A few days away

The plane used for our journey.

Just spent a few days with my sister and husband  on Westray & Papa Westray, two of the Northern isles of Orkney, We flew first to Papa Westray a small island with a population of just sixty, a beautiful place with white sandy beaches, we were there for one night before flying to Westray. The flight takes about two minutes and is the shortest flight in the world, The island is much larger with about six hundred people living there  ,it is the most north-westerly of the Orkney islands, it has a huge 80km coastline,with stunning cliff scenery and beautiful sandy bays.If you are interested in history then Westray has a lot to offer from the iron age through the Viking period right up to to the modern day  ,our reason for being there was the bird-life ,from Arctic and Great Skua  to cliffs covered with Gannets, Guillemot both common and black ,Razorbill  and Cormorant,Kittiwakes and Flumar,  but the best of all was the sea stack at Castle O' Burrian which in spring has 2-300 Puffin nesting on the stack and adjacent cliffs, this was a fantastic sight with Puffin's only feet away as you can see from the pictures below.  The holiday finished on Sunday with a flight back to Kirkwall and I got to sit in the Co-pilots seat to balance out the weight, fantastic views flying over the Islands.

Knap of Howar  Orkney's oldest known Farmstead

      Inhabited between  3600 and 3100 BC

         On Papa Westray

Puffin's at Castle O'Burrian

Outdoor work progress

  The work on the outside of the house has gone very well over the last few days, the weather has been a bit of a mix, One day hot and the next cold and windy, seven days without rain is not bad though.

All the old render removed.

The house is about two hundred years old , the walls are between two and three feet thick and made of sandstone, they are held together with clay which was dug from the bay at low tide and the finished building was rendered with lime mortar. Years later the lime render was removed and rendered with cement , this has had an effect on the clay which has dried out ,which  is a problem when you do any work on the building as it makes the smaller pieces of stone very loose. I have got to the stage where the whole wall has been pointed , I will leave it for a week before cleaning the stonework with an Air hammer and then point with a coloured mortar mix. 

All the first pointing finished

Outdoor Work.

Started the outdoor job's this week,
Continuing on from last summers job of removing render, I started  removing the render from the upper half of th house, this is no easy task as it has been up there for a very long time. Judicious use of the lump hammer and an assortment of cold chisels removes most of it, then it's down to an air hammer fitted with a with chisel. The other day when I started it was bitterly cold with persistent showers, today was completely different , a clear sky  and when the sun came round my side of the house it was decidedly hot, being a bit on the short side puts you at a disadvantage when the wall is ten feet tall, so borrowed a set of tower scaffolding from a neighbour.

 
 These jobs play havoc with your hands especially when you keep whacking them with the lump hammer. 

more Images

The Stone images come from the numerous old buildings  left after the population decreased and farms and crofts were bought up but the buildings were no longer needed, on Orkney it is cheaper to build new than to renovate, although most are beyond salvation.

 

Sandwick, South Ronaldsay.

 

 

Eastside.

 

 

Images, Iron ,Wood & Stone

Sorting through files on the hard drive the other day I realised that most of the pictures I take spend their life hidden away never being shared with others, so today I decided to post a few and share them with you . One of the subjects I like photographing apart from the wildlife is what I call Wood & Iron, Orkney has an abundance of old cast iron winches, made in Victorian times and used to haul out the small open fishing boats, most are just left to rust away, On the mainland they would have been carted off for scrap years ago.

                                            Old Winch at Eastside , South Ronaldsay

                                                 

                                                          Sandwick , South Ronaldsay

 

 

 

The Wood images come from the old fishing boats left to rot on the foreshore and other objects scattered around the islands, although these are less frequent as most wood is used for firewood owing to the lack of trees on Orkney. 

 

Old Fishing Boats, Sandwick, South Ronaldsay

 

 

Old Cart Wheel, St Margaret's Hope.

 

Old Mahogany Chest

Jill returned last week from a three week trip down to Bristol to see family, While she was away we had four days of gale-force winds with sleet and hail, Down at Stromness at the wave energy site they recorded a wave height of just over twenty six feet which is a near record. Over the last few months Jill has been looking on the web for an old wooden trunk to put all her sewing bits and pieces in, unfortunately for her they are far too expensive with a price range of £200-£800+ ,so with her away I decided to have a go. So a few words with Billy my friendly neighbour ,Billy collects wood for his fire, everyone around here drops off wood for him, old furniture ,old beams, pallets anything that will burn, so a quick look around his storage shed produced a few old mahogany top’s off sideboards and cabinets . well after three weeks in a freezing shed I produced a storage trunk, it was meant to look old so only the old varnish & wax was removed leaving the old colour and staining. The handles and hinges were to bright so two days in the log burner reduced them to really old looking metalwork, the chest was treated with sanding sealer & five coats of wax polish applied with wire wool. As you can see from the pictures below it looks old with plenty of dents and cracks, all of which were in the original wood, I was pleased with the finished chest and Jill was impressed with my work.

 

Small project

 

A small project that I completed was the restoration of a small stool that had been lingering in mum's shed for many years, first the old Seagrass seat was removed and then all the black paint was cleaned back to reveal the origional wood, this was waxed and polished before a new seat was woven in Seagrass ,and all for under £20 ,not bad.