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I researched Loganair flights from Kirkwall to Westray without delay. The planes they use for inter-island services are only ten-seaters and of course they fill up quickly. 

I would be in Orkney only for a week, arriving on Tuesday 6th May, and, realistically, I really didn't have a lot of choice where flight days were concerned. 

Wednesday 7th May was perhaps too soon after the previous day's voyage to Stromness to contemplate a hectic early-morning dash across the Orkney Mainland to Kirkwall Airport. It would give me no time to recover from the stress of catching a sea ferry with a caravan in tow - and then compound that with the stress of two small-plane flights, and a lot of foot-slogging on Westray. Iron Woman I am not. 

I didn't want to travel on Sunday 11th May because almost certainly very little would be open on Westray, and besides, it was getting a bit close to my Tuesday departure back to Caithness. Monday 12th May was a definite no-no for that very reason. I couldn't risk getting stranded on Westray, and missing the next day's ferry. 

That left Thursday 8th, Friday 9th or Saturday 10th May as Westray Days. And guess what, it wasn't possible to get to Westray and back on the same day on any of these dates - either the outward flight, or the return flight, or both, were already sold out. 

Worse than that; the world-famous ultra-short Westray-Papa Westray hop was an essential part of the experience, but it was only on the menu if you flew to Westray in the afternoon, and returned on the next-morning's flight. It seemed that an overnight stay on Westray was expected. I didn't have the time or money to consider that, even if a pleading phone call to the Loganair desk at Kirkwall secured me flight tickets. (I dare say they keep a seat free until the last minute, in case an emergency worker is urgently needed on Westray)

So there you are. Thwarted. Some would say it's a cop-out, and yes, I'll own up to feeling relieved that I won't have to commit myself to a small aircraft. But another part of me is regretful. It would have been very memorable. And now no aerial pictures from the plane!  

So Hoy must provide the thrills. A slow boat to Lyness. At least I'll have Sophie with me, and can easily get around most of the island. Not quite the full-on adventure Westray could have been; but on balance Hoy should be - photographically speaking - just as satisfying, as it's a very scenic place. 

UPDATE I saw to the Hoy ferry booking straight away, and it's now in the bag. Outward to Lyness on Hoy at 10.00am from Houton on the Orkney Mainland; return from Lyness to Houton at 4.40pm. The ferry takes 35 minutes. So, allowing for check-in times, I'll have nearly six hours on Hoy. The return fare for Sophie and myself was £28. It's sobering to think that I paid £84.50 to Wightlink last October, to take Sophie and me roughly the same distance to the Isle of Wight and back. But then the Hoy fare is heavily subsidised by the Orkney Islands Council for the benefit of Orkney residents and visitors, and I don't think the Wightlink operation is.

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Hoy or Westray?

I depart for Orkney mid-morning on 28th April - only sixty hours away now - and will actually reach the place mid-afternoon on 6th May, after a very long haul in stages to Scrabster, near Thurso, on the northernmost coast of Scotland, and a two-hour ferry voyage to Stromness. I'll be there for a week, and then linger in Caithness for nearly another week. 

This will be my second visit to Orkney. The first, in September 2022, was just for one night. This time, seven nights. 

Here are some location maps. Click on them to enlarge the view.

The first visit three years ago merely whetted my appetite. I only had a day and a half to fit everything in, but I still managed to have a good look at the Old Man of Hoy (from the ferry sailing by, coming and going), the Ring of Brodgar, the Standing Stones of Stenness, Earl Robert's Palace at Birsay, the Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm, the Cathedral, Bishops Palace and Earl's Palace in Kirkwall, and The Pier Arts Centre in Stromness. Plus a great evening meal at The Foveran restaurant overlooking Scapa Flow, with two medical Professors on holiday from San Diego in California. 

Actually, that was quite a lot packed into the short time available. I'm hoping to see so much more this time, and I'll be able to do it at a much more leisurely pace. 

As an outline plan, I intend to go up at least one high hill on the Orkney Mainland for a 360-degree Orkney-wide view; to inspect every prime coastal location on the Orkney Mainland and those south-eastern islands connected to it by the Churchill Barriers; to examine the archaeological sites of Skara Brae (a neolithic village) and Maeshowe (a gigantic neolithic tomb); and to thoroughly explore the two towns Kirkwall and Stromness. 

