A Cycle Round Dearness, Orkney.

 

Wind today was fairly light and from the east, I decided to go for a ride around Dearness today.

Headed down towards St Andrews primary school, initially quite cold, on the horizon over Dearness I could see some showers heading this way. 

Turn right at St Andrews and you are on the Dearness road. dearness is an isthmith or nearly an island. this area is known as Toab, there are quite a few houses both new and old all serviced by the Toab post office. Head out of Toab and over the hill and Dingyshowe bay lies before you. This was a prehistoric meeting place in times past.

Dingyshowe Bay pictured above. St Peters Pool is on the left, you can just see Copinsay peeking out beyond Dingyshowe.
Head on up the road and you will reach the Dearness shop on the left hand side, cant miss it, it has a green roof and petrol pumps outside.
I keep on past the shop and past the Community centre with its new playpark and wind turbine and ride up the hill towards Lighthouse corner. Usually I go left here and go round towards the Covenanters memorial carpark, but not today. The road was very icy so it was wiser to turn back. I crossed the crossroads and headed down towards Newark Bay and turned right about halfway down the road, past some houses to be met on the road by a massive (looked fairly young) Great Dane. It tried to lick me off my bike but failed to keep up.

Back to the shop and turned left for home.

An Orkney South Isles Cycle Ride

The weather all last week was pretty poor cycling weather and I was itching to get out and get a ride in. Saturday started out as fairly icy conditions but this soon cleared once the sun got to work. I left it until afternoon before venturing out, as the roads looked fairly black by now.

The wind from the south east was fairly light, unusual for Orkney. I set off from home, which is in the east end of Holm, heading west past the Holm war memorial heading towards Kirkwall. The road was free of ice and fairly wet. I got to the main Holm - Kirkwall junction and turned left down towards St Mary's village, this is a lovely straight downhill run and I clocked 34 mph, fairly zooming along. Arriving at the start of the village there is a lovely little loch on your right with some wildfowl and a pair of resident swans. The road carries round the bend into St Mary's, a onetime lively herring station, past the pier on the right and then you are out the other side of the village.

The Commodore pub with holiday chalets next door to it are on your left as you leave the village soon followed by a large Nissan hut, owned by local builder Alfie Flett. Memories of Orkney's wartime role are awakened by this hut, Nissan huts are scattered throughout Orkney apparently left after the WW2.
50 yards further on and you arrive at another reminder from wartime Orkney, the Churchill Barriers. There are four of these causeways linking the South Isles to Mainland, built to defend Scapa Flow following the sinking of the Royal Oak. There are really five of these causeways although the fifth one linking Burray to Hunda is believed to be a practice one prior to building the main ones.

I carried on over the first barrier to the small island of Lamb Holm with the Italian Chapel on my left followed by a small private airstrip. Nobody lives on Lamb Holm, although there are a couple of small businesses opened up. Up over a small rise down to the second barrier. This is the one with a wave wall built to deflect waves washing over the road during winter storms.
You are now on the small island of Glims Holm, no houses are on this island although a colony of Arctic Terns have taken up residence during the sojourn here in the spring/ summer.
Approaching the third barrier the eye is drawn to the rusting hulks of sunken block-ships, position at entrances to the Flow before the barriers were built. Once over this barrier you have reached the inhabited island of Burray, another busy herring station in its day and also the location of a small boat builders yard.

Burray has a few routes that you could take, but on this occasion I elected to stay on the main road as I was a little bit apprehensive over the road conditions of the smaller roads. Soon I was cycling over the fourth barrier connecting Burray to South Ronaldsy, the largest and most southerly of the South Isles. The barrier here looks very different from the previous three, due to dune colonisation taking place since the erection of the barrier.
Once over this barrier the road swings to the right and you head to St Margarets Hope, the main village in South Ronaldsy, this is where you would get the Gills Bay ferry owned by Andrew Banks of Pentland Ferries.
On this occasion I cycled past the 'hope' and carried on past the recycling yard on my left and on up the road past the new nine hole golf course. I had a lovely straight road ahead with the hamlet of Herston on the waters of the Flow on my right. At the top of the road there is a shop with petral pumps, the shop appears to be undergoing refurbishment although the sigh did say open. I took the next left, signposted Aikers, this road started heading back in the direction I came from although on a more circular route. I had some spectaculer views of the island of Copansey and her attendant islands shown below

Just to the left of this view was the Point of Ness, where I started from in Holm, just behind the green finger of headland.

On the right was a lovely spit of land,the name of which I do not know.

Following this road led me back to the fourth barrier and I retraced my routeback over to number one barrier, where I then took a right by Grahamshall and its loch, up the steep hill towards the war memorial and finally back home.
Total distance for the journey: 24.6 miles.

