It was a bloody cold night last night. Cold and damp, I had to implement blankets and heap jumpers on top of me as well and I was still cold. Was a bit tired and blurry the next day as a consequence. And I've had a Scottish version of 'Burnin' doon thi hoose' going through my head all day too - David Byrne would turn in his grave (if he were dead that is).

Hoy - well I can now say confidentally that there is nothing there. Well, there's the Old Man I suppose, but as I didn't see any sort of gift shop, cafe or public convenience I'd still count that as nothing.

Hoy is served by three ferries a day that hold around 20 cars max each so I should say there can't be more than 35 cars on the island at any given time. Hence when you launch off down that road from the ferry, you pretty much know you're going to be on your own.

The type of people you meet on Hoy are people who are very determined to see Stuff, else locals who are very grumpy about tourists. Anything of note worth seeing on the island is hard work i.e. usually requires a 5 mile hike up a mountain or over a soggy moor in the rain. The locals have done nothing to make this easier, thus the tourists have become even steelier and more determined to see Stuff. There ain't no shops, there ain't no fuel. If you want any of that sort of stuff ye can f*ck off back te the mainland where ye'ar came frum.

The Old Man of Hoy is certainly a case in point. To get to it you have to take a 40min ferry, then take a 30 min drive across to the opposite side of the island via single track road, park a mile from where the footpath starts and walk up some farmers drive, weave your way from sea level up the side of a 350 metre hill, and finally hike another couple of miles across wind swept moor (3 hour round trip from OMoH to carpark and back). You have to really want to see the Old Man of Hoy therefore. On the mainland there would have been a paved road right to the cliff edge, perhap a cute little viewpoint/carpark and certainly a bunch of explanation boards and handrails. Maybe even a guide.

It's also not just a three jumperer attraction, but three jumpers, raincoat, overtrousers, hat, scarf and gloveserer. That said, I must have accidentally looked artistic sitting on the brink of a 125 metre cliff edge, swathed in waterproofs and poking bits of beef and bannock into the hood of my coat with numb fingers, because a guy with an expensive camera and a newsy/professional look about him came up and asked if he could take my picture. I screamed yes of course, over the gale, and continued with my lunch as he clicked away. So perhaps I am going to appear in some sort of guide book. Not particularly recognisable of course, but the principle is there.

In facts, I haven't done a full on freeze-and-suffer style hike in ages with all the gear and it was damn good fun. Of course I can say that cos I *have* all the gear. I pitied some of the people I encounted though, the people who were expecting the walkways, handrails and information boards like the woman I met going in the opposite direction - one kid in a cheap pac-a-mac and clogs, the other in a light coat and sandals looking very miserable, her in nice normal ladies shoes and desperately battling along with a cheap umbrella. I didn't see any bodies dead of exposure in ditches on the way back but I was keeping an eye out.

And rain, yes. I'd like to say it was raining but its more complicated than that. At sea level, it wasn't raining, but as you climbed the summit of the cliffs, this took you above the cloud level and then it was raining, only a wierd sort of rain that didn't fall, only hovered in mid air as if waiting to wet something, or making its mind up whether to wet you or not (and then eventually soaking you). And it was definately wetter and more granular than fog.

Coming to think about it actually, during my entire time in Orkney I've always looked over to Hoy and thought 'Oh heck, it's going to rain soon' but then been pleasantly surprised when the weather front has never arrived whereever else I am. Now I'm thinking that is just always rains in Hoy and nowhere else. That swath of cloud over the tops of the hills is a permanent fixture and I shouldn't worry about it any more. Like snow on Mount Everest.

In fact the Hoy micro climates get even more extreme than that - not only can you decend from a rainstorm into a warm sunny valley in the space of 10 mins, but you can then drive from one cove to the next and discover fog in one, steam rising from wet roads in the sun on another, gales and rain in another - it's just plain strange.

Anyway - the OMoH was worth the journey. It's very impressive in its own right and the cliffs are some of the highest in the UK, tis humbling to sit on the edge of them eating bannock. I bet the only reason people throw themselves off the White Cliffs of Dover in preference is that at least there is a decent motorway link to Dover...

In comparison, the Dwarfie Stane was a pitiful half mile hike over moor to get too. It's as wierd as the weather is - a big big stone which has been hollowed out to provide crawl space into it so that on one side, you have a nook big enough to lie in and sleep in the foetal position (but not sit up in), and in the other you have a hearth where you can light a fire (though the smoke would have to escape out of the crawl hole so it could get very smoky. Its a neolithic bothybag - and emergency shelter for it you are caught short in the crazy Hoy weather. Very clever.

I got back at Lyness with spare time before my ferry back, so I did a turn of the Scapa Flow Visitors centre (a free museum in a mouldering old army building - the only local concession to tourism that I could fine). It told you all about the british navy base during WW1 and WW2, the captured and skuttled German boats etc. They'd cleverly rigged up an exhibition of old war vehicles inside a huge old war oil storage drum thing (as big as a large warehouse) and put on a cinema show against the wall of the drum. This took me neatly to when the ferry pulled into dock, and before you know it I was back in Evie and wolfing down my tea.

Tomorrow is going to be much more civilised I hope - I'm going to spend the day on Rousay. Its about two thirds the size of Hoy and much more benign - low rolling hills, no brooding banks of weather hanging over it, and more neolithic tombs than you can shake a ceremonial stone axe at.

And tonight, I'm bringing in a few extra blankets. If that doesn't work, I'm going to be looking round Kirkwall for a hotwater bottle tomorrow in readiness for Shetland (which is bound to be a few degrees colder again).