I've been feeling a bit guilty this week as my friend Pat has been out touring every day in all weathers - we've been having gale force winds, horizontal hailstones & thunder - fairly typical for late October.
I've been snug indoors since I took a policy decision this year to close for the winter on 1st October, instead of taking the odd day tour bookings whenever people are brave enough to go out like I usually do.
Several reasons for this, partly because it's good to have an official cut off date so I can get stuck back in to the PhD research without having to break off to do tours, but more particularly as I wanted to sell our tour vehicle ready for the new one coming home on 1st March and didn't really want to leave it sitting through the winter doing not much except going rusty before selling it.
The added advantage this year was I also needed to get minor surgery to straighten one of my toes out, which leaves you hopping around for 6 weeks. Plus I hate doing tours when you have to hide behind the stones at the Ring of Brodgar out of the weather. So I managed to kill several birds with one stone, closed on 1st October, vehicle now successfully sold, new vehicle about to be ordered once I decide on the colour, toe straightened, PhD stuck back into.
All fine - except the guilty feeling as I've been forwarding all my tour enquiries - for October, November and would you believe December - to my friend Pat, who consequently has been out this week in all weathers, whilst I've been sat with my foot up getting frequent cups of tea brought by my man Dave, and not having to do any cooking or washing up, watching the hailstones bouncing off the window.
Feeling slightly less guilty because I'm also forwarding work to her for next season as I'm already having to turn folk away as I'm already booked.
Winter activities start to take over - the Orkney Archaeology Society has some interesting lectures coming up, including one next week on the Pictish symbol stone that was found in Sanday earlier this year. Hopefully we'll get the stone itself back for the Orkney Museum after it's been conserved. There's been a good exhibit in the Westray heritage centre this year of the finds from the Neolithic site at the Links of Noltland, including the Orkney Venus aka the Westray Wife - a definite plus to have items displayed in the place they were found.
There's been a bit of excitement in the news this week about the Viking boat burial found at Ardnamurchan in the Scottish Highlands - nice warrior burial with sword & shield etc - previously the only Viking boat burials from Scotland were from Orkney. The Scar viking boat burial from Sanday is probably the best known - mainly for the Scar plaque, a really nice decorated whalebone plaque now in the Orkney museum - but we've also had examples from Westness, Rousay. There's a huge Viking/Pictish cemetery at Westness - but not very well known as they were excavated back in the 1960s & 70s by Sigrid Kaland of Oslo university - and have never been published, although I think the finds are mostly in the National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh. Sadly I can think of a good many Orkney excavations from that period that are still awaiting publication - including the 1970s excavations at Skara Brae, at Grobust in Westray, Newark Bay in Deerness etc & don't get me started on the excavation publication backlog from the 1980s & 1990s. If you're not going to write it up you shouldn't be digging it in the first place!
Away from the archaeology side of things we had a sperm whale in Kirkwall Bay the other week - huge crowds gathered on the pier to get a look at it, but it didn't seem to be very well. Expert opinion was sought & suggested that the whale was looking for somewhere to die, so it was looking like it would be a disposal problem for the harbours people (dead whales are very big & smelly & usually have to be moved & buried). Thankfully the whale made a sudden recovery & followed a local boat out to deeper water then headed off looking quite happy, and hasn't been spotted since. It was said to have propeller marks on its head - maybe it headbutted a ferry & was just stunned?
Following this a dead badger washed up on the beach at Warebeth - very odd since we don't have badgers in Orkney - consensus was that it had washed up from Scotland somewhere. Not that unlikely - I once found a very large dead deer on the beach at Skaill Bay, below Skara Brae, that must also have come from Scotland. Much too large to carry - just as well or my man would have wanted it for his reference collection (see http://orkneyarchaeologytours.blogspot.com/2010/01/everyone-should-have-porpoise-in-life.html if you're interested in why!)
http://www.orkneyarchaeologytours.co.uk
