Friday 1st June 2012

Another musical day. So far, so good

 An afternoon concert in The Reel in Kirkwall today. A bit more relaxing than last night but good nevertheless. Two acts, both orcadian. A young 14 year old girl, Emily Bourn who shot to prominance last year when she was asupporting act in a Matt Cardle concert in Kirkwall. She got rave reviews and was much more talked about than was the supposed star of the show. She writes all her own songs and has areally sweet and accurate voice. I would not be surprised if we hear a lot more of her in future years. At 14 years old, she has plenty of time to develop yet.

Having praised her so highly, I must say that though she was good, her music is not my favourite. I think that she will do well with good quality pop music.

The othere group, "Redd", are three Orcadians who now live in Scotland. As seems almost inevitable, when they were at Kirkwall Grammar School, they were all members of "Hadhirgaan". Hadhirgaan and their teacher Douglas Montgomery, must be responsible for a huge proportion of the musicians in Orkney. Douglas narrowly failed to win the award for the best music teacher in Scotland at last years celtic connection festival in Glasgow. He of course lives on Burray where all the best people live.
http://soundcloud.com/reddfolk/strathspey-and-reel

I couldn't find any videos of Redd so the above is a link to some of their music including one track with Kris Drever.



In the evening it was the Finstown Ceilidh and again a much different but very good "line up".

For a change, the highlight was a Yorkshire lass called Edwina Hayes. She has a beautiful voice when she can stop talking, although having said that, her patter was all part of her act. She now spends half of her time living in Nashville which must be a bit of a change from Yorkshire.

The clip is of her singing part of the soundtrack to a film called "My Sister's Keeper" which Pam tells me we have on DVD but it is on loan to Helen at the moment.
 Although it is, I think, a bit of a weepy, from the clip with the song, it looks well made so I will have to watch it when it comes back.
Among other good bands at the ceilidh were Hullion who are loosely based on several of the musicians who play regularly at "The Reel" and "The foundry bar band" who apparently have a combined age of over 500 years. One member of the band gave everyone a bit of a turn when he stumbled while coming on stage. We all thought that they may be playing with one less member. They play traditional scottish dance music very reminiscent of "the White Heather Club" that I can vaguely remember my aunty Bet watching on an old 12 inch black and white telly when I was a kid. Not really my sort of musis but they were good fun.

Thursday 31st May 2012

Folk Festival. Cromarty Hall

Thursday night was the first night of the folk festival. Most of the concerts, events, sessions and gigs are based in Stromness which is normally a very quiet town but comes to life and really buzzes for the four days of the festival. There was a concert in The Hope that we wanted to go to and so we did not go to Stromness for the opening. The Hope concert was brilliant though. there were four groups on and all were good, including "Shoramere" a group of youngsters from Stromness Academy, who like "Hadhirgaan", their equivalent from Kirkwall Grammar School, really can not fail to impress anybody with the amount of musical talent up here and the quality of the music tuition that all the kids recieve.

 The highlight of the night though was a danish fiddler and his band, "The Harald Haugaard quartet". They were extremely good and very active, diving around the stage energetically as they were playin. Very infectious stuff.  

Being a true music fan, Pam's first comment was "phew, he's fit." , a feeling that was apparently shared by quite a few if the female members of the audience.                                                                                                                                        


I couldn't find a video of the quartet at the Orkney festival but this is one of the group at Edinburgh. His wife was not in Orkney as she is pregnant but her replacement was also very good.

Not to late of a night either. We were back home for just gone midnight so at least we will not be totally knackered before we start tomorrow.

Tuesday 29th May 2012

Beginners Luck

 I went out for my fishing trip on the "Welcome Home", the Sea Angling Associations boat.
Lovely weather, if a bit cool at times when the boat was facing the wind and most importantly, not very much of a swell.

 There were just four of us fishing but fortunately the others knew what they were doing and helped me get the kit together as well as offering advice when needed. Probably because of all this advice, I was the first one to catch a fish. Just two mackerel which I did not even realise that I had hooked until I got them quite near the surface. Being by now a champion fisherman, I was also the one and only person to catch a cod.

The Welcome Home

Pam had told me to catch a cod for tea and so I felt that I would be in trouble if I did not catch one.
 It was not strictly necessary as it turned out because Pam had so little faith in my fishing abilities that she had already prepared something else when I got back.

It cost £20 for the trip and I got the loan of the fishing gear from the association including one set of tackle that got lost when it snagged the bottom and snapped (I was not the only one to lose tackle) as I do not have any boat fishing rods etc. We were out all day from 9AM to 4PM so not bad value for money.

