Lovely weather Orkney style, read no wind, no rain, met us this morning so we decided to take in the Neolithic offerings of the main island using the convenient map from our accommodation. So, we packed our lunch like good little school children and headed off in the Vauxhall Mocka. I really like driving this car...very responsive 1.3L turbo petrol but with excellent road feel, smooth gear shift and brilliant economy at about 6.5L/100km in all conditions including small windy roads. Pleased with this one afterall given my early misgivings in it being quite a bit smaller than the MG station wagon thing that was car number 2, and I think much better than the original Citroen.

First up was the standing stones at Stenness. Getting out of the car we were shocked both with the nip in the breeze but also to spot a couple of seals out in the nearby brackish loch. We assumed it was a freshwater one given it is a fair way from the nearest coast. They are funny in that they seem to find rocks that are just submerged and lie on them, holding their tails and bodies up out of the water as much as possible. They seem to prefer this than at the shoreline, both here and at South Erradale. Epigenetic effects from the sealing days...harder for humans to get at out there? Anyway, off to the stones we went. There is still much mystery about the exact reason for erecting these but they do predate others in the UK. There is clear line of sight between them and the Ring of Brodgar, the Keep stone (single standing stone at the entrance to the nearby land isthmus), the Maeshowe burial mound (only accessible on a tour...boo), the Barnhouse Village (neolithic remains that can be explored that we went to next) and also the Brough at Brodgar that has been partially excavated but has now been recovered with soil to be left for a later time. Not sure exactly why this is the case but assume it is to wait until more has been learned from other sites then things will resume there. A mystery.

All that can be said is that it was a bloody good effort to get stones of this size standing up and that they must have been well pleased with themselves for doing it. The barnhouse village was very interesting, especially trying to imagine people living there and what it must have been like.

Reading indicates that the neolithic (late stone age) were considered to have been the first people in the UK who settled rather than the mesolithic (mid stone age) people who were hunter gatherers here after the last ice age. The neolithic people brought livestock of sheep, cattle, goats plus grain like barley and some wheat as staple foods. They also had domesticated dogs with them, thought to have been critical in humans' ability to fully domestic cattle and sheep. So, a very significant group of people that, with multiple other migrations (Anglo Saxon, p-celtic and q-celtic, Roman, Norse) gave rise to the populations of today. The picts are enigmatic and seem to have their origins from Eastern Europe (Aegean Sea?) and arrived by boat but the exact details are difficult to make sense of.

The Ring of Brodgar was spectacular in the sunlight and we then set off for the well publicised Scara Brae. It is the best preserved neolithic (5300 year old) settlement in Eurpoe. We had the place to ourselves and had a really informative chat with local guide Ian. He pointed out some amazing features including the wardrobes (holes in walls for storage), bedside nooks, and the ingenuity of construction with the curved upwards and inwards sloping inner walls with periodic through stones for structural stability. The lintels above the doorways were cool too, helping to bring the place alive. Very interesting. Apparently it was hidden below sand dunes on the farm estate there but a huge storm eroded the sand in the 1800s and revealed the village. It was excavated in the early 1900s. There remains still developments about the construction above the stone that remains, whether it was stone or timber based. More recent suggests it was likely stone with light earth over the top for insulation. For fuel, with limited trees, they likely burned carbon soil (not quite peat but matting of grasses that are partially broken down, dried and burned) plus kelp, cow dung and household wastes. Stinshy.

After that we took advantage of the low tide to pay a visit to the Pict/Norse ruins at the Brough of Birsay, a place I visited the day before. Again, it was very interesting to look at and imagine the lives of the people there. The causeway was cool to cross and having only seen it at lowish tides, it is really surprising that at high tide, we would have been fully submerged. It appears common that the Picts put up little/no resistance to the advances of Norse people, quite different to the experience of the Norse elsewhere in the UK where they were tensely allowed farming access before being eventually converted to Christianity (which was universal) and/or violently booted out!

Next we attempted to visit a couple of the outlets on Orkney's "creative trail". The Harray Potter was closed, but the Ortak jeweller was open. We had an explanation of the process of jewellery making with the current trend of glass enamel addition to predominantly silver pieces. A master jeweller will design a piece which is then made into a series of wax moulds attached to a "tree" via short wax attachment pieces (looked like a 3D printed thing but in wax). The tree is then covered with plaster of paris. This is hardened in a kiln which in turn melts the wax out, leaving a hole in the shape of the jewellry tree. Silver is then heated to molten and poured into the mould and allowed to cool. On cooling then plaster is then washed off, leaving the silver tree from which the items can be snipped of ready for enamelling.

The glass enamel is just coloured ground glass that is pushed into indentations in the silver mould before being heated (700C) that melts the glass but not the silver. Cooled and polished (chemical and physical), inspected and sold. There is a range of colours available and they do a lot of specific made to order pieces. Not sure if I think it is genuinely artisan or if it is mass produced in a labour intensive way...hmm.

Back into town though to get dinner supplies, a visit to the Orkney brewing company for a quick halfie and some takeaways to sample, along with meeting an interesting guy originally from Edinburgh who moved to Orkney to work and write (he's a screen writer). Another visit to Ortak jewelry and I bought Bronnie a marvellous new Celtic knot ring that she really loves.

Home for another yummy steak pie from the Brig and Larder. TV choices limited :(