trips away
Well after the massive amounts of rain we have had these last few weeks the rivers finally burst and flooded out the top of England , which looked bloody horrible on the news. Some parts are still underwater now so racing up north got cancelled for this last weekend so I thought id go on a wee adventure up to the Orkney Islands way up above Scotland, to see if it was raining up there, and to hopefully go see some Puffins.
Well the trip started out pretty horribly with a 6.5 hour ferry trip to get up there, and it was rough!! We got out of the harbour ok, then the guy behind the bar said it was pretty rough out in the moray firth so if anyone suffered from sea sickness they should move down the back of the boat. I didn’t think things could possibly be that bad so I sat in the bar watching Wimbledon on the box.. Then it got rough. Really rough. So I headed down to the back of the boat to try and get some shut eye and wake up when it was a bit smoother. Getting to sleep want a problem, I just got woken up all the time with my head getting slammed against the table when we hit a big wave. After shifting to the floor I got back to sleep, “go me” I was thinking, no rough ferry trip for me just beautiful sleep. Then things started to go wrong. I got woken to the sound of spewing. Alight I thought, ill just keep my eyes closed and block it all out. I couldn’t really shift cause everyone was down the back of the ferry, then that one spew, set of a touch of a chain reaction. Then there was another one, then another one, then a little kid about 2 metres away from me started yakking it up, then that set off her mother who was a bit closer to me. Right about at this stage I was looking out the window at the life raft and was preparing to abandon ship and just fend for myself out in the sea without the sound of people throwing up in my ear.
We got up there late at night stayed the night on the mainland up there before heading out to the island of Shapinsay . It was pretty cool really, training wasn’t the best as the rain followed me up there but got out everyday and saw some sights. The whole of the Orkney Islands are so steeped in history it was really surreal riding round. The paddock just out the back of granny Muirs (not my real granny) has 9 unexploded World War 2 bombs in the ground courtesy of ze Germans.
It was great actually just to get away, no emails, hardly any cell phone coverage and just switch off for a few days. The island only had one shop, and one restaurant, which is actually top notch, and a tiny ferry that travels from the island to the mainland about 6 times a day. While I was there they had the annual shapinsay picnic, which doubled as the sports day for the island (population about 150 people) so everyone turned up, the kids had the crowd favourite egg and spoon race.
heres the little port of shapinsay, with the mainland in the background. no puffins though. very disappointing.
The island also really only had one big looping road around the island which took about half an hour to get round, some times I would go round it clockwise, then to really mix it up id go round anti-clockwise. Then other times when I was near the end of a 3 hour ride I just randomly just started riding around paddocks for an interval. The silage had just been cut so most of the paddocks had short grass and open gates, so I thought “well that’ll be something a bit different for this lap” and went and did a lap round the paddock then back out again. Riding on grass is quite hard Ive concluded.
There were some pretty cool sights though, there were a couple of sunken WW2 German boats just in the harbours, and unfortunately it was high tide when I took the photos but you get the idea. Felt quite eerie going past these, and just further out from these under the water they have just found 2 German U-boats from WW1 that have lain there untouched since they were sunk by mines in 1915 or something like that. Orkney was apparently quite a strategic place in both the wars, they stretched a mine field from here all the way to Norway to try to blockade the Atlantic, they laid about 200,000 mines according to the books, which sunk numerous ships and subs on both sides, as they set that many they lost track of where they were, then all round the islands here German U-boats that made it through laid mines of there own to get the brits. Its quite mind numbing to think of all the people who lost their lives right where I was just out riding my bike.
you can see the german emblem on the mast still
One of the things I really couldn’t get over was the amount of sun there was. The sun didn’t set until about 11.30ish, then it would get to dusk for about an hour or so, then the sun would start rising again, it was really bizarre. It through my body clock out of whack really easily, id look outside and think it was about 7’oclock at night, but it would be 10.30.
Being up there also cut me off from the news quite a bit, it was only when I was home watching BBC I caught up that someone decided to park their jeep in Glasgow airport and try to blow it up plus car bombs in London. Watching the news this morning the cue for both airports and train stations looks crazy. Going to be fun getting a train tomorrow night with my bike, for whatever reason police don’t like bikes when security levels have been raised, im not talking about lugging it in a bike bag, just my actual bike. 2 years ago in the states one cop in Chicago airport actually wanted to cut my bike up cause he thought it was an elaborate pipe bomb. That was a fun day, hopefully tomorrow will be relatively pain free, one thing I have learnt though, you just cant argue with a big guy with a big gun. So if someone has to pull you aside for extra questions cause im travelling with a bike, you just can’t fight it.
Well the rains finally cleared so I should get out the door and chuck some tunes on, speaking of which, instead of listening to my MP3 music the other day I just put the radio on for a change. Is it just me or is a lot of music these days broadcast on the wireless about 2 lines of verse repeated over and over and over again?