I also want to visit at least one of the offshore islands that you need a ferry to reach. As I'll be based at Stromness, and with mountainous Hoy (the next-largest island in Orkney, after Mainland) close by and visible from my caravan, it's almost a no-brainer to go there. I'll have to take Sophie in order to get around. There's scenic Rackwick Bay and the Dwarfie Stane (a hollowed-out rock that a hermit lived in once) in the north part of Hoy; in the middle, the remains of the Lyness naval base with a museum (Scapa Flow was a Home Fleet anchorage in both World Wars); and in the south of Hoy, Longhope Lifeboat Museum (I well remember the lifeboat disaster in 1969, so this would be a kind of pilgrimage) and Melsetter House (if open; a famous Arts & Crafts house). 

But now Hoy has a rival. There are other large islands, all of them individual: Rousay, Shapinsay, Stronsay, Eday, Sanday, North Ronaldsay (the most north-easterly) and Westray (the most north-westerly). The last of them, Westray, is also calling to me. I have two tenuous connections with it. First, when last in Kirkwall I had a conversation with an old lady (older than me, anyway) who had lived on Westray but now lived in Kirkwall. Social Services had moved her to Orkney's 'capital' (where the modern NHS Balfour Hospital is) and she had mixed views on that. Clearly Westray had been special to her, although she appreciated her new flat in town. Secondly, the crime author Ann Cleves has a new Jimmy Perez book coming out - announced in January, to be published in October - called The Killing Stones, and it's set in Westray. Jimmy Perez was the main character in her Shetland-based crime novels, which inspired the Shetland series on TV. This latest book catches up with Jimmy a few years on, and I'll look forward to getting a copy of it when it's out. Meanwhile, I could go to Westray and spy out the land. 

The only trouble may be that, unlike Hoy, the ferry times won't work for a day trip. I could fly there perhaps, from Kirkwall Airport, but (a) I don't like flying, (b) it would be mega-expensive, and (c) it's a three-mile walk from the airfield on Westray to the main village at Pierowall. Unless a minibus meets the plane. Still, it would be a memorable thing to do! And maybe I could tack on the very short hop over to Papa Westray, and forevermore hold the distinction of having flown the world's shortest scheduled plane service. (The flight takes just two minutes)

As you can see, this holiday might turn out to be rather adventurous. I'm getting excited!

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Driving Licence Blues

Not a Lead Belly song from the 1930s. It's about that sinking feeling when you think you may have been caught - yet again! - by a speed camera. 

But first, the good news. Being over seventy, and approaching my seventy-third birthday, it was time to go through the regular process for getting a renewal driving licence. You have to do this every three years. This one would take me to 2028, when it would all happen again, and repeatedly until I eventually gave up driving, or was forced to. 

Right now it's done by self-certification. And it's all too easy to be dishonest about (for instance) how adequate one's eyesight is. So far as I know, nobody checks. As it happens, I have no reason to be in any way dishonest, but you can imagine how some elderly people with very dodgy vision, who refuse to go to an optician, might be reluctant to own up to their impediment and risk the withdrawal of their driving licence. Well, the loss of mobility if their eyesight were too poor for driving might be very awkward indeed for them. But they shouldn't become a menace on the roads, and I think the government could rightly insist on elderly applicants proving that they've had a fairly recent eye test, and that they wear any glasses found necessary.

Back to my application. You could fill in a paper form (and one was sent to me), but I could also do it online with the DVLA, via the gov.uk website. It was a longish job, not because the online application form was complex or especially lengthy, but because so much care was needed to correctly tick all the boxes. It was essential to get it completely right. 

Well, I was finally satisfied, and clicked on the 'submit' button, getting an immediate acknowledgement. Online applications are supposed to be processed inside a week, but I'd heard of long delays for paper applications, and so wasn't too hopeful for the ones made online either. But I was too pessimistic. My application was on 16th April, and the new plastic card with my picture on it came in today's post. So it took six days. I'm relieved because the DVLA asks you to snip the old licence in half and send it back. I did that at once, first class post, because I reckoned they would not release the new licence before the old one had been returned. So for a few days I was without a licence to show. And had the new one been delayed, I might have had to go off on my long holiday to Orkney and back without a driving licence. It probably wouldn't have mattered, but you never know. But now the new one is tucked away in my bag, and I need not worry.

Next, the not-so-good news. It's nearly time to renew my car insurance. I will probably get this year's quote by email from LV when travelling north next week. Last year everyone's car insurance practically doubled. I myself paid £1,041 to insure Sophie - although in addition to the general increase, my quote partly reflected a speeding offence in January 2023. To keep future insurance costs down, I have since then been paying great attention to my speed when driving, and had been expecting to hold this year's quote down as a result. 