                                                                                            Champion Cod Fisherman
  All the others were saying that it was not a good days  fishing and that not much was being caught but as far as I was concerned, I was very surprised that I had caught anything.
 I ended the day with 2 mackerel, 1 cod, 2 whiting and a gurnard that was thrown back as being no good to eat.

I shall definitely be going again and so I had better get myself a proper boat rod and reel. Rods are not very expensive but I think that the reel will have to be an ebay job as they are about £100 new.
 At least when Pam objects, I can say that it is an investment in fish suppers.

Prior to going, I had been a bit worried about being sea sick. The rolling of the boat, even in a light swell was quite pronounced when the engines are off and we were just drifting but this proved not to be a problem. We will see if it becomes a problem in rougher weather. It was noticable however that when I returned home I felt as though the ground was moving and began to be a bit queasy and this lasted for quite a few hours.

Folk festival starts the day after tomorrow, so no sleep for a bit.

Tuesday 29th May 2012

A Few Quiet Days Before It All Kicks Off

 The folk festival starts on Thursday so we have a few days to try and gather our energy before it all starts. A few early nights and lazy days are called for.

 On Sunday I was supposed to be going on a walk with the South Ronaldsay group from Burwick around the south coast up to Windwick but My aged leg started acting up. Well in fact both of my aged legs were acting up and so I had to cry off. I did manage to sit on the tractor and take the topper over the top field to tidy it up and take all the seed heads off the grass.
 One of the ducks has gone broody so I have removed her eggs and replaced them with some hen eggs, 3 Andalusian and 3 black Orpingtons. We will have to wait and see how she does.

 At the moment I think that we are providing half of Burray with eggs. Pam is keeping most of the duck eggs to bake with but Hilda has had a few as she also loves them for baking.

 On Sunday evening Pam decided that she had done enough cooking and baking and so we retired to The Sands for a meal. We saw Magnus Woolham in The Sands and he says that they have had over 2000 hits on the Orkan Adventures website since we put up the whale video on "You tube" and have got some firm bookings. Nice to know that we have managed to do them some good.

 Our friends Dave and Clare are on holiday in the western isles this week. Dave is a keen bird watcher and was looking forward to seeing some sea eagles and golden eagles if he could. Of course, "Sod's Law" struck again and on Monday there was a golden eagle and 5 sea eagles seen on Hoy. I had to text him just to rub it in. He has not yet seen any eagles.
 I got a phone call from The Orkney Sea Angling Association asking if I wanted to go out for a trip tomorrow. I had earlier said that I would like to try a trip to see if I took to boat fishing and they have an all day trip tomorrow with spare places and some experienced members who will be able to help me learn what I am supposed to do. I can borrow some of their gear so that I do not have to buy my own rods, reels etc until I have decided if it is OK and I am not going to be sea-sick all day. At least it is supposed to be a reasonably calm day tomorrow.
 I was supposed to be going out with the painting group tomorrow so I have had to send my apologies. Hopefully the fishing will be more fun.

We sent away to "Vista-Print" for a T-Shirt for Magnus Spence for a joke and it arrived on Monday. I must admit that they had made a much better job of it than I expected.

Unfortunately I did not take a photo of the T shirt but this is the logo that we had put on the front with Orkan Adventures address on the back.

 When we took it round both the Magnus's were at Northfield, Magnus Spence's farm and Magnus S dissolved in laughter at the sight of the shirt. He said that he would not dare to wear it but would hang it on his wall. {We have since learned that he did indeed wear it at the folk festival when he was playing with "The Birsay Boys".}

Saturday 26th May 2012

A LOVELY DAY OUT TO A LOVELY ISLAND


Well Rodney and Libby got away on The Pentalina on Saturday and phoned us later to say that they were home for about 8pm. Not bad time.
 After they had left, I went down to Kirkwall and joined a trip out to Auskerry.
 Auskerry is small island a few miles off Stronsay that I have long wanted to go and see. Many years ago, when Gareth and I used to come up to Linga Holm for the RBST round up of the North Ronaldsay sheep that the trust kept there, Simon Brogan, the owner of Auskerry used to come across and give us a help. He is a really nice bloke and for many years, until he married, he used to live alone on the island with a boat just dropping in every 6 weeks to fetch his mail. He now just spends 10 months of the year there with his family.
 When we worked with him, he was so used to being alone that after a while he had to move up the beach a few yards away from us for a time every now and again. This from a man who used to be a road manager for "Jethro Tull" and involved in concert tours by "The Who".

