Have you read any of Carmel's wonderful blogs on her website Images On The Run? She tells great stories with both words and photographs. Well worth checking out. Here is just one instalment for you to enjoy...
From Carmel Brennan's Images On The Run Blog
Tomorrow morning I have to catch a bus to board a ferry and then another bus for Inverness. My last week in Scotland waits for me. I am sad to leave Orkney but I will be back. This would be a great place for members of the Ontario Society of Artists to come for a field trip to paint & photograph and print!
I didn’t waste the day over the rapidly passing time. I headed down to the visitor’s centre which also doubles as a bus stop and along with a fellow workshop participant we hopped the bus to Maeshowe, a 5000 year old tomb that was raided by the Vikings a 1000 years ago. Luckily I mentioned to my companion the standing stones I saw on route through the window to my right.
The bus driver had passed where we had to get off. Damn it. We had a booking at 10am and he just shrugged his shoulders. “You’ll have to walk back,” he said. It would have been a mile or two and it was almost 10. Well can you imagine us hiking back with our thumbs out. Two old biddies hitch hiking! Guess what? We got a ride and made it on time.
They only allow 12 people in at a time; the guide bussed us to the path and unlocked the gates. The tomb is deceiving from the outside, a huge mound covered in grass. To enter you must bend over double and not raise your head in the tunnel for at least 40 to fifty feet. No pictures were allowed inside. The interior appears to be about 15 to 20 feet square with huge stone slabs squarely at each corner. There are chambers in each of three walls. The 4th has the opening.
After Maeshowe we went off to Stromness for a couple of hours to piddle around in the shops. Then back to Kirkwall on the bus and I walked back to my hostel. I am now repacked and ready for more adventure tomorrow on the mainland of Scotland.
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