Tag Archives: Hoy

Aug 02 2025
3 Comments
Daily Post, Landscape

Farewell to Stromness (early)

Saturday 2nd August 2025, 6.40am (day 5,091)

Stromness morning, 2/8/25

Another landscape, but why not. This was the last view seen of Orkney on this trip, as the 6.30am ferry back to Thurso turned itself around and gave its passengers one final chance to admire the photogenic qualities of Stromness, with the hills of Hoy behind. I would come back here with no qualms at all. Orkney is a great place and there should be more like it.

By a total coincidence, the picture taken ten years ago today was also timed as 6:40am. I remember this because it was another rather fine landscape, captured near the summit of Kilimanjaro on 2nd August 2015.

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Jul 27 2025
Leave a comment
Daily Post, Landscape

The Old Man of Hoy

Saturday 26th July 2025, 2.20pm (day 5,084)

The Old Man of Hoy is around 450 feet high and probably Britain’s most well-known pillar of rock, thanks in large part to a famous televised climbing of it in the late 1960s. Plenty more people have subsequently made it to the top, including an 8-year-old, who thereby demonstrated more desire and ability to propel themselves up sheer rock faces than I ever will. But the Old Man is not some durable phenomenon. A map drawn in 1750 shows a headland here but no stack. The first known painting of it was completed in 1819 and shows him with two legs, and looking much bulkier. And when he’s seen now — as from the Scrabster to Stromness ferry this afternoon — it does look like the next really big storm will take him down. Will the Old Man last longer than the Old(ish) Man now blogging about him? We’ll take bets…. after all, if I lose, I won’t be around to collect.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,