Tuesday, 19 May 2026

Orkney and North Coast - Day 6

We drove to Deerness, the far north east point of the mainland. The weather was pretty rough, quite wet and windy. We parked up and went to have a look in the unmanned visitor centre, which was quite interesting.

We then set off on a circular walk, and not far from the car park we came to the Gloup, a spectacular collapsed sea cave.



Further on up the coast is the Brough of Deerness, a rocky outcrop almost completely detached from the mainland. It has an 11th century Norse chapel on top and the remains of other buildings dating back as far as 600BC.

You can walk down a gorge to the bottom of a stone staircase which takes you up onto the Brough.




There are many geos, which are narrow inlets with steep rocky sides.

We carried on walking to the point then back down the other side, before crossing back to the car park.


When we finished the walk we drove to Kirkwall, where we'd booked into the Orkney Caravan Park at The Pickaquoy Centre. First we stopped at Tesco for provisions.

After setting up at the campsite we went for a walk into town. It has flagstone streets similar to Stromness.


We visited St Magnus Cathedral, Britain's most northerly cathedral, originally founded by the Vikings.






We went back to the site for showers, and later left Oscar in the van to go into town. We had a drink in the Auld Motor Hoose pub, which has a lot of motoring memorabilia.


We bought fish and chips in the Happy Haddock and took it back to the van. It was really good!



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