I'd just like it noted that I'd attatch my spork to my belt with a chain if I could, but what with each end being useful for eating with, I don't have anywhere on it to fix the other end of the chain...

Okay I've decided now. The last will and testiment of Elly.J.Kelly is that I want my body to be exposed on a driftwood platform on a hillside and defleshed by wildlife . Then I want my bones put in a small stone tomb - nothing flashy as long as it has a long entrance you have to crawl down (to deter Vikings) which is aligned to the sun on the winter soltice. I want some meaningful grave goods - my phone, my laptop, some of my favourite books/movies, my spork - and my husband if I have one at time of death. I also want to be buried with at least 20 eagles talons.

Then I want an offering to be placed in the entrance every few years, not fussy what. This should be carried on by my genetic line fore as long as they are able, 1-2 thousand years ideally.

This isn't unreasonable is it? Good. Call my solicitor.

This was the second night in a row that I woke up with dew on my sleeping bag, maybe its an Orkney thing. I have noticed that every night in Evie a fog bank rolls up over the hill and stays there til dawn, so perhaps the dew on the sleeping bag is simply an extension of this.

Today I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at my tent, making up for the ower hasty wake up yesterday. This meant two helpings (yep, two) of Oatso Simple and powdered baby milk, a nice long read of my guide book and a nice short chat with the Warden of Evie. Said warden was an ever so well spoken English chap of uncertain age, with a big white beard plus fashion right out of Edinburgh Woollen Mill including cap, trous, body warmer and wellington boots. If ever there was a London Stockbroker gone wild, this was he.

After breakfast I headed into Kirkwall, mainly to seek out the Orkney Ferry terminal there and get a definitive list of all the ferry times plus booking numbers. Also did the high street - it's the first place I've seen that approaches a decent shopping centre (though I still haven't seen a washing machine shop - how do Orcadians buy large white goods?). I also popped into the Spar for the ingredients for Second Breakfast (aka 'Butteries' - a bun with a light croissanty texture though they don't taste buttery, they taste kinda salty - a Orcadian joke?) and lunch (local beef, sliced, plus 'Bannock' aka a sort of flat bread very similar to the Manx 'Bonnaig' hmm who nicked whose recipe here?).

Of note - there is also a firm called McSomething who produce Scottish specific microwavable ready meals including (I quote from the box) 'Tatties n Haggis'. Dinnae see any black puddun' tho. Perhaps it was sold oot.

As Kirkwall was one of the few places I could get phone reception, I also took the opportunity to book a slot at Maeshowe. My time slot fitted in nicely with an opportunity to pop down to Houton terminal to book a ferry to Hoy, (Houton being like a smaller version of Scrabster i.e. feck all there but a terminal and nothing nice to look at either). Got to Maeshowe just in time to nab the last parking space, slapped down my Megalith Megapass and I was in.

Maeshowe is really good fun. On the outside, it's a large grassy mound as usual, but inside is a wonderful stone chamber with holes here and there to store bones. The entrance lights up during Winter Soltice and apparently there is a webcam of the interior at www.maeshowe.co.uk so you can watch the Winter Soltice light from all over the world if you want to. Nice touch.

There are the obviously impressive bits (the talented neolithic stone masonary) but I loved the other bits too. For instance - it was originally built in 3000BC or there abouts - a local neolithic village owned the place and used it to store the bones of their ancestors. At some point, it was emptied and sealed off though so even by the time of the Vikings in 900AD, this place was practically the equivelant of the Egyptian pyramids - they knew about it, there was rumours of treasure in it, but it wasn't built over or anything, it was just on the map.

It's said that a group of Vikings got stuck in a winter storm one day, and desperate for shelter, they decided to break into the tomb so they could hide in there. The original entrance was sealed so they broke in through the top of their mound, breaking through 3ft of earth and then the heavy stone ceiling. After that, it seemed to remain open and Vikings used it quite regularly.

Now, the place is covered with Viking runes - banal stuff, literally 'Thorfin carved these runes' etc. That said, clearly runes and knowing how to write then wasn't for your average Viking so some boast in their graffiti that they are the finest runesmiths in the land and do all sorts of fancy backwards forwards stuff with their writing. One Viking saw fit to climb 12ft to the roof to write the equivelant of 'Thor wrote this high!'. The best stuff though - and the guide was very coy about this, was all the runic graffiti referring to Viking women 'entertaining' in the tomb. One particularly set of runes goes along the lines of 'Ingermer is the most beautiful' and then a picture of a dog with its tongue hanging out - I guess 'Ingemer is a right dog' by translation.

It was utterly amazing (to me at least) to witness the same thing you see now in bus shelters and public toilets in 5000 yr old tomb by 1100yr old people. So why people shag in graveyards now? (which is what these Vikings were doing). i guess same reason whatever millennium - it's quiet and you get a bit of peace.

