And another nice day.

Tuesday 16th August 2011
 Now that the weather has returned to normal it was no surprise that we had another fine day.

David has decided that after seeing the lads fishing so sucessfully at the pier, he wants to give it a go himself so we were going to Shearers in Kirkwall to see what they had in the way of reasonably priced tackle. On the way we stopped at The Italian Chapel and the adjacent wine shop.



At Shearer's, when we said what we wanted they went and got one of their staff who does a lot of fishing to help us out. He soon had us sorted out with a rod, hooks, lures etc but although he went through all their stock he could not find a decent quality reel at a reasonable price. Apparently they were due to get some in stock in a few days but as we needed a reel quickly that was no good. He therefor decided that he had a reel that we could have for £15 and shot off to get it, returning in a couple of minutes. David and Ann now had all that they needed (except perhaps a certain level of skill or experience) to enable them to catch their own fish.

 That will have to wait until tomorrowthough as we still had some compulsory sightseeing to do. So it was off to Maeshowe then to the Ring of Brodgar

On Wednesday there was one of the U3A birdie walks on at Marwick head. I had checked and it was OK to take Dave and Ann along. (They sometimes get worried about the insurance if a non-member falls off the edge of a cliff.)  I drove up to the car park for the Kitchener Memorial at Marwick Head. We were 2 or 3 minutes late but there were no other cars there. I assumed that I had got the details wrong, maybe the wrong time, so we decided that we would have a stroll round anyway so made our way up to the memorial. From there you can see the other car park, that I did not know existed, down by Marwick Bay. Surprise Surprise! the other car park contained several cars. We started off down towards the bay and met the others coming up.
After a few personal insults from the rest of the group, we turned round and all went together back up to the top of the cliffs.
there were quite a few gannets around. there seem to be getting to be more gannets around mainland Orkney but I am not sure if this is a good sign or if it just means that they can not find fish in their usual haunts. there was also a very obliging kestrel who kept coming and hovering not to far away and some ravens. The best bitmewhat "red in tooth and claw" was a bonxie that had just caught a fulmar and was kindly tearing it to pieces on the sea for the benefit of those with zoom lenses on their cameras.

On the way back I though that it would be a good idea to go and have a look round Stromness while Pam was not with us. Stromness is not Pam's favourite place but I like it so we had a stroll round the harbour and down the town. I took Dave and Ann to have a look at Tim Wooton's gallery as I love his paintings but just as we went in, Tim went rushing out shouting "You're minding the shop". I tried to negotiate a commission but Tim was to fast and had gone before agreeing to terms.

 On our return home Dave and Ann wanted to try out their new fishing tackle. Bev from over the road had said that she would help us get it all set up but she was not about. I therefore had to reach back into my youth and remember how to tie knots in fishing line. We went to the pier at LambHolm and gave it about 15 minutes but caught nothing which was not totally surprising, so we went back to Burray pier. The lads were there again and they said that the fish had gone and it would be better at high tide tomorrow. Bowing to their superior knowledge we decided to come back tomorrow.