Well, I spent a very quiet Hogmanay (New Years). I did have a lovely New Year’s Eve dinner, accompanied by one of the bottles of English Sparkling Wine that I bought in Kent last week. Last year I sat up late to see if any of my neighbours would go ‘first footing’, a Scottish New Year’s tradition of going out (walking) at midnight, and stopping by neighbours’ houses for a good-luck-to-the-new-year dram. A few people went by, but as we were dealing with Omicron last year, it wasn’t too busy. I’m in a different neighbourhood now and closer to a main street, and all I could hear after midnight was a few locals who were clearly on their way home from a long haul at the local pub.
Then today, the weather was just beautiful. We went for a long walk in the morning, but it was so nice after lunch I felt we had to go back out again. One of my plans for 2023 is to complete as many of the walking trails as I can in my little guidebook. I realised we hadn’t been out to the Noust of Netherton (really, you can’t make these names up), so into the car and across the island to Stromness we went. Weather is changeable here in Orkney, so even tho it was blindingly sunny in Kirkwall, things looked a tad more ominous at the east end of the Mainland. But the views were still spectacular – this is looking back at the lovely town of Stromness from the Point of Ness. You can see the bright skies in the background from the other side of the island. We had a great walk, and ran into a couple of people we knew.
As they say in Scotland, Lang may yer lum reek!
