It's County Show day today in Orkney - the culmination of a week and a bit of agricultural shows, starting with the Sanday show, then the East Mainland, the Shapinsay, the South Ronaldsay & Burray, the West Mainland aka the Dounby Show, followed finally by the County Show in Kirkwall. An exhausting prospect if you attend all of them, although I've been pretty busy all week with one of our 'Islands Extra' tours so have missed them all, although I might make it to the County later on.
We originally started the 'Islands Extras' as a one off, since some folk who'd done our regular holiday wanted to come back and do the rest of the islands, & it's really taken off - next year's two weeks are nearly full already, with a lot of folk this year booking to come back before they've even finished their first holiday with us.
It's great fun to get out to the rest of the islands - we go to Sanday, Wyre, Hoy (again - but this time to walk to the Old Man of Hoy), Westray, Papay (Papa Westray) and Shapinsay - a nice change for me as well as for the guests to get back out into the Isles.
We mostly had OK weather apart from one day when it blew a gale - we were out at the dig at the Ness of Brodgar & all the diggers were huddled around the site huts looking bedraggled. Later in the week I was chatting to one of the Ness volunteers - an old friend from London digging days - (when we were all part of the old Department of Urban Archaeology at the Museum of London) - & he said that they'd eventually been rained off site & gone to the local pub for a nice hot chocolate - a definite sign of middle age if you ask me!
Sadly we missed the puffins in Westray by 2 days - they're all off back to sea for the winter - but we were rewarded by lots of fluffy fulmar chicks everywhere we went, and also a herring gull who has decided that picnickers at the Old Man of Hoy are a soft touch for food - he was coming right up to our feet on the scrounge.
It is nice to have a day off today though - catching up on paperwork etc - it's amazing how many bookings are coming in for next year already - some of our holiday weeks are nearly full and the enquiries are flooding in - I'm amazed folk are so organised so far in advance - we've had bookings 18 months in advance this year.
Also catching up with other jobs - managed to get the pet North Ronaldsay seaweed eating sheep sheared last week, wormed the dogs today - not that easy any more as Jet - the big black lab/collie cross - can detect worming tablets even wrapped in bread & butter & spits them out. You have to give her each tablet wrapped in a big bit of bread & slathered in butter so it slips down before she realises she's been had! I also had to exercise restraint as there were black lab puppies in the paper this week - OK they were in Shetland so it was easier to resist than if they'd just been down the road. Four dogs is definitely enough - especially when we get back from our walk in the pouring rain & they all want drying.
http://www.orkneyarchaeologytours.co.uk
