Travelling Hopefully - Scapa Flow

 Scapa Flow is a large chunk of sea water surrounded by various Orkneys. During both the first and second world wars it was the major base for the British fleet selected possibly on the theory that if the British high command was prepared to do that to its own sailors what it would do to the enemy would be even worse.

Scapa was bleak, remote and devoid of facilities but it had one priceless advantage. From here the Royal Navy could enforce a blockade of Germany that cut them off from raw materials and ultimately food.

Scapa was supposed to be secure, a reputation that took a bit of a hit when the battleship Royal Oak also took a bit of a hit courtesy of a German u-boat. One of the consequences of this was that the British imported a group of Italian chapel builders to improve the defences. They finished the defences at about the same time as the war came to a conclusion, the chapel took a little longer.

We clambered onto what was either a small car ferry or a second hand landing craft and plied the grey waters of Scapa to the island of Hoy where a museum and no end of war era relics abound. The museum is compact but informative covering the surrender and scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet after the end of the First World War and various naval tragedies both natural and German inflicted.

With little time to waste we jumped from ferry to bus to yet another bus. The buses whipped around the narrow Orkneys roads with what seemed to be more enthusiasm than caution. Nevertheless we were deposited at a historically significant hole in the ground with zero injuries.

The Maeshowe Cairn is another Neolithic site. The word cairn seems to imply the presence of corpses but according to our guide it was never used for burial. It seems to be a highly specific calendar. The tunnel into the cairn has been built in such a way that on the Winter Solstice the sunlight will pour up that tunnel and illuminate the cairn’s interior thus announcing that winter was half over and that people should start cracking out their Stone Age beachwear. There was also a dragon but it was small harmless and might have been a dog.