Nokia 'Tube' 5800

This phone has changed a lot of the way I do things.

I always wanted a touch phone but was not very impressed by the i phone, until the new 3G one came out, but even then it is way too expensive for me. So I heard about the 5800 by Nokia, wow, it is a feature packed smart phone with 8Gb memory card as standard, 3.2 Mb camera, the quality of which is very good outdoors, not as good indoors, and it also takes movies, secondary camera, web browser, calender, notes, ovi maps, great music player, FM radio and a few other things.

One of the best things are the free apps that are available to download : googlemail, googlemaps, youtube, bbc I player, bbc mobile, and most importantly OVI stores and OVi Share by Nokia.

Ovi store is a widget which takes you direct to the store where you can browse, select and download any app you like, either free or for sale.

Ovi share is a site where you can synch your phone, contacts, calender and notes at the moment but more promised in the future.
You get a free email address (yourname@ovi.com) send and recieve emails from phone or desktop, upload and share pictures from your phone to Ovi, unlimited storage unlike flickr's free account.

Two apps I find most usefull are: Mail for Exchange: synchs with google to push mail and calender details to your phone, and Sportstracker by Nokia: A data logger for outdoor pursuits. I use mine purely for cycling, allows you to track and upload your workouts and enables you to log your runs.

I find that the nokia 5800 really compliments my computing life in a most pleasant way, nothing beats browsing on the internet better than on a fast pc, but when you do not have access to your trusty pc then that is when the 5800 becomes a really usefull tool.
Like I said at the start, this little phone has changed the way I do things a lot, by the way.... have a look at the price compared to the I phone, you'll be very surprised.

Here is my Gal, my pride and joy, although there are others, this one is mine.

Some folk have a whole stable of bikes, but I have only one, (now I have two)
so she gets my full and complete attention. I bought her from new around three years ago just around the time I decided to quite drinking alcohol. (another story). I felt that I needed something to do when the weather is fairly nice and also realised that I could do with the exercise. I was in my mid forties and developing a middle age paunch. I had not been on a bike since I was a kid and often thought about how nice it would be to be able to cycle again.

I spent quite a bit of time deciding what kind of bike to get, I did not realise there were so many different types to choose from, depends on what you wanted it for. Fast, light road bikes, rugged mountain bikes, springy comfort bikes, touring bikes, hybrid bikes, fixed gear bikes, and frame materials - titanium, aluminium, steel - what one?, how many gears should I get?, derailleur or hub gears?, Shimano or campagnola? and most important of all - what size bike do I need?

Where to start?

Fortunately I knew just where to start, find an expert, a guru, someone who knows bikes, and I knew just the man. After exhausting this resource I then found some cycling forums online, have you ever visited a cycling forum? they are fascinating places full of all things bike, and a lot more besides, and everyone wants to assist a newbie like me. So I lurked in the corner of a couple of forums. Cycling Monthly (UK) which became Bike Radar, and another one called CycleChat.
Soon I was becoming a cycling nerd, able to know my down tube from my bottom bracket, and familiar with terms such as Bonking? not what you think, bonking is when a rider going all out for some time suffers a severe energy loss and is unable to continue at the same high energy rate as he was doing. On YouTube there is a clip of Lance Armstrong bonking going up a mountain.

Finally I was in a better position to decide on the type of bike I would like. I knew that I would want to be able to commute to work, a distance of just over 7 miles each way through open countryside, I would also want to be able to go out for short (at first) spins for leisure, and I wanted the possibility of being able to do some light (at first) touring. I wanted as many gears as I could get, I decided on a triple front, and a bike that would be as durable as I could afford. A touring bike fitted the bill. In the end it was a choice between the Dawes Galaxy and a Revolution Country Traveller, from The Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op. Both were of a similer specification, and the Country Traveller was around £200 cheaper. I settled for the Galaxy, mainly because it was reckoned to be the touring bike standard with a proven track record, although I am sure that I would have been perfectly happy with the traveller. Since my purchase both companies have expanded the range of bikes to perhaps a more suitable bike for what I was looking for but was unavailable at the time. I am very happy with my Gal and have spent hundreds if not thousands of miles exploring Orkney with her.

The only modification I have made was to fit a Brooks saddle, it was a good rear end investment. I have various panniers for her and a wireless computer, not the best, but good enough for me. I have also bought some cycling clothing, cycling shoes, a helmet and a decent rainproof hi vis jacket. Add on a decent lighting set and a saddle bag with tools, spare tubes and and a puncture outfit. i also bought a couple of pumps, one for at home and a smaller one to take on the bike.

here are some pictures taken recently when I have been out over the Churchill Barriers, my favourite route, quite close to home.

