Referendum Day

There's More to Orkney than Fudge,  day 5 - 14 September 2014

On the big day itself we busied ourselves around the islands starting at the Brough of Birsay.  Planning a visit to this tidal island needs to take the tide tables into account because you can only cross at low tide when the causeway is not covered by water.  Viking settlement with traces of earlier Pictish inhabitants.  Interesting triangular stones used in the construction.

Make sure you don't step back as it's a long, cold and rugged way down.

You can't see it but I know it is there on the land in the distance is a memorial to Lord Kitchener (of Your Country Needs You fame).  He went down with HMS Hampshire when it struck a German mine in the water you see here on 5 June 1919 along with 600 others.

We made it back over the causeway in time and then went back in time again to the Iron Age to the Broch of Gurness.

Zoom forward 2,00 years to the very modern, very slickly marketed Highland Park distillery.  The northernmost distillery of Scotch (only by half a mile) in the world.  In order to be labelled Scotch whiskey has to be created and matured in Scotland for a minimum of 3 years and 1 day.
I was going to buy a bottle but one of the other tourists pointed out that it was on offer in Tesco's for £8.00 less per bottle than it was on sale for at the distillery.  He went on to add that the Kirkwall Tesco had sold out on the day the offer started so I bought a bottle at Horsham for the offer price.   The two Orkney distilleries (the other one is Scapa) both make single malt whiskies and I had my own blind tasting session.  I really wanted the Scapa one to win because I like the bottle more but the Highland Park tasted better.