Such a lovely time!

image from Clipart Library

As you may remember I mentioned previously that we were having friends coming up to visit, which is why I've been MIA this last week or so.  Christine and John arrived Thursday evening of last week, and our lovely friend Phil drove me to the airport to meet them ~ thank you so much Phil 😘

Poor John has hurt his knee so wasn't able to do too much walking whilst they were here, which was a shame.  Mind you, I wasn't either as my hip is still painful ~ the pair of us looked like the walking wounded, hobbling about with our walking sticks!  Nevertheless we did manage to visit a few places, and Christine and Adrian went by themselves to the places that were too much for John and I to tackle.  There was also the added complication of the cruise ships that visit Orkney at this time of year.  As we were using the buses we had to try to plan our trips out on the days when there were fewer visitors, as the buses can get absolutely rammed 😮

Mind you even if there are no cruise ships in, the local places of interest can get very busy with the "normal" amount of tourists, and of course folk still come over for day trips on coaches from the mainland.  This was borne out for us when we chose to visit The Italian Chapel on the Friday, the day after Christine and John arrived, as there were no cruise ships in that day.  We got off the bus only to see three coaches already there, with a fourth expected!  It turned out that we had managed to choose the busiest time to visit that day😏 Thankfully, the coach passengers trundled out and we were able to have a good look round the Chapel before the fourth coach arrived.  We caught the next bus through to St Margaret's Hope, on South Ronaldsay, travelling over the Churchill Barriers.  We wondered if it would be busy but it wasn't too bad, and we managed to get seats for a lovely lunch at The Murray Arms.

On Monday the lovely Phil took Adrian, Christine and John out for a tour around the parts of the island that aren't as easily accessible by bus.  Being of a "traditional build" (a la Mma Ramotswe), I had already decided not to go with them as I thought it would be a bit of a squish in the back of the car, but as it turned out I felt a little under the weather anyway.  They had a fab trip out, which I think Phil enjoyed as much as they all did, and even though John couldn't manage the walking at Marwick at least he got to see more of the island.  Phil took them to Yesnaby, Marwick Head and the Kitchener Memorial, Birsay, then round the top of the island past the Swannay Brewery.  They then went through Evie, down to Tingwall where they stopped off at the tea room in the Fernvalley Wildlife Centre, then back through Dounby and home to Stromness!  They certainly fitted in an awful lot in their tour that day😄

On Tuesday the four of us took the bus to Skara Brae.  Adrian had booked for that day as there was only one small cruise ship in but we were a tad unlucky with the weather ~ it was absolutely chucking it down whilst we were walking round the village!  Adrian and Christine then went to have a look at Skaill House whilst we were there.  John and I couldn't comfortably manage to do both so we took ourselves off to the café in the visitor centre for a nice warming pot of tea 😉, where we all then had a bit of lunch when they had finished looking round the house.

We had a little jaunt round Stromness on Wednesday, having lunch at The Pier Bistro & Takeaway.  The contrast in weather from the day before was amazing ~ the sun came out and it turned really warm!

On Thursday Adrian and Christine took the bus to Stenness village from where they walked to see the Standing Stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar, and the dig at the Ness of Brodgar (of which this is the final year for the foreseeable future).  They had a full day with lots of walking and came home tired but very pleased to have done it.  Thankfully the weather stayed kind for them, too.

Christine and John travelled back home yesterday and much to everyone's relief, the IT outage didn't affect their flights very much.  It was so lovely to welcome them to our home, and despite the difficulties with poor weather and dodgy knees and hips, I'd like to think that we all had a good week 😊