Not a bad day, a bit of light drizzle and a bit breezy but OK for walking in.
This time for a change, when I got to Kirkwall there was a ferry. In fact there were two ferries so I was spoilt for choice. I managed to figure out which one was the westray boat and met up with the rest of the motley crew who were going on the trip.
There were eleven of us, twelve if you count our guide Chris. He is the RSPB warden on Papay (Papa Westray) but was on his way back home and so was taking the walk on Westray before getting the boat over to Papay. At least I think that he was getting a boat but he may have been flying. (Interesting fact No 1. The flight from Westray to Papay is the shortest scheduled airline flight in the world. 2 minutes including taxiing at both ends although I think it has been done in about 90 seconds.)
Unfortunately the ferry from Kirkwall to Westray took a little longer than 90 seconds, about 90 minutes longer. there was nothing exciting on the way over but at least it was cheap. As I am over 60 and have a bus pass, I get half price on the ferries so it was only about £3.50 for the ferry and unexpectedly the mini bus that picked us up from the ferry, and took mus to the other end of Westray was free on my bus pass. I had assumed that the mini bus was a special hire as it took us to a farm off the beaten track for the start of our walk and then came to another farm to pick us up at a pre-arranged time in the afternoon.
The walk was not a long one, about 4 miles but it was better than most from the bird point of view. There were loads of puffins, some of which obligingly sat only a few feet away while we all took photos.
There were even more guillemots and razorbills and a fair sized gannet colony. Inland a bit was a colony of arctic terns and ever present as usual were the skuas. There were several great skuas (bonxies) and even a couple of arctic skuas.
The bonxies are the thugs of the bird world and they look the part. The arctic skuas on the other hand, though probably almost as bad, are much more graceful which makes you forgive them some things.
hen we started out on the walk Pauline had been quite concerned about the footware of some of the visitors. The grass was short and the grass and the stones were fairly slippy. She told several people to be very careful, especially near the edge of the cliffs. In the end nobody fell except pauline. She was very very lucky. We were at Noup Head and all the others had moved off. I was just taking a photo of some gannets when I heard a noise and turned to see Pauline falling. She landed and stopped flat on her stomach one foot from the edge of the cliffs. (The cliffs at this point are at least 200 foot straight down)
I gave her a hand up and she very quickly regained her composure as we walked up to the lighthouse. If it had been me that fell thenI would have had to sit down for 5 minutes to collect myself.
By the lighthouse there was a large seal colony. This is I think the biggest colony that I have seen, over 100 seals hauled out on the rocks.
Then it was a quick walk to the farm where the mini bus collected us and took us back to the pub for a meal and a pint before it returned to take us to the ferry.
The rain held off for most of the dayand it was a hunky-dory trip.
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