Rainy Friday

We hatched a cunning plan last night to take the world's shortest scheduled flight to Papay (2 min). It's only £15 return and uses an old Britten Norman Islander. The booking line opens at 8 am, enough time to walk to the airport if there was room on the plane.

In the end it was raining so hard we couldn't face it.

After a fine cooked breakfast of egg, square sausage, haggis, black pudding and what might have been spam we headed off to the Heritage Centre.

We watched a short video about the Links of Noltland dig, presented by Peter Yeoman who gave us the tour around the dig itself on Wednesday. It really is a significant site. We got to see the tiny Westray Woman, one of the oldest representations of a human to be found in the British Isles. The Westray Stone was found in a nearby quarry and was the lintel for a chambered cairn. The carving is at least as good as that at the world famous Newgrange in Ireland.

We had a lazy afternoon reading and writing as the weather gently improved. In the evening I watched three skiffs racing in the bay.

Later a truck came past the harbour full of locals chanting, drumming and singing the Johnny Cash song 'The Gambler'. We think it was part of a wedding celebration.