But now the bad news. Another speeding offence looms, and it will shoot the cost up to £1,500 or more.

Incidentally, I consider myself a responsible driver, and I don't scorn speed limits. But I occasionally I exceed them by accident, or circumstances make me. The January 2023 incident was a simple error. I joined a dual carriageway (the A24 north of Worthing) from a side road, and assumed that I could drive along it at 70mph, the normal speed limit for a dual carriageway. But in fact I'd turned into a short stretch limited to 60mph, and a speed camera recorded my mistake. I went back later to check: sure enough, there were 60mph signs that I hadn't noticed. There was nothing I could do except pay the fine and accept the points. And report it to LV, who upped my premium on renewal. 

So what has happened now? Why do I think I may have been caught speeding again? Well, it was dusk, and I was on the westbound M20 in Kent, travelling home. A white car had been tailgating me, clearly wanting me to go faster, although I was doing a steady 70mph and wasn't going to be hustled. Then it changed into the inside lane and tailgated another car instead, who, like me, was driving at the maximum speed allowed. That lane became a slip road off the M20, but it was a long one, and for several hundred yards we remained in a close parallel formation, with the white car off to my left, driving aggressively and showing every sign of impatience. A potentially dangerous situation. I put on a little extra speed to get away from both of them. I saw 74mph on my speedometer. At that moment a speed camera flashed. Who had triggered it? I assumed it might be me, but we were all going at much the same speed, and the white car had been the one misbehaving.

I drove on with a sinking heart. Another speeding offence, willy-nilly.  

That was a week ago. The Kent Police have not yet been in touch. But I won't be in the clear until a fortnight has passed, and by then I'll be on my way to Scotland. 

The nightmare scenario is that a stern missive requiring a rapid response arrives while I am away on holiday, not to be seen by me until I return on 5th June; meanwhile my apparent silence has triggered unwelcome consequences. But I will ask Jackie my next-door neighbour to check my post, and email me a photo of anything sent by the Kent Police. I can then get them to put things on hold until I come home again. It will spoil the holiday though. And the insurance company will have to be told. Sigh.

UPDATE Saturday evening, 26th April. Nothing heard from the Kent Police yet. They are leaving it rather late in the day to send me a penalty notice. But if it's already on its way, I won't now see it before I depart for Orkney two mornings from now. To be on the safe side, I will definitely have to get Jackie next door to examine my post when she gets home from her own holiday. Tsk. 

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Future posts

I've been writing here since February 2009. The earliest stuff was taken down in 2018, as it didn't cover the subjects that most concerned me from 2015, when my income increased, my social life took off, and I simply did more. 

And yet by 2015 the blog's heyday was already over. I kept it going because I liked to write. But my photography (a particular interest of mine since 1965) took precedence. It was my dominant leisure activity. I built my holidays around seeing places and taking pictures. And in between those holidays I always had a camera to hand. No day passed without a crop of shots to deal with. By the end of 2022 I was taking more than 20,000 pictures a year. The time needed to process all those shots ate into my waking hours. It was - and remains - a labour of love, but photography has increasingly crowded out blogging. Nowadays publishing something here is very much a secondary activity.

So what is the future of this blog? I still want to write, and apparently I still have readers. Besides, the blog is a place (Flickr is the other) to showcase the pictures I take. I'll keep it going, but won't feel compelled to write often. Certainly not to meet some personal writing target, whether it's the number of posts per month, or how many words for each post, or whatever. It's not as if I'm paid to churn out posts. Thank goodness I have never monetised my blog, nor accepted sponsorship in any form.

I'm sure it wouldn't matter two hoots if I just stopped altogether, and took the blog down. But I know that I would still feel the need to write about the things I do or see, or affect me, at least occasionally, and this is a ready-made platform. So I'll keep the thing going. 

I maintain an ever-updated list of subjects I can write about, which I consider daily, though often without taking any action. I have to be in the mood, and not minded to get on with anything else. Putting a post together takes at least two hours if it's illustrated with pictures. At least an hour if it's all text. This is assuming that I have a good flow. Basically a morning gone, or an evening gone.

I'm becoming ever more aware than ever before that subjects need to be chosen with care, lest there is an unwelcome comeback. I well recall spats with counter-opinionated people way back, and want no more of it. Not that they can easily vent their displeasure here. I don't allow public comments, so there can be no public name-calling, vitriol-throwing or point-scoring. They can only send me a one-to-one email from my profile page, and that deprives them of an audience. Nor can they look me up on social media and fire verbal missiles at me, because I'm not on it. But adverse comment on the acts or attidude of a foreign regime might clearly hinder future travel to that country, if my words were picked up by that country's security staff.

