Log in to Craglife






Home arrow 2005 arrow The Hoy Diaries
The Hoy Diaries PDF Print E-mail
Written by Richard Apps   
Wednesday, 23 August 2006
Article Index
The Hoy Diaries
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 4 of 4

01/9/05

Image
Stack ye Not!! near Castle Yasenby.
This morning the weather was crap. Proper real miserable unrelenting rain. Clearly it was to be a no climbing day. We dawdled and lingered over breakfast discussing where and what to do. With the rain in place it was a real quandary. Rog fancied seeing Skara Brae, so we looked it up programmed the GPS and trundled off. Being a major international heritage site there was a sizable visitor’s centre with an exhibition.  The format was a video about the place & what is known, followed by an exhibition and then out into the cold and wet to see the genuine article. Interestingly enough the path to the monument had a timeline marked on it complete with sizable gaps. The village is dated at 3000bc making it pretty damn old.  It is known that there is an earlier village under this one but it’s not been excavated for fear of damaging the one above. The whole thing is so close to the shore that I'm sure that one day a big storm will just take it all.  The houses in the village are all round and of a similar layout. Hearth in the middle mantelpiece opposite the entrance. Storage by the mantle in the floor (probably seafood/water). Beds were to the left and right and were stone cot affairs.

After walking through the village ~12 houses -really very small, we went around a classic mansion that was part of the same ticket. The mansion was good but nothing particularly memorable.

We grabbed a bite to eat at the cafeteria, Scara burger for me, & jumped back into the truck. It was still a bit miserable but with the promise of brightening up so we went to take a gander at Yasenby Castle - a very impressive blocky stack with caves at the base.  By now the weather had improved considerably and there was a breeze - the mood had changed - what we needed to try the old man (a dry day with a breeze) was coming together. On the approach to Yasenby stack and on the return we encountered a couple of bolted lines and what looked like a really good natural line.

Image
Rog dodging the surf

As the weather was improving and the rock was now pretty dry, fished the gear out of the beast and went to play.  The first bolted line I guessed to be 6a and the second much easier depending upon how far right you climbed it, maybe f6b. This was confirmed when we got back to Blightly the first line being f6c+. After the bolted lines we made our way back to towards the car park and had a crack at the line I had spotted - it turned out to be juggy holds with a delicate step out of a cave. A very pleasing line. We top roped it on account of the waves trashing the belay stance. I found it to be easy and Rog suggested that he solo it. I was cool with this and fired off many photos - I really miss a zoom.

From here it was back into the truck and into Stromness to get a ferry to Hoy - the only problem being that we'd not checked out the Ferry times and as we got there we found the last ferry just coming back into port.  This was a minor setback; the only resolution was to find food and then try to hunt down a friendly chap to scoot us over. Food was easy - a good pub/hotel up the road with a stunning barmaid. But no ferry. Back at the truck we organised the kit and a nice skipper stopped by with his camera. Turned out he was a professional yachtsman and was taking clients around the coast. He'd been stormbound for the past few days in Oban. His clients were in town and he was out to enjoy a beautiful evening and take some pictures. We chatted to him a bit - as soon as he found out we were there for the Old Man he became much more animated and started talking about the climbing he did in his youth. He made me think of my cousin Stephen.

Image
Gear, Truck, Rog
We ambled back to the hotel which had provided us with dinner only to find that there were no rooms we were back into the Stromness hotel. Rog wasn't keen on drinking tonight as we were all on for the big stack with an early ferry at 7:45. We minced in the hotel room, Candy phoned and I didn't recognise the number or her voice. Smooth Richard - really smooth - even better that Rog was there so I couldn't have a cutesy conversation.  I was bored after the call.  Nowt on the box. I persuaded Rog that we really should go out and spend all the change  - by my reckoning it would equate to a maximum of three pints each or a pint and a whiskey.  I wheedled away and we went back to ogle the barmaid - but seeing as we were the only ones in the bar we felt pretty stupid and went back to our hotel. However, before going back to our room we stopped in the whiskey bar which the nice but dim chap at reception opened up for us. He and Rog chatted about whiskey and we sampled several before settling on a poison. The loose change was still healthy even after a round of whiskey. It was still healthy after the second round.  The guy forgot to charge us, and when we asked how much he said we'd already paid. I know we hadn't as the big stack of change said otherwise. Not being prepared to carry a kilo of money around for the next couple of days I gave him his cash despite protestations and we went to bed.

02/9/05

The big day - I wrote this up into a short article with the idea of submitting it to one of the climbing magazines - you can