Oh and neolithic men sometimes managed to live to 40 said the tour guide - new evidence that suggests old bone data was wrong. Well that's something then.

The Maeshowe tour lasted about an hour. After that, I went to Yenesby, another place along with Marwick Head cited for its high cliffs. I was getting slick at navigating by GPS device by this time. Yesterday it was letting me down badly because it only has two or three place names in its database for Orkney. I could see the roads, but no town or village names i keyed in were ever recognised. This forced me back to ole fashioned map navigation, and Orcadians don't seem to think that having road numbers on signs is very important so its a bit of a bitch.

On wed though, I figured it out. I just pick a point on the map and order it to take me there regardless of whether it has a name or not. There is a bit of skill because I have to match the shape of the coast of the place I want to go to with a Ordinance Survey map, but once that's in, the GPS seems to be ok at working everything else out. And what has become apparent is that everywhere appears to be 20mins away, which says something about Orkney. The only place slighly further away is South Ronaldsay and that's only because its on a long spit of land. Some places are already becoming disturbingly familiar because you always have to go through them to get someplace else (e.g. Finstown). Perhaps it wouldn't be so great to live here...(echos of the Isle of Man).

Anyway - Yesneby. Very very pretty. Lots of entertaining caves and stacks and things, possibly worn into those shapes by having a block rock and an oblique set of waves washing over them. It was a case of 'oh I'll just turn this corner, the go back to the car' over and over again as I kept encountering new and interesting shapes in the rock to explore.

I wonder why people like high vantage points? I mean why they are deemed prettier or more exhilerating than anything else? Good for spotting enemies? A hard wired instinctual thing? Just like why are people in awe of big things? Some ancient thing to do with our reactions to large predators?

The only peoblem with views in Orkney is they are generally very cold. Yesneby was definately a three jumperer (like Marwick) compared to e.g. the Broch of Birdsay which was a mere two jumperer and Kirkwall centre which is a one jumperer. The breeze at Yesneby also almost blew my bobble hat off, which is no mean achievement.

This meant I needed to round the day off defrosting with a one jumperer piece of entertainment, and I found that at the Fossil Museum south of Kirkwall. This place definately seems to be run my a family with Mum on the front desk, daughter (16ish) in the cafe, daughter (14ish) cleaner and husband general handiman. Actually that's a point - it seems that the majority of serving staff in North Scotland and Orkney are children. I guess with a limited number of residents, that's how it's got to break down - skilled labour is adult, unskilled labour are the teenaged kids who want extra pocket money. Thinking back, I suppose the Isle of Man is a bit that way inclined too. It's completely different in the city though. Unskilled labour is for immigrants so the children have to stay on the street and rob instead...

The museum is tiny, but it had a soul. I enjoyed the fossils and geology bit - they even had a funky UV section which showed which bits glowed what colours. The museum upstairs was basically a collection of bric-a-brac laid out on rough themes, but I did love the box bed from the 19th century.

You see, all around Scara Brae they were going on about the house layout and specifically the box beds - low level man sized boxes made out of slabs of stone with stone posters at each corner, and built against the wall with cute little recesses in the stone wall to keep your watch, wallet, and any other neolithic effects. They were conjecturing that the box was filled with heather and fur was used as blankets, and perhaps fur was even thrown over the top and sides to create a four poster effect for greater insulation.

Now, in the museum, I was staring at the same design of bed over 4000 years later. It was a man sized wooden box, totally enclosed with good headroom to sit up, a roof you could store stuff on as well as room underneath. Inside, were shelves to store personal effects and you could close the whole thing up using two sliding doors for better insulation. The museum hadn't made any reference to Neolithic design, I think box beds are just something people did in Orkney because I'm going to see a 19thC farm tomorrow which cites central fire pit and box beds not dissimilar again to the layouts of houses at Scara Brae. I'm amazed to see such clear evidence of something being passed down that long. Makes me take more seriously the Orkadian nicknames for each other (e.g. People from Birday are 'Dog' - dogfish, people from Shapinsay are 'Sheep'). In a lot of tombs, animal bones are found with the humans and in most cases there are 'themese' like one mound has a lot of sheep, others have a lot of eagles talons etc - for all we know, these nicknames are 4000 years old too...

That was me done for the day. I got back quite late and saw some new neighbours setting up a tent in the fading light and wind - perhaps more refugees from the Stromness and Kirkwall sites. I really should get around to visiting some of the other islands but to be honest, there is still loads to do on the mainland - I'll have only covered a fraction of it all before I have to leave. Good place, Orkney. Probably going to be crappy weather tonight, but I'll forgive it.