 Anyway, I finally managed to get over to the island and we were greeted by Simon as we landed. After a biy of a reminder, he remembered who I was and it was nice to see him again, and this time on his own beloved island. The island is indeed beautiful, with just the lighthouse at one end, Simon's house at the other end and loads of North Ronaldsay sheep and birds in between.

 I was very keen to see what his sheep were like. I was not disappointed. He has some spectacular animals and they look brilliant, especially on the shore where they really belong.

The rams were really something special. I have never seen so many superb looking rams. They were much better than those on Linga Holm.
 Simon and his family sell wool, fleeces and skins and they have several hundred sheep living on the island just as they should do.

The trip was organised by the RSPB and so I thought that I had better take an interest in the birds as well as the sheep. Simon was saying that there used t be many more terns and puffins than there are now, but there were still a lot of terns and I have only ever seen more puffins on Swona. There were hundreds of shags and tysties, a couple of arctic skuas which are great looking birds even if they are theives.

We had our flasks and butties sat on a grassy bank at the top of some low cliffs and without realising it, we were sitting in the middle of a whole load of puffin burrows. I spent a few minutes wondering why every now and again one of the puffins would leave a raft of about 50 birds in the sea below us and would fly up close to us and then back down to the sea before I realised that they were just wanting to get into their burrows.
 I tried to be clever and get a photo of a puffin in flight as they came close to us but most of what I got were empty blue sky. This is the best one so no photography prizes yet then.


The highlight of the day was a Red Backed Shrike. These no longer breed in the UK and though a couple have been seen in Orkney over the last week we were very lucky to get such a good look at one as it sat on a fencepost in Simon's garden while we were having a cup of tea.

Another blurry photo but still it is rare so you will have to put up with blurry.

Simon's house is just what you would expect. I think that most of it has been built by Simon onto a very small original bothy. It has wind turbines, solar panels and of course well water. We were not even allowed to wash our own cups as he thought that we may waste water and I think that the well does not have a huge supply.

 A lovely place to live on a nice, calm, sunny day for today but a little bit isolated for me especially in winter storms. Still it must be nice to wander about knowing that it is all yours and that you are not going to bump into anybody else.

Friday 25th May 2012

A busy but very pleasant week

This last week seems to have shot by.
I think that all the fuss about the whale rescue has made it seem more busy than usual.It made the front page of the Orcadian and was apparently reported in "Thw Scotsman" and "The Daily Mail" as well as being on BBC Scotland TV news and being at one time the 3rd most visited item on the BBC website.I was interviewed along with Magnus Spence by Radio Orkney and later recieved an e-mail saying that our interview sounded like a maritime version of the Morcambe and Wise show. (I will take that as a compliment).

Interview on this link. http://soundcloud.com/radio-orkney/whale-interview

Fionn Mcarthur from Radio Orkney decided to do the interview by the harbour in Kirkwall so that he could get all the marine noises. I would have thought that the BBC could just dub the background from "Desert Island Discs" as a background and record the interview inside but Hey-Ho.

I am sure that Rodney and Libby have had a good time up here and hopefully will come again sometime. The schedule was affected a bit by vast hordes of tourists from a huge cruise ship that was in on Monday. We had been planning to go to Skara Brae and Maeshowe on Monday but after seeing how Kirkwall was heaving with visitors we decided to leave it for another day. In fact I think that there were two ships in but one of them alone carried 3500 tourists so all the tourist attractions would have been packed.

 Instead we ended up going to The Broch of Gurness, Birsay and the Barony Mills. As ususal, the Barony Mills tour took a very long time. The miller there is so enthusiastic and devoted to his mill that it is infectious. He seems to be especially proud of the fact that they do not have to pay Scottish Water for all the water that they use for the mill because of ancient water rights for the mill.

 We dropped into Stromness on the way back but it was shut.They are still replacing the concrete in the main street with original flag stones. It is to be hoped that they have it finished for next week when the folk festival is centred in Stromness or there will be chaos.

 Libby and Rodney could still ot book for Maeshowe on Tuesday and so we went round Stennes, Barnhouse, the Ring of Brodgar and Skara Brae. Unfortunately the Ness of Brodgar excavations are not open yet. They just open for about 6 weeks when the teams from the universities recommence their investigations. 

 They finally managed to get booked in to Maeshowe on Wednesday and spent the rest of the week going round the island on their own while Pam and I got on with a few routine tasks. I cunningly managed to break the strimmer on Thursday and so had to spend all day doing nothing 

I managed to get booked on a trip to Auskerry for next Saturday. It is a place that I have always wanted to go to since meeting Simon Brogan, the owner and sole resident of the island years ago when on Linga Holm for the roundup of the sheep with the RBST. More of that later though.