This log entry is for all those poor people who missed out on the trip to Eday - or Ebay Island as it has been renamed!
When we arrived at the pier the four of us - me (Robin), Rich, Rob & Shorty (the ESL) watched the ferry disappear into the mist on its way to Sanday. Phil had a conversation with some crazy sounding local, the subject of the conversation wasn't clear to me. We headed off towards the house where you had to sign into the Youth Hostel. The woman there let us camp at the hostel and use the facilities the hostel offered for only £12 - pretty excellent value for 2 nights! She then pointed to some hazy distant headland and said "It's only 4 miles or so away" and bade us a good stay.
Meanwhile Rob had wandered off to post a postcard and came running back looking somewhat abashed; he said:
"Not wanting to sound stupid, lads, but I don't know how to use the postbox."
We laughed and I went back to teach him how to use such a complex device as a postbox. The letter slot had a flap over it to stop the ingress of the rain and sea, which tend to arrive horizontally and at some conserable speed and force during the winter season. I gave it a small pull and posted Rob's card. By this time we were all laughing quite a lot at the crest-fallen Rob, who continued:
"Oh, I thought it may be ornamental."
I felt it necessary to phone Coey and tell him what had just happened.
We started out on the 4½km walk to the Youth Hostel. Barely 400m down the road, a van pulled over and a woman who we later found out was called Chris offered us a lift. We gratefully took the opportunity and clambered onto the back of their little flat-bed truck and made ourselves comfortable amidst the gravel, stones, buckets and tools as we sped along the narrow island lane towards the north end of the island and the Youth Hostel.
As we disembarked and gave our thanks to Chris and her husband Pete, who we found out was the island's part-time Harbour Master, the fact that Rich and I were geologists came up. Our enquiries whether there might be any good fossil beds around the island were not only rewarded with some possible locations but Pete's own requests that we help them determine the possible source of some flint tools they had unearthered on their farmland in the south of the island. They were currently excavating a site which they felt might be the next Scara Brae (neolithic village) and suspected that the flint tools they had found would have been imported.
Rich got out the geological map he had only just bought the previous day at the fossil museum on Lamb's Holm - although it didn't help that much, we put forward a couple of theories which sounded plausible and made it sound like we knew what we were talking about! We got a bit worried though when they invited us round to their house the next day to tell us more about the finds; after all, we had only just finished our first year as AS geology students. As it happened, though, Rich's hypothesis proved to be quite a good one.
Waving a cheery farewell to the little truck as it bounced and sped away up the road we stretched out our limbs and had a look around. The Youth Hostel was an old wooden airfield hut which stood next door to a modern brick and concrete building which was the island's fire station. Close by was the airfield itself - London Airport! The runways however were grass and the terminal and control tower a small single-storey slate roofed building housing an office, waiting room, garage and loo. The only other building nearby appeared to be an abandoned church building the boundary walls of which curiously had been newly and solidly rebuilt. This little remote community was sited on the narrow neck of low-lying land which joined the northern and southern halves of Eday. We got settled into the hostel and pitched our tent on some nice soft heather at the back.
We headed off for one of the possible fossil sites Chris and Pete told us about - we didn't find any though but had an enjoyable walk along the coast, bouldering along the rocks and scaring off the occasional seabird. We caught up with Phil at a beautiful shallow sandy bay and joined him barefoot paddling in the warm gently lapping shallows, while a lone oyster catcher maintained its vociferous complaint at our presence there. It was a wonderful and timeless afternoon, and as the sun eventually burnt off the last of the sea mist, the sea took on a myriad of blues and purples and sparkled like diamonds under the warm summer sky. Heaven!
After goodness how long we left the bay and picked up the road south back to the hostel. And lo! There appeareth a couple of buildings which on closer inspection revealed themselves to be the local community-run Co-op store ... which was open! With the hostel facilities open to us and not needing to cook on our little back-packer stoves, we took advantage of the opportunity and increased our provisions with some fresh-laid Eday eggs, local sausage (which came in slab form) and a couple of bottles of Heineken Export. On our return, a fresh brew was soon followed by a great fry-up of eggs, sausage, fried bread and noodles (chicken flavour). I was rather proud of my culinery efforts that evening which were well received by all as the empty plates and Rob's satisfied belching bore testimony.
