We asked pretty much everyone we met the same questions. We asked the clerk in the little general store; ditto the staff in the hardware/booze shop; we asked the waitress in the hotel; we asked a man sitting at the bar: where else is there to eat here? where is Wilson Cheese manufactured? where is the Westray Chutney Company? Oddest thing: on an island of 588 people (they’re hoping to break 600 next year), when it came to local shops and manufacturers, truly nobody seemed to know where anything was. Yet I know they exist; I’ve bought all those products in Kirkwall. (Westray Chutney Company purportedly produced the first local food I bought here in Kirkwall, Granny Reid’s Rhubarb Jam, so I knew it was a real company. After blank stares from all the locals, we went to social media and drove to the three different locations for Westray Chutney that had shown up on the Internet – one was an unlabeled warehouse, one was a ruined barn, and for one, the road just stopped. I’ve given up on Westray Chutney – I think it’s actually made in a factory in Wishaw.)
Then there was the ‘bistro’. While we were perfectly okay having five of our meals at the Pierowall Hotel (the food was good), we thought we should mix it up a bit. Jack’s Chippy didn’t open until Thursdays, ditto Groats Buckies (coffee shop inside the General Store). But everyone mentioned ‘The Bistro’ – it would be open, it was nearby, we should try it. We drove up and down and up and down that damned road at least five times – Pierowall only has one single, 1 kilometer-long road, but we could NOT see a bistro anywhere. Gave up and headed back to the hotel restaurant.
That evening we asked the proprietor of our B&B, who said, “oh, you mean the Saintear” and proceeded to give us perfectly clear, correct directions. Not only had no one been able to point us in the right direction, not one other person on Westray had even used the actual name of the bistro; we honestly thought it was called ‘The Bistro’.
We never did make it there – by the time we knew where it was, we were ready to leave Westray.