The harbour master came by, as promised, and brought me the tide and current tables, and with this knowledge I quickly realised, when talking to the sailors in the harbour, that we are sailing in a completely different way. – The sailors don’t take more time on a whim, no, they simply have to take much more time due to the system! Not only because they are travelling differently, let’s say ‘slower’, but because even with their (emergency) engines they can’t cruise wherever and however they want. Those I meet here in the northernmost tip of Scotland have their boats crammed with electronics; two to four weather forecast programmes run in parallel… They plan constantly and decide when everything is right for three to four days. And in addition to a great respect for weather caprices, they have an almost irritating patience.
I, on the other hand, want to see the country and the people, and I want to go on when I have taken in ‘enough’ and feel it is right for me – with the disadvantage of always being on the go somehow, sometimes driven by the threat of bad weather… After studying the charts and weather map in Stromness, for example, it is clear that conditions are ideal for me to pass the Pentland Firth from north to south today in the early afternoon; the tide is running out, the tidal currents are changing only slowly, the wind continues to be negligible (which almost makes sailors despair and ultimately blocks them). At the same time, it is foreseeable that I will not be able to sail northwest around Scotland today and for at least a week, because firstly, there is no infrastructure, no harbour, above all no petrol for the next few hundred kilometres, only cliffs exposed to the Atlantic, and secondly, there is the threat of a storm coming from the Atlantic, from which even the Outer Hebrides do not really protect me. – While the sailors have to keep waiting, I could still quickly slip through the favourable current and wind window this afternoon with my ArgoFram.
So I have to decide quickly: I rent a bike, visit my eagerly awaited Skara Brae, a Neolithic settlement uncovered 150 years ago, inhabited for a few centuries sometime around five thousand years ago, so old as stone. And very impressive to see how our pre-ancestors imaginatively took their better life into their own hands. And I plan to go to Wick during the short time window after my return, back to Scotland. But instead of going around the north-western cliffs to Ireland, I will cross Scotland by the Great Glen (the Caledonian Canal). Not particularly sexy, but this far north I’m very exposed at this time of year – I’ve got a long way to go, I’ve got to orient myself to Ireland and south again, and I’ll only be in Brittany in a week or two after all… So, don’t plan too much, here we go: Off on the two-wheeler over the hilly ‘mainland’ to Skara Brae! – One hour there, one hour back, sounds like joyful heart palpitations (unlike yesterday).
No sooner had we arrived than access restrictions were in force throughout the excavation area – I beg your pardon? Aha, Corona, Scottish administration… Tickets are only available via the internet, and the few available entrances have been booked up for days: A big tourist ship had landed in Kirkwall yesterday! Well, I have to go to the toilet – and from there I walk around the museum building to the excavations. (Once again I’m glad I didn’t look closely beforehand, but went straight there without a care in the world. Would I otherwise have stayed on board, shrugging my shoulders like the sailors? But now I am here, and there is always a way).
Back in Stromness, I say goodbye to the sailors on the pier, thank them for their tips (useless in terms of content but nevertheless extremely important, especially because I realise more clearly than ever that I am travelling in a completely different way and have to write my own story) and zoom through Orkney’s island world towards the Pentland Firth.
By the way, I ‘discover’ a possibly strategic oil depot with countless huge tanks on an island to be passed, which form a reserve for turbulent times in all seclusion – if conflicts break out or someone outside Europe turns off the oil tap? It’s exciting what I can see from the water, where only a satellite can look.
I am in Wick so quickly that I almost didn’t notice that below me the sea can also be quite different, beguilingly harmless – but I only found out (once again) in Wick harbour that even here entry is sometimes impossible if the winds and currents don’t match… I should have had an alternative ready, I am told. I didn’t.
But the harbour master and everyone I meet (two captains of ultra-modern catamarans used as supply ships for the wind farms come to the jetty after work and greet me) are by no means know-it-alls, but extremely obliging. And curious. And so one word exchanges the other, and I find out a lot, learn a lot, very much! – Finally, a harbour employee invites me to drive to the next petrol station in his company car so that I can get my petrol more easily. And I can also use the showers. That’s within the harbour master’s competence, he says with a mischievous smile, not with those in Edinburgh. – I’m welcomed into the Highlands, so fine!
Opposite me anchors an older, chubby gentleman with tousled hair; we meet in the shower and we too soon strike up a conversation: he is sailing his small sailboat around Great Britain – one more – fulfilling a long-cherished lifelong dream. And because he is short of money, he has set up a foundation and is constantly collecting donations. Brits are obviously big spenders – he is very active on social media channels and provides the stories to match. And enjoys his existence. A true sailor.
In the evening we go out for dinner together, to a chain establishment that conveys a retro-modern attitude to life with canned music, lots of beer and cheap meals. It’s fine with me, I can finally see a little deeper into the soul of the people. And with the beer, the women-only and men-only tables begin to dissolve or merge, and the hygiene masks are suddenly no longer worn between bar and table… Aha, I think, the viruses are finding their way in Scotland too. And everyone toasts each other.