Later in the evening we went out to explore the west side of the island, crossing over heather covered and in places boggy ground to arrive at a long curving sandy bay, which at this point was just under a kilometre away from the hostel. There were large and in places steep sand dunes here which proved great for leaping off and landing in the soft shifting sand. While Phil wandered off and explored further along the beach, we spent a great couple of hours here amongst the dunes as the sun slowly decayed into a grey horizon. However, such is the nature of sand that it got into our clothes, hair, ears, nostrils, etc(!) and the antiquated shower at the hostel proved ineffectual at removing it from all those awkward little bodily creases and crevises!!
The next morning we had a healthy lay-in until about 10am. We breakfasted on 'Al-Porge' - pleasant mixture of porridge and Alpen - and set out to find Chris and Pete's house via the Eday Heritage Walk. On route we stopped at various sites - a hide over-looking a lake where we watched the local water fowl, the largest standing stone on Orkney and an ancient tomb which had an acrylic roof window so the main chamber was illuminated; the light however didn't reach into the several side chambers, and having no torches we improvised with camera flashes to see in. They were just big enough to house a small human form, as Rich tried out.
We arrived at Pete and Chris' house around lunchtime. They delighted us by not only offering us coffee and cake but producing great steaming bowls of delicious mutton stew. We chatted for quite a while before Pete showed us some of the stuff they'd found at their dig site and Rich put forward his flint theory. We then had a guided tour of the farm they were restoring - The Red House Eday Croft Restoration Project. Phil seemed interested in coming back on a later expedition and the group providing some manual labour on the project in return for camping.
Pete told us the story of Faray, the island we could see off the west coast. Now uninhabited except for sheep, it used to have a sizable population. Island development schemes offered them the choice of a new jetty and ferry link to Eday, or a new road on the island. The populace chose the road and found themselves increasingly isolated and remote, making a living virtually impossible and were eventually evacuated to other islands. There is great concern amongst the island dwellers that a similar fate is only just around the corner for them - the smaller scattered communities are particularly vulnerable.
We left Chris and Pete around 3.30pm to continue the Heritage Walk. The three of us - Rob, Rich and I - opted for the shorter return and left Phil to go solo on the extended route right around the north headland (and its resident Bonxies!). This enabled us to call in at the island's Co-op store before it closed at 5.30pm to augment our meagre breakfast rations and stock up on some additional 'liquid refreshment'. Back at the hostel we relaxed over tea and cards while we waited for Phil to return. Two cyclists had joined us at the hostel but apart from exchanging a few pleasantries (during which we found out the lady used to be a Venture Scout Leader somewhere in Yorkshire) they kept themselves to themselves.
Upon Phil's return we had some food and then went off to the beach again to do some geology. Phil tried his hand at fishing and and on his first cast hooked a small fish which we thought might be a codling. That was all he managed though for the rest of the evening! It was just enough for us to try a few mouthfuls each - good flavour but annoyingly bony.
The next day we rose early to catch the ferry at 11.25am. I cooked a mega fry-up to finish off our meal rations. Not counting on a lift this time we anticipated that the walk back to the ferry would take a good couple of hours. We set a good pace and even though we broke off for a couple of photo calls found ourselves at the ferry pier in just over an hour. As we trolled up it started to rain so we crammed into the small waiting room with our rucksacks to await the ferry. Phil tried some more fishing but to no avail.
The trip to Eday was probably one of the best parts of the trip. It was nice to get away from such a large group for a few days - just the four of us meant we could have some good food of our own choosing and the hostel provided the added luxury of indoor seating and modern cooking facilities. The island had a wonderfully relaxing atmosphere - timeless almost - and we made friends with two interesting and extremely welcoming people Chris and Pete. I'm sure some day I will revisit Orkney and Eday will be top of my places to stay.
