• Today’s mileage: 44.7 miles
• Total mileage:     94.95 miles
• Desasters:   1 – the headwinds

We woke early to clear skies and sunshine.

Coffee and porrage for breakfast before packing quickly to get on the road – the forecast says bad rain at 4pm.

The sunshine lasted till about mid-day by which time we’d seen…

• Stones of Stenness where we met a woman called Elaine from Cockers – whats the chances…
• Ness of Brodgar archaeological dig. This was the last day of the dig for some unknown reason. Really helpful and enthusiastic staff.
• Ring of Brodgar stone circle. Not as good as the one in Keswick but what do I know…
• The site of Skara Brae though we didn’t go in because we’d not booked ?
• The Brough of Birsay island. Pretty rock cave.

All very nice but none of that was top of my “to see” list. Top of my list was the village of Twatt. Being a 55 year old with the mental age of 16 I found that village name highly amusing and wanted to visit for a selfie. Sad I know…

Sarah, being a grown up wanted to stick to the EV route so we parted ways at Scorne and arranged to meet at The Barony.

I struck out on my own with a little snigger and had soon detoured to Twatt. Though there was no Twatt ! The map said it was there, the gps said i was there but there was no place names anywhere. Even Twatt farm had no sign.

I was distraught. How could the residents of Twatt not have signs ? We’re they so humourless to not be proud Twattians ?

Then I saw it – a faded sign on a church bench – Twatt church. I got my selfie ?

Happy now I pushed on and caught up with Sarah just outside Northside to report on the lack of Twatt in Twatt…

It was at this point the headwind really kicked in and reduced us to a crawl in places. Progress was slow but the scenery was beautiful in a barren sort of way.

We got to a junction by a disused quarry and there it was…

From here on it was just hard going. The wind seemed to be relentless and always in our face. The last 15 miles to Kirkwall were a sense of humour test…

We arrived at the camp site at 4pm and just got the tent up before the heavens opened. More biblical rain. Weve been stuck in the tent since then. This is how the rain radar sees our situation…

Anyway a summary of todays ride…