Wind from the West

I have been reading a brief history of St Boniface Kirk by Jocelyn Rendall, an elegantly written little book. It seems that it was part of a fairly large settlement, even though it now stands alone on the edge of the sea, with remains of a broch and other buildings still visible on the sea shore. "Monkerhoose" suggests a colony of monks in the vicinity. It is sobering to realise that there has been so much coastal erosion, that the kirk was once well back from the shore. JR suggests that it was called St Boniface because the saint's murder in Friesia was recent and well known.

I found that there was too much strong wind sweeping in from the West to inspect (with my amateur eyes) the remains below the church, in fact I was driven back by an icy flurry of slashing hail it was impossible to face head-on. But it makes you feel alive. It reminded me of my experience on Caldy forty years ago when I stood by the cliffs, leaning back comfortably on the wind.

There is a view of Eday far beyond St Tredwell's Loch from my bedroom window.

There was comedy and inconvenience on the way up. Soon after Lancaster the Toyota sprung a leak in the top hose, nothing worse than that, but the motoring organisation to which we belong by virtue of our bank account sub-contracted out and we received no visit from a resourceful knight of the road but a man with a trailer who was intent on 'recovering us' to John O' Groats, five hundred miles away: which he did, with some gallantry since it was a tough assignment. Anyway, lots of cancellations and new bookings, mostly done by Rosemary, and we finally made it after sailing from Scrabster across the deep and unsettling swell of the Pentland Firth and then into quieter waters as we came in to the beautiful Stromness ...