De avonturen van Draakje en zijn vrienden: Mainland Orkney, lots of history, and the local nightlife

Yesterday we did a roundtrip along ancient Orkney. There is so much history on this small islay, unbelievable. We only saw part of it, but it made us realise how short our stay on this planet is. And how long back history of mankind goes back.

On our way to our first stop we came along a brewery, naturally we had to pay it a visit and buy some locally brewed beer. Alcohol is the other thing they have loads of on Orkney. They brew their own beer, have two whisky distilleries, a few Gin distilleries, and a wine making place.

The Orkney Brewery

So after we got our beers we went to the Broch of Gurness, an ancient settelment. Younger than Skara Brea, but still 2300 years old. Amazing how much is left of it. It gives an idea about how people back then must have lived.

To get there our Tomtom send us over this gravelpath, quite a challenge with the H-van. So instead of the four minutes it would take to get there, we needed 15. Even the cows looked worried. But we made it.

Once upon a time this was a decent road

Cows

Bull

At Gurness the “office” was closed for lunch so we couldn’t buy a ticket. We could still enter, so we did en we payed afterwards. To nice that this kind of trust still exists.

The site itself was impressive, you could walk trough the buildings and get a feeling of how crowded it must have been.

Entrance to the fortified settlement

Beds, cuboards and fireplace still in place

Al the houses were connected with only one small covered path around the mainbuilding in the middle, and one way out.

In the information centre was the possibility to grind flower the way people from the settlement did 2300 years ago. The same grinding stones were found when they discovered the settlement.

It actually works quite well

Impression of life inside the houses

After this Broch it was time for some stone circles, there were two of them close to each other, one small “the stones of Stennes”.

Stones of Stennes

And one very large, the Ring of Brodgar.

Ring of Brodgar

And of course there was another settlement as well.

During our cultural trip we were stalked by this monster camper van which seemed to have drivend straight out of a transformers movie. It was huge! What do these people carry around with them?

Mini & Maxi

After two days of overwhelming history we saw enough for that moment. Time for some other entertainment! We drove to Kirkwall to the campsite. First we had to do some laundry, but then it was time for the local nightlife. We walked into the centre and found a nice old fashioned pub, the Auld Motor Hoose. It was filled with old things from cars, so we feld right at home. We had a beer and went to a hotel restaurant after that for a nice meal.