ORKNEY - May 17th - 23rd 2009

Come and enjoy a week photographing one of Scotland's finest groups of islands at the best time of year, with almost continuous daylight!

£720, including all travel, comfortable 3 star bed, breakfast, dinner accommodation and photographic support.

'Scottish Photographers', 'T16' and 'IPSE' members are entitled to a 10% discount.

The tour starts from Inverness on Sunday, includes all ferries and all travel to and on Orkney and back to Inverness the following Saturday as well as bed, breakfast and dinner for 6 nights at Woodwick House, comfortable 3 star accommodation.

Please also look at the various photo galleries on the 'Orkney Images' pages.

On Sunday we’ll collect you from Inverness airport or Inverness city centre (train and bus stations are close by) around lunchtime. There’s a pleasant drive during the afternoon heading north up the east coast, with great views over the North Sea, then crossing the Flow Country to arrive at the ferry port of Scrabster. We cross the Pentland Firth on the comfortable modern ferry M.V. Hamnavoe. The crossing passes close to the island of Hoy and we will get a fine view of the Old Man of Hoy, one of the UK’s best known sea stacks, and of St Johns Head, towering sea cliffs of 1000 feet, before entering the sheltered waters of Scapa Flow and arriving at Stromness. It’s a short drive from Stromness to Woodwick House, our base for the week, where our dinner will be waiting for us!

Woodwick House is a warm and welcoming historic country house, set in an extraordinary, peaceful location with bluebell woodland, a cascading burn and a secluded bay overlooking the island of Gairsay.
Accommodation is comfortable, mostly twin rooms, with some shared and some en suite facilities.
Cuisine is superb! A full Scottish breakfast will be available with plenty of choice; kippers too. For dinner, there is the option of up to 3 courses. A choice from three main dishes, and a second course, is included in the tour price. Woodwick House is licensed and will cater for special diets. Our dinner and breakfast times will vary to fit in perfectly with our photographic schedules.
There are two living rooms for our use with a variety of facilities, where we will be able to review our photography and relax.
The gardens and grounds of Woodwick House provide lots of great opportunities for photography – the woods, the burn, the bay, the 16th century doocot and the surrounding coutryside.
Woodwick House is situated at Evie, on the north west coast of mainland Orkney, convenient for most of the main attractions of Orkney, and equidistant from Kirkwall and Stromness.

Orkney is an archipelago of more than 70 islands, about 20 inhabited, that contrasts with most of the Scottish Highlands. It’s a very fertile land with soft green hills dominating the landscape, interspersed with many freshwater and sea lochs. Orkney is a very beautiful and peaceful land where in the summer, when we’ll be there, there’s a rare abundance of bird life, as well as some fine wild flowers. Perhaps the most exceptional of Orkney’s many attractions is the extraordinarily rich and diverse abundance of its history and archaeology. There are numerous sites of interest and new ones are regularly discovered. We’ll visit many of these, some by day, and some also in the late evenings. Some are described in more detail further below.

Each day we will visit and photograph some of the many and varied attractions on Orkney. There are some fine beaches such as Waulkmill Bay, dramatic cliffs especially on the west coast such as at Yesnaby and Marwick Head, great sea views almost everywhere, and always the views across the fertile arable lands with moorland on the higher hills.

A highlight of the week will be a day trip to the Island of Hoy. We will take the little passenger ferry from Stromness acroos Scapa Flow, then a short bus ride to Rackwick Bay, a beautiful bay breaking up the almost continuous line of cliffs along the north and west coasts of Hoy. We will walk up on to the cliff top areas overlooking the Old Man of Hoy. Quite probably we will see puffins here! Also we will see bonxies (great skuas), arctic terns, great black back gulls and other bird species, some almost exclusive to Orkney.

Kirkwall and Stromness are the two main towns of Orkney. Both are picturesque with stone paved roads through the towns and busy harbours. Kirkwall is the capital, and St Magnus Cathedral is here. This is an impressive red sandstone building with the original foundation stone being laid in the 1100s. We will visit both towns by day, and also in the twilight of Orcadian summer nights, when there will be some great photo opportunities. Stromness runs along the waterfront and amongst the one time wharfs and piers is The Pier Arts Centre. This is an award winning gallery, recently refurbished and reopened in 2007.

Amongst the many archaeological sites we may visit and photograph are the following –

• Skara Brae, possibly the best known of all Orkney’s attractions, is a prehistoric village on the shores of the Bay of Skaill, rediscovered after a storm in the 1850s, that is remarkably well preserved. Nearby is Skaill House, a large manor house from the 17th century.
• The Ring of Brodgar is an impressive stone circle between Lochs Harray and Stenness. Its size, over 100 metres wide with stones of up to 4.5 metres high, makes it one of the most notable stone circles anywhere.
• Just along the road are the Stones of Stenness, 3 more impressive stones, and the Watchstone, alone and at over 5 metres tall, particularly impressive.
• The Broch of Gurness is close to Woodwick House, our base, and is perhaps the best preserved example of a broch on Orkney.
• The Brough of Birsay is a tidal island at the north west tip of mainland Orkney. Dramatic seas, a lighthouse, the remains of a sixth century settlement and the possibility of seeing puffins on the cliff tops, and various whales and cetaceans in the seas beneath are some of the attractions here.

More recently Scapa Flow, the almost enclosed sheltered sea within Orkney, played a part in the Second World War; the Churchill Barriers, now linking the chain of islands to the south east of mainland Orkney, were built to safeguard the British Fleet, stationed within Scapa Flow. On Lambs Holm, the first island in the chain is the Italian Chapel, an extraordinary testament to the spirit of the Italian prisoners of war stationed here to help construct the Churchill Barriers. Domenico Chiocchetti, an artist, designed and oversaw the conversion of a nissen hut into an attractive chapel, still well preserved today. There are now good relations between the Italian ex-prisoners and Orcadians, with many revisiting their old prison camp sites. One day we’ll drive across all the Churchill Barriers onto South Ronaldsay to visit a fine old church, St Mary’s at Burwick, adjacent to an attractive bay and disused harbour area, with all sorts of photo potential.

Orkney’s social heritage is preserved and celebrated with some interesting farm museums and craft traditions. We will possibly visit Corrigall Farm Museum or Kirbister Museum, as well as some of the many local crafts makers.
The ‘real’ Harray Potter is Andrew Appleby, who produces many impressive ranges of pottery as well as researching and recreating some of the ancient techniques discovered by local archaeologists, at his studio close to Loch Harray.
Pam Farmer is both an effective and successful photographer and an award winning café / small restaurant proprietor at 'Appies'. We’re sure to stop by one day for a bite to eat, possibly sampling some of the many local products and delicacies of Orkney.

The wide and exceptional range of Orkney’s flora and fauna is found at locations all over the islands. There are numerous RSPB reserves, and as well as probably seeing puffins and skuas, we’ll see many other less usually seen birds from the sea, wetlands and moorlands.