I'm sure that any post about my personal adventures and concerns will be safe. Likewise posts about getting old, and the various impacts of climate change. But posts that are bound to trigger a poisonous reaction from the hidebound and touchy are not safe. And I think it would be silly of me, in these over-sensitive times, to have a poke at fanatics and extremists or anybody who might be able to do me direct harm. 

On the other hand, why blog at all, unless one is going to provide an interesting read? So there's a balance to be struck between expressing a definite personal sentiment and fanning the flames of some controversial debate. 

Of course, even if there are no readers, a blog can be a published personal diary of whatever caught one's attention and seemed worth taking a view on. So if all readership drops away, I will at least have maintained a public record that may outlast me - unless Google introduces rules on how frequently blog posts must be made, or begins to charge for server usage. Then I'll sign off tout suite.       

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Beards

I'd better be careful about what I say in this post. I might give offence (potentially dangerous in these hyper-sensitive times). It's about beards, those hairy growths on men's faces. And when I say 'beards' I'm including moustaches and prominent sideburns - any facial hair at all.   

More than once in recent months it has occurred to me that there are many more men around sporting beards of one kind or another than there used to be. It was once the case that you could identify a person by referring to him as 'that bearded bloke over there' and because he'd be the only one, there would be no mistake. Now, when so many men are bearded, that won't do. There are thankfully still a lot of clean-shaven men around - I don't think they are yet in a minority - but it is my perception that being clean-shaven is nowadays most likely the mark of a middle-aged man: young men have taken to beards in a big way, and surely more old men seem to go bearded than hitherto.

Assuming I'm right, why is this? 

I'm pretty certain that many (if not most) women dislike beards, whether it's untidy stubble, a carefully-trimmed creation, or a luxuriant growth in the style of Charles Darwin or the guru of your choice. The simple reason? Beards tickle if soft, and scratch if wiry. You really do not want to dance cheek to cheek with a bearded man, nor kiss him. I suspect that a high percentage of men who are unsuccessful with women are bearded, and are automatically less desirable for this simple reason. If I were ever interested in dating, a bearded man would be a non-negotiable no-no, as much as if he smoked or vaped. 

I can't be unique in my aversion to facial hair. It's a turnoff. So why do men cultivate beards? Are they quite unaware that it's not generally attractive to women? Well, I think they do know. Perhaps, then, they grow beards not primarily to win female company, but to impress other men. 

Let's see. A bearded man would presumably assert the following.

(a) Beards, whatever else you might say, are natural. They indicate the natural man, the straightforward man, the reliable man.

(b) Beards are a sign of maturity. They indicate the adult man, the serious man, the wise man (as in ancient Greek philosophers and thinkers, all with beards).  

(c) Beards are a sign of virility. Facial hair growth indicates strength, capability and potency. 

(d) Beards are a badge of authority. A bearded man is a dominant figure. He is unafraid, undaunted by problems, and likely to be noticed and obeyed. At any rate, someone not to be messed with.

(e) Being clean-shaven is to artificially maintain a childish appearance - bad for credibility, and fatal to achieving supremacy within a group. 

(f) In any case, real men should not look like girls.

I expect that I am wide of the mark on some of these things. But otherwise it's hard to see what the rationale is for having a beard. (I don't want to say that the main reason so many men wear beards is because they are too lazy to shave, or want to conform to the current fashion, or are vain)

Rebels, revolutionaries, mercenaries and mountain men: all usually bearded. Popeye shaved, but Bluto had a beard. Rapacious men generally have had beards. Vikings did. I think it's rather telling that misogynistic men like Andrew Tate are also bearded. As were may of the Proud Boys who backed President Trump when he incited his followers to storm the Capitol in Washington in January 2021. 

Against this, most of the top leaders in the world are clean-shaven. Perhaps they think a shaven face is a political asset, conveying the illusion of honesty and openness, whatever the actual facts. Certainly, a beard can hide a lot of things, including giveaway facial expressions, and I for one would trust a bearded man somewhat less than a clean-shaven man. But there's also another thing: beards add age, especially when flecked with grey. Therefore a world leader, anxious to seem young and full of vigour, needs to use that razor.

No bearded man will get my vote. Nor any of my social time. I'll be polite to him, of course. But he has to realise that his facial fungus, whether grown to bolster his standing with other men, or just an affectation, is anything but cool.

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