Churchill Barriers At Sunset

One of the things that I love about living in Orkney
is that no matter where you are really, you will always get a view of the sea. This is what I look out to from the comfort of my home. It faces out towards Scapa Flow, a natural deep water anchorage used frequently now by large oil tankers waiting for the best price for their cargoes, but once used as a secure anchorage for the British Fleet during both world wars, until that is, the sinking of the battleship Royal Oak near the beginning of the war by U-boat U47. You can read more about the sinking here.

After the sinking there was a desperate need to plug the gaps into the Flow and so the Churchill barriers were constructed with the help of Italian POW's. The Italians were billeted on Lamb Holm, the small island just above the house in front of my house, which is named Churchill by the way. They left behind a converted nissan hut which is called The Italian Chapel. This is still standing and maintained and visited by coachloads of tourists every day during the holiday season.

Also on Lamb Holm is a private airfield, owned and operated by Tommy Sinclair. It is quite a sight to watch the light aircraft fly in and out. Behind Lamb Holm is a small uninhabited island of Glimps Holm and behind that is the Island of Burray, one of the south islands now connected to the mainland by the barriers, and behind that is South Ronaldsay, the largest of the south isles.

About Becoming A Blogger

I have been using computers and the Internet for some years now, both at work and at home.

I consider myself to be fairly technically literate and enjoy the challenges that computing throws at you. I have dabbled in HTML and made a couple of very basic websites in the past, and then I started using sites like Moonfruit to design and post fairly decent websites. I have learned photo manipulation and uploading to sites such as Flickr, I have made some home movies and edited them using windows movie maker, then I upload them to youtube. I am currently using Wikispaces and running a few 'wiki's'. I have also tried social media sites such as Facebook, yes, I have a facebook profile. I never really got into Facebook, although I can see the attraction of it.

Now I came across this site, Blogger, and the ease of it really appealed to me, I like the way that I can decide who gets to see my words of wisdom and my pictures. I don't really mind who looks at this, if anyone ever will is not really a concern to me.

What to do with it?

I don't really want it to be just for one subject, as I have more than one interest, such as ,my family for one. I already have a website purely devoted to the latest pics and video's of my kids, which I love keeping up-to date, this is mainly for both sets of grans and grandads who live fairly far away from us and we only get to see them at holidays.

Possibilities were starting to come into my head about what to do with Blogger. Like I mentioned earlier, I do have a couple of other interests, one of these is cycling, I have became quite a keen cyclist in the last few years, I try to get out regularly and do 10 miles, although Orkney is not the most cycling friendly climate in the UK, there seems to be a pretty constant wind. I don't mind cycling in the rain, but I don't like both wind and rain, or even just wind. But when I do get out I am going to start posting pictures of my rides. I do try to vary my rides, depending on the wind direction (wind out) and there are a lot of really interesting places of interest here in Orkney.

So that could be one topic, another interest I have is playing guitar, mainly electric blues, which I have enjoyed for at least twenty years. I try to play every day if I can although it is not always possible in this house to make the time. I also play when I can at our local Blues Jam in Kirkwall, also we have a very good blues mini festival every year since I have been here, although the future is not to certain. So I plan to add some guitar blues into my blogging mix.

So I look forward to posting more in the near future and if anyone does come across these aimless ramblings...........

Sunrise Over Roseness

I was out cycling yesterday morning down by Graemeshall, Holm. It was cold and frosty with a little bit of mist. Graemeshall on my left and Roseness on my right and the sun was just making its appearance, very lovely indeed. I would like to share this moment with you.

Seven Years In

Hello there, and welcome to my new Blogg. Musings from an Orkney Ferry Louper, a Orkney term for folk who arrive in Orkney by Ferry, plane or any other means.

I arrived here seven years ago to start work as a technical teacher at the Kirkwall Grammar School.
I was accompanied by my wife Marina and by our little three year old girl, Verity. We have since expanded to include two five year old twins, Orla and Peter.

We were quite fortunate in the ease in which we initially found a house to rent, followed by buying the house we are still in, Aorangi, named after a prewar coaster blockship. This lies sunken somewhere in front of the house. The initial owner of the house, a keen diver, named the house after the wreck and we kind of liked the name and so left it alone.

I am quite a keen cyclist and love to explore Orkney mainland by this method, I also try to commute to KGS as often as the weather permits, a journey of just over 7 mls. I hope to post pics and details of future journeys.

I also enjoy playing blues electric guitar, mainly at home, although I have been known to play at the local Blues jam, these have become few and far between lately.

I look forward to posting more regularly in the future.