts its own barley, claims it is the only remaining (or one of a very few?) and it does this to get the peaty taste into the malted barley by drying the barley with a peat fire – which, sadly, wasn’t alight – two reasons, one for the warmth to help me dry out and the other for the smell of burning peat.

On the way back from the distillery I went to visit an Orkney Chair maker, part of the Craft Trail where tourists are encouraged to go and look – these are the ones where the man’s chair has a hood and the backs are made of straw (“can’t get the right sort of straw these days”).  He takes measurements so that the chair fits the person who intends to sit in it.  He reckons that a standard chair takes 100 hours.  He’s taking order for 2013 now.

So that’s today.  However I am now in for a bit of culture.  I discovered this morning that the St Magnus Festival starts tomorrow so I went to the box office to see if I could get tickets for anything.  So I’m going to see The Tempest tomorrow and a concert of Mendelsshon and Peter Maxwell Davies (who lives on Hoy) on Saturday. 

I’m very amused to see that, as part of the festival, they are showing the film The Wicker Man on 21 June. 

So I will be here at least until Sunday…