Et in Orcadia ego: Saturday 13 July
While I was hard at work on Thursday, David had dropped in to Kirkwall Airport and bagged himself a sightseeing flight on Loganair to a couple of the smaller islands. He reported that if one phoned as soon as the office opened, one might secure a flight for that day if there were spare seats not booked by island folk for their business and leisure needs. So I rang up on Saturday morning and secured flights that afternoon for the pair of us.
I spent the morning exploring Kirkwall; a town not short of touristy boutiques, but the presence of Peacocks, Poundstretcher and the Launderama reassured me that people do live here too.
I hadn't expected to find a copy of The Spy in Black, the original novel, in the Orkney Bookshop, but there it was, in a limited edition by a local small press. I told the bookseller that I'd watched the film the previous evening: "Ah, Conrad Veidt," she said, and we shared a little Moment.
I'd managed to book myself on a tour of the Orkney Distillery, as seeing where a drink is made and what goes into it always makes it taste better. Our group of eight sniffed botanicals, sipped samples and inspected stills, ending up in the bar and gift shop. Nobody went away emptyhanded.
Now I'd got my duty frees, it was time to fly!
Sightseeing flights are a pot luck affair, and the most popular route, Westray to Papa Westray (the shortest scheduled passenger flight in the world), is always booked up, but we were very happy to be going to North Ronaldsay. On David's previous trip he had asked if he could possibly, as a pilot himself, sit next to the pilot. This was granted, and on this occasion we asked whether I, a seasoned passenger, could do the same thing.
So I took the righthand seat and put on headphones, which meant I could hear the pilot say reassuring things like "We'll use the short runway, why not? We're light enough."
I was thrilled to be flying in a twin-prop Islander, as seen in SPECTRE, and thrilled to be over the sea, the rocky cliffs, the green fields with sheep like spilled grains of rice. We landed on little North Ronaldsay, famous for its seaweed-eating sheep. The other passengers alighted, one more boarded, and we sightseers, plus the pilot, stayed where we were for the return trip.
The sky had clouded over, and our pilot climbed higher, popping up into the blue sky with the shadow of the plane running below us, briefly ringed by a rainbow. Then he circled looking for a gap to descend through, and we landed back at Kirkwall. The round trip had taken forty minutes.
When Naomi collected us in the car we couldn't stop talking about what a cool experience we'd had and what cool people we were. Eventually she dropped us at the pub for an hour to get it out of our systems.
I spent the morning exploring Kirkwall; a town not short of touristy boutiques, but the presence of Peacocks, Poundstretcher and the Launderama reassured me that people do live here too.
I hadn't expected to find a copy of The Spy in Black, the original novel, in the Orkney Bookshop, but there it was, in a limited edition by a local small press. I told the bookseller that I'd watched the film the previous evening: "Ah, Conrad Veidt," she said, and we shared a little Moment.
I'd managed to book myself on a tour of the Orkney Distillery, as seeing where a drink is made and what goes into it always makes it taste better. Our group of eight sniffed botanicals, sipped samples and inspected stills, ending up in the bar and gift shop. Nobody went away emptyhanded.
Now I'd got my duty frees, it was time to fly!
Sightseeing flights are a pot luck affair, and the most popular route, Westray to Papa Westray (the shortest scheduled passenger flight in the world), is always booked up, but we were very happy to be going to North Ronaldsay. On David's previous trip he had asked if he could possibly, as a pilot himself, sit next to the pilot. This was granted, and on this occasion we asked whether I, a seasoned passenger, could do the same thing.
So I took the righthand seat and put on headphones, which meant I could hear the pilot say reassuring things like "We'll use the short runway, why not? We're light enough."
I was thrilled to be flying in a twin-prop Islander, as seen in SPECTRE, and thrilled to be over the sea, the rocky cliffs, the green fields with sheep like spilled grains of rice. We landed on little North Ronaldsay, famous for its seaweed-eating sheep. The other passengers alighted, one more boarded, and we sightseers, plus the pilot, stayed where we were for the return trip.
The sky had clouded over, and our pilot climbed higher, popping up into the blue sky with the shadow of the plane running below us, briefly ringed by a rainbow. Then he circled looking for a gap to descend through, and we landed back at Kirkwall. The round trip had taken forty minutes.
When Naomi collected us in the car we couldn't stop talking about what a cool experience we'd had and what cool people we were. Eventually she dropped us at the pub for an hour to get it out of our systems.
