Orkney Islands

Orkney is Old Red Sandstone laid in flat beds, which gives the islands their character: low rolling farmland with almost no trees, and coastlines where the same rock breaks into vertical cliffs and stacks. The Old Man of Hoy is the famous one, a 137-metre sea stack standing clear of the cliff on a plinth of basalt, best seen from the Scrabster ferry as it passes. The cliffs at Marwick Head and on Westray hold dense seabird colonies through the summer - guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and puffins in packed ledges. Inland the archaeology is unusually complete, with the Neolithic settlement at Skara Brae uncovered by a storm in 1850 and the Ring of Brodgar standing on its isthmus between two lochs. Twenty islands are inhabited and small ferries link them from Kirkwall and Stromness.

Highlights

• The Old Man of Hoy - a 137-metre sandstone stack off the Hoy cliffs.
• Marwick Head - crowded seabird ledges on the west Mainland coast.
• Skara Brae - a Neolithic village of stone houses beside the bay.
• The Ring of Brodgar - a wide stone circle between two lochs.

When to go

May to July for seabirds, wildflowers and the long northern twilight when it barely gets dark. August still works but the colonies empty as birds fledge. Winter is dark and severely windy, though it brings the best chance of the aurora. Book vehicle ferries well ahead for summer crossings.

What to expect

Wind is the defining condition and there is nowhere to shelter from it in a treeless landscape. Crossings from Scrabster can be genuinely rough and cancel outright in gales. The Old Man of Hoy needs either a ferry passage or a long boggy walk to see properly. Skara Brae is viewed from a perimeter path, not entered.

Nearby

Shetland lies further north by overnight ferry, and Caithness sits across the Pentland Firth.

Key facts