Why you should explore the lost land of the auk – Britain’s most underrated destination
As I clambered over a step-stile, Papa Westray’s maritime heath opened up ahead, colonies of Scottish primrose creating a parti-coloured island view, gently sagging on three sides to the coast.
There, sloping gulches of enormous up-ended slabs of rock cut deep inland. Great skuas, known locally as Bonxies – huge, unsettlingly beady-eyed birds – watched me warily.
But it was another bird that I’d come to pay homage to. At aptly named Fowl Craig, stood a cairn and a claret-coloured carving of a great auk – the “penguin of the northern hemisphere” – staring mournfully out to sea.
Unfortunately, I was more than 200 years too late to see a real great auk, for the statue represents a moving dedication to the UK’s last-known example of this flightless bird, shot nearby in 1813.
The auk encounter marked a wistful end to my journey through Orkney’s outer North Isles archipelago, a collective term for the islands set in the waters north of the island capital Kirkwall: Westray, Papa Westray, North Ronaldsay, Stronsay, Sanday and Eday.
They vary in size, you can walk or cycle some but require a car for others. Oriented towards farming, they are distinguished by isolated homesteads and low-slung settlements strung around the safer harbours. Rich in archaeology, birdlife and often violently beautiful coastal scenery, exploring them can feel like being in another country.
Papa Westray – affectionately called Papay by Orcadians – sits 20 miles from Kirkwall, more or less on the latitude of Stavanger in Norway. Empty? Remote? Far from it. Not only is there a vibrant community of around 90 islanders but for the visitor there is much that’s of interest.
Birdlife – from puffins to oystercatchers – is abundant, but I made for the Knap of Howar, a Neolithic two-roomed farmhouse house boasting a superb setting on the west coast.
The Knap, whose walls stand to their original height, dates from 3600 BC, making it the oldest stone house in northern Europe, pre-dating Orkney’s blockbuster Stone Age site, Skara Brae.
Only the Knap’s distance from Kirkwall keeps it from being deluged by visitors – a principle that applies across the North Isles.
I’d begun my journey on Eday, located in the middle of the North Isle – in Old Norse, Eday means “isthmus isle”. I arrived by ferry but there is also an airfield by the Bay of London, making this the UK’s northernmost London airport.
Eday felt like a real island, a place where people live and work, where tourists are not the main event. I headed for the unmissable Stone of Setter, one of the largest standing stones on Orkney.
Mantled in lichens and 15ft high, the monolith resembles three fingers raised in salute. Ghoulishly, it may have been part of a wider site where the dead were ritualistically cleansed before burial.
Eday was full of the unexpected. I dropped into Eday’s Old North School Classroom, where, rather like Mr Benn, I found myself walking through a 56ft-long, 10ft-wide reconstructed submarine, featuring sleeping quarters, forward torpedoes and the original toilets of HMS Onyx, which served in the Falklands War.
The components of the submarine HMS Otter were re-assembled by Mike Illett, a retired submarine mechanic. “I collected a few bits from the submarine and put them on the mantelpiece,” he told me. “Then as I got more, I put them in a shed; then I needed a bigger shed.”
My next ferry took me to the most northerly of the isles, North Ronaldsay, 34 miles northeast of Kirkwall. Another curious standing stone here: this one called the Stan Stane and – 13ft high but just 3ft wide – perforated with a hole in its midriff.
The credulous accuse a witch of poking her finger through it; scientists think the stone a locator for calculating a prehistoric calendar. Standing by the Stan Stane, I was struck by the absence of manmade noise. The air, though, was full of birdsong, for the island is a globally important avian hotspot and firmly on migration routes.
Pounding hooves, muffled by sand, broke the silence. A band of North Ronaldsay sheep scooted by. They are famous for living almost entirely on the beaches, nourished by a diet of seaweed, kept off the heart of the island by a 13-mile-long, 19th-century stone dyke.
I spent a day circumnavigating the wall. At South Bay, a gorgeous half-mile crescent of sand, both harbour and grey seals were hauled out. The beach is popular as a “run” for the sheep, and as I munched my picnic by a retreating tide, they dashed past in pursuit of freshly exposed seaweed to nibble.
Half-way round the island, I reached Dennis Head lighthouse – at 109ft the UK’s tallest land-based lighthouse. On a busy day Billy Muir, lighthouse keeper for 50 years, will hail you from the top. Wheezing my way up the 176 steps, I appreciated why Billy is understandably reluctant to greet every guest at ground level.
