So, this might go well or I might end up failing again! I’ve tried this about three times from my phone but have now discovered an app that allows me to save a draft as I’m going along so fingers crossed. This whole process puts me in mind of the Luddite’s (from my sketchy memory of history and I’m currently resisting the urge to break the technology). To be fair I do have a history of breaking things but that’s enough of that.. I’m sure the kids could regale you with lots of tales of things I have managed to break over the years!! Regardless of that, here goes. Before I do, I am writing this sitting on North Ronaldsay for a second unexpected night but there will be much to follow on that!

So that’s us setting off just about a week ago.. we normally split the driving 50/50. When I’m not driving I usually manage a nap! After the obligatory recognition and announcement that we were in Scotland (a family tradition usually accompanied by some poor Scottish accents!) I managed to nap all the way between Gretna and Glasgow!

As you can see, Dunbeath was a great little place to stay over and a bit of a break for us into wild camping. We really object to the idea of people wild camping and not taking responsibility for their waste (of all varieties). As I’ve mentioned it now let’s talk about campervan toilet emptying etiquette. In the days of equality, and obviously this is just an observation, but has anyone ever seen someone other than a man emptying what is technically known as the cassette? Just saying and, as seems to be the way, it might just be best to leave that one there!

From Dunbeath it was just an hour further north to the afore mentioned Pentland Firth..

It’s a bit of a feat getting on and off this boat. It isn’t a roll on, roll off more of a reverse on and drive forward off. I have to pay homage to Emma and her ability to reverse, however she tells me it’s my turn on the way back and who knows what could happen with that! Being on the ferry is also a good opportunity to see how clean the roof is, I can’t take any credit but that’s clean, thanks Toby!

Anyway.. all aboard it was like crusing in the med.. once we’d spent the time in Kirkwall it was straight out on another ferry to Sanday.

And there we go again leaving mainland Orkney behind us.

I’ve already spoken about Sanday so just going to add some more photographs here.

As you can see it really is a beautiful place.

I love the idea of making do and re-using and this made me chuckle. I’m sure if this was plugged in you could charge extra for them being pre-scrambled!

Once we have pitched up we like to spend two or three days in the same place and having set up home use the bikes to get around. We headed out to Start Point lighthouse. This is an unusual lighthouse with a sister tower on North Ronaldsay with horizontal rather than vertical stripes.

Unfortunately we didn’t make low tide sufficiently well to get across to Start Point and didn’t really have time to wait as we had another ferry to catch back to mainland Orkney. This was in preparation for flying out to North Ronaldsay which is a whole other chapter and the basis of the next blog which I intend to write when (and if) we get back onto Mainland Orkney. As I said at the beginning that’s a whole other story and I’ll definitely leave that one there for now!!