6/13/2004 9:00AMOn the ferry to Stronsay (all the islands here are in pig latin) with stops on Eday, and Sanday. Cute local girl with mullet in the cafeteria recommends the Kenco coffee, and pulsing jellyfish off the starboard side.

5:10PM, on the ferry back to Kirkwall. OMG. I was lucky to make it back in time. These islands are so damn windy that scarcely any trees grow here. They occasionally get hurricane force winds WITHOUT a storm. Derelict houses all over Stronsay, crumbling, with collapsed roofs. After I got off the ferry I started walking south when a retired Englishman named Brian Crowe picked me up in his car and took me to the south end of the island. (says I can knock on his door if I don’t think I can make it back in time) It would be 10 miles and 4 hours to get back to the ferry port. Mr. Crowe apparently came to Stronsay to fix up a farmhouse and settle down. A subsidiary isle of a subsidiary isle of Britain. Ferries stop in the winter because of the roughness of the seas, so it must be extraordinarily lonely here when the sun goes down for the last time around December 20th.

The sky remained an angry grey throughout the day, and it drizzled on and off. I followed the cliffs around the south-east promontory, and birds followed me calling out a warning to the other animals. The island felt HOSTILE. I did see some seals though. They were out on a rocky bar in the bay, groaning and slapping the rocks with their tales. When I approached, gingerly balancing on slipper rocks, some plopped into the water and watched me from there. I wish I had a better zoom on my camera. At another point I spied some birds that resemble cormorants. Mental note to ask the PhD student studying birds back at the hostel. Sat down on the wall of the ruins of a Pictish house for some ‘lunch’. A can of sardines and some bread. Then time to get moving. . .

Back at the ferry port, it’s amazing how good fish and chips taste after my ordeal.