6/10/2004 Last day in Stromness. Key words: caravan of Michiganites, Maeshowe burial mound, amusing runes, hitchhiking failure, storm clouds roll in, Kirkwall youth hostel, West End Pub with Clive, Martin & Stuart.

I guess I got up rather late, since I was in the Stromness Hotel bar until closing the night before, but I also wanted to enjoy the luxury as long as possible. Still it is annoying to have to check out at 10:00AM every day. It means that I have to dispose of my bags somewhere for the day, or hump them everywhere I go. I left them in the whiskey room. . . for safe keeping.

Maeshowe: the “finest neolithic chamber tomb in north europe” – I had passed it the previous day on my bike, but there was no way in hell I was going to do that again. My butt seriously ached from the un-soft seat. So . . . I took the bus. Sorry, no pics of the inside of the tomb (forbidden) but there were some interesting runes left there by visiting vikings, and ‘crusaders’ who broke into the tomb around 1000AD while they were on the way down to England to participate in the medieval crusades. Some left some bizarre and prosaic thoughts “Ingigerth is the most beautiful of women”, “Crusaders broke into Maeshowe,” etc. Yeah. Outside the gate I ran into a group of 15 Americans from Michigan. They were pretty funny, though the elders of the group had trouble entering the long passageway.

I had a little trouble getting back to Stromness afterwards though. I walked a few miles, but I couldn’t get any of the supposedly friendly islanders to pick me up in their car. I guess I looked a bit too threatening to the predominantly elderly drivers. The sky clouded up; it was amazing how clearly I could see the storm brewing. (I took a movie of it. Hopefully I’ll be able to put it online.) As the rain started, I found a bus shelter and waited (~1 hour). The day was shaping up to be very very soggy.

By the time I got to Kirkwall, the largest ‘city’ in the Orkneys, I was soaked. The youth hostel was even another 20 minutes up a hill, and it was miserable walking with all my bags in the wind and rain. The youth hostel itself was steeped in that wet-tatami-mat smell that I rather dislike. Perhaps you know what I mean. The proprietors were cool, and actually, big surprise, so were the residents. I met Clive (an Englishman), Martin (Welsh), and Stuart (Australian) and we ended the night over a few rounds at the West End Pub. ‘The Red MacGregor’ ale is pretty good. Try saying that with a Scottish accent.

A local (an Orkadian) told us the sad tale of Skullsplitter Ale. “It’s terrible. None of the pubs can sell more than three pints a night.” The Orkney Brewery is probably gonna stop making that shtuff. Too bad.