I snapped a pho­to of this curi­ous car, which I found parked on a street in Kirkwall.

To iden­ti­fy it, I con­tact­ed my friend Peter Svi­lans, an expert of auto­mo­tive his­to­ry. He replied:

“That is indeed an inter­est­ing car. It goes by the charm­ing name of ‘Figaro’, and was built by a spe­cial divi­sion of Nis­san in lim­it­ed num­bers in 1991. The delib­er­ate­ly retro-styled car was ini­tial­ly sold by means of a lot­tery in Japan only, but it proved quite pop­u­lar and addi­tion­al cars were built. Rare and col­lectible. An off the beat­en track car in an out of the way place.”

Images of Tingwall and Rousay:

Entrance to Mid­howe Broch

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So Mag­nus Erlend­son, when he came up from the shore that East­er Mon­day, towards noon, to the stone in the cen­tre of the island, saw against the sun eleven men and a boy and a man with an axe in his hand who was weep­ing. Read more »

Break­fast in Kirk­wall was deli­cious, but it was a veg­e­tar­i­an’s night­mare. Fried eggs, a huge beef sausage much meati­er than an Eng­lish banger, a slab of blood pud­ding, some fried toma­toes, and toast. Noth­ing even remote­ly green.  Read more »

I had been warned that the Orkney dialect was “dif­fi­cult,” but it is per­fect­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble to any Cana­di­an, and extreme­ly pleas­ing to the ear. The into­na­tion pat­tern, in par­tic­u­lar, reminds me of Cana­di­an speech in the Atlantic Provinces. Read more »

Upon my word, my jour­nal goes charm­ing­ly on at present.… How eas­i­ly and clev­er­ly do I write just now! I am real­ly pleased with myself; words come skip­ping to me like lambs upon Mof­fat Hill; and I turn my peri­ods smooth­ly and imper­cep­ti­bly like a skil­full wheel­wright turn­ing tops in a turn­ing-loom. There’s fan­cy! There’s sim­i­le! In short, I am at present a genius: in that does my opu­lence con­sist, and not in base metal.

― James Boswell, Boswell’s Lon­don Jour­nal, 1762–1763 Read more »

More images of West Main­land: Read more »

Images of West Main­land, Orkney (part 1) Read more »

I was eager to get to some of the key archae­o­log­i­cal sites, so I hoist­ed my pack and set out on foot. I soon got a lift with a cheer­ful Orca­di­an, and was dropped off at the base of the nar­row arm of land that sep­a­rates the Loch of Sten­ness from the Loch of Har­ray. This was the most active cen­ter of Neolith­ic Orkney. It was but a short walk to the Stones of Sten­ness. These date from around 3000 BC. The phys­i­cal set­ting, between two lochs and at the cen­tre of a vast bowl of land sur­round­ed by high, bare hills, is mar­velous. I was beneath a par­tic­u­lar­ly fine mix of sun and clouds, and there was nobody about to spoil the sense of mys­tery and awe. 

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Strom­ness is a pleas­ing lit­tle har­bour with many grey stone build­ing climb­ing a steep hill. Smack in the mid­dle, how­ev­er, is a hideous glass box, an exam­ple of just the kind of esthet­ic crime I com­plained about in the last post. The main com­mer­cial street is a nar­row , wind­ing lane, paved with flag­stones, and hemmed in by most­ly eigh­teenth and nine­teenth cen­tu­ry hous­es. Pedes­tri­ans share it, anar­chi­cal­ly, with auto­mo­biles. Most parts only have room for a car going in one direc­tion, but there are occa­sion­al wider spots where oncom­ing traf­fic can nego­ti­ate prece­dence. Read more »