Every North Isle invites you to linger, but on Stronsay I only had time to cycle to the superbly named Vat of Kirbuster, a natural arch representing an elemental slice of geology that deserves its place in Orkney’s sizable pantheon of startling cliff-top architecture. The cliff edge curves inland in a broad arc, 150ft in diameter, a single block of sandstone serving as a natural lintel. Inside this spectacular geological doughnut is a gloup (or blowhole), dropping 60ft to the sea.
The neighbouring island of Sanday is well named (pronounced “sandy”, it unsurprisingly means “sandy island” in Old Norse) and defined by nearly 30 strikingly white beaches. The island offers what I feel is Orkney’s most extraordinarily located Neolithic tomb, at the end of a walk that is hard to beat for raw beauty.
I began at the Plain of Fidge, a watery meadow at the head of Cata Sand, a tidal sandy bay stretching for two miles, flanked by 30ft-high alpine-shaped dunes of glittering sand. One after another, the dunes danced their way down the bay, the interchange of light and water utterly astonishing, the waters so shallow that the aquamarine colours resembled a montage of the Caribbean.
The dunes finally collapsed, giving way to the bird-smothered headland of Tresness. Where it tapered to a fingernail, I reached a Stone Age chambered cairn, lapped by the sea. I scrambled down wave-cut ledges to the beach and stared into the tomb’s entrance, a low passageway flanked by stones. Free of modern-day signage, the tomb is a purer experience than many archaeological sites, and can give a fleeting inkling of why Neolithic peoples may have chosen particular places to be buried.
Westray, the penultimate island on my journey, felt different to its neighbours. With the largest population – around 600 – after a few days out this way its single village, Pierowall, can seem like the bright lights of the city. You will even hear snatches of a localised version of Old Norse, known as The Norn.
Brooding behind the village was Noltland, perhaps Orkney’s most dramatic castle, its classic Z-plan appearance incised by narrow shot holes. It looked exactly the sort of place a notorious ne’er-do-well would call home – which was indeed the case. Built around 1560, the castle was owned by the notorious Gilbert Balfour, master of the household for Mary Queen of Scots and described as motivated by “neither fear of God nor love of virtue”.
The northwest coast of Westray offers the wildest and most elemental landscapes of all Orkney. I found the cliff-walking here to be just that: the coast near the lighthouse of Noup Head had simply been guillotined by nature. On a ridge below the lighthouse I sat and watched the seabirds. You’re sure to see puffins between April and July, but the showstoppers were gannets returning to their nests, beaks full of fish.
All that was left was to head for Papay. There was a passenger ferry, but who could resist the chance to travel on what is, famously, the world’s shortest flight – a distance of 1.7 miles, shorter than the runway at Heathrow airport? Understandably, Westray’s airfield “terminal” is barely larger than a garden shed. The safety briefing and taxiing took longer than the flight, which was hauntingly beautiful, skimming over Papa Sound.
Eight of us were squeezed into a juddering Britten-Norman Islander, and off we took, up into the skies – a spectacle Orkney poet George Mackay Brown described as happening “slowly, like a soft moth in the haze”.
Less than two minutes later, my own moth fluttered down to earth, landing with an inelegant bump.
Essentials
How to get there
All the North Isles are served by daily flights and ferries from Kirkwall.
Loganair flight times (loganair.com/) range from 8-15 minutes, with fares starting at £17 one-way. Excursion fares apply to Papay and North Ronaldsay, with a return fare of £21 if you stay overnight.
Ferry (orkneyferries.co.uk) times range from 80 minutes to 2hr30, depending on stops. You don’t need a car on Papay or North Ronaldsay – cycle hire is available locally or in Kirkwall.
Where to stay
All islands have good hostels with private rooms; some also have B&Bs and pubs. The following are excellent options:
Beltane Hostel, Papay (01857 644224; papawestray.co.uk)
North Ronaldsay Bird Observatory (01857 633200; nrbo.co.uk)
Stronsay Fish Mart Hostel (01857 616401; stronsaycafehostel.weebly.com)
Braeswick B&B, Sanday (01857 600708; braeswick.com)
Eday Community Hostel (07789 900950; hostellingscotland.org.uk)
Pierowall Hotel Westray (01857 677472; pierowallhotel.co.uk)
Mark Rowe is the author of Orkney, published by Bradt Guides (bradtguides.com). Telegraph readers can use code ORKNEY25 to get a 25% discount.
