Day 1 of our Orcadian Adventure For February break we decided to take a family trip to Orkney, it’s one place in Scotland we have never been to. We caught the ferry from Gills Bay to St Margaret’s Hope. A fun 1 hour trip. The departure was at 1.30 so it was a very early […]
A style of chair that goes back centuries. The iconic Orkney Hooded Chair was traditionally made from driftwood washed up from the sea. Timber in Orkney is scarce so islanders would use other materials to make furniture. The earliest version of the chair was more like a low round stool covered with straw. From this it […]
Gow’s Folly was once cursed by generations of wagoners and hauliers, an odd looking little building with the stone spire in the middle of a busy goods yard. Nobody knew or cared about its origins and it was threatened with demolition on several occasions. Thanks to the Kirkwell Community Council this odd looking building has […]
John Gow was a pirate thought to have been born around 1698 in the Caithness town of Wick on the northern coast of Scotland. Gow grew up in Stromness, an important and bustling international port at the time. Young lads would all grow up with a strong calling to the sea and Gow was no […]
A 5,000-year-old whalebone figurine, one of the oldest representations of a human form ever found in Britain, has been rediscovered after going missing for more than 150 years. The figurine has been dubbed the “Buddo” of Skara Brae a name taken from an Orcadian word meaning ‘friend’. It was carved from a single piece of […]
