Continuing on from Tuesday’s post, I thought I would continue on with some more photos of our outdoor Orkney escapades. We spent a lot of time walking, mostly on sandy beaches, windbeaten coastal paths, or in the quaint small towns of Stromness and Kirkwall.
(While I remember, our self-catering apartments deserve a shout-out – see where we stayed in Stromness for two nights, and Kirkwall for ten. Both highly recommended!)
You might think this picture above is an alleyway – no, it’s the main street in Stromness. You can get one car down here and a pedestrian either side (if you’re lucky!) and the shops were further down here. Kirkwall was similar. It was a shock to the system coming back to Inverness and it’s dual carriageways and roundabouts after spending almost two weeks in a place where the biggest towns were like this. I liked it a lot!
The first walk we did to explore outdoor Orkney was around the stunning Yesnaby cliffs on the western side of mainland Orkney. Despite being a bit of a cloudy/drizzly afternoon, I’m actually quite pleased with my photos! All of the cliffs had amazing rock faces with different colours that have come out well in this photo below.
The waves were spectacular and I spent ages trying to get a decent shot!
Our walk at the Tomb of the Eagles took us past this sign and along to a whole beach where there were lots of new seal pups!
When we did another walk the following walk on South Ronaldsay, we found even more!
And at another beach on South Ronaldsay, we caught the last light of the day for me to snap some candid shots of Mr B and a nice broch at the shore. 
Our favourite beach walk was at Scapa – it was only a couple of minutes drive from Kirkwall and we caught sight of the distillery there too from the sandy shore. It seemed a very popular place with dog-walkers!
We also found some lovely places for lunch/coffee. One such place was the Birsay Bay Tea Room which was a finalist in the 2016 Scottish Baking Awards, We had a lovely warming lunch there as well as sampling their sweet home bakes – it’s gotta be done in the name of research!
We also picked up some pieces of Orkney to take home which included homegrown Birsay tomatoes, and some knitwear which kept my hands and head warm over the course of our holiday!
Next week there will be a small intermission in my Orkney posts as I have some special St Andrews Day related content, but December I will have lots to treat you to, as I’ll be showcasing the wonderful food, drink and producers that we met while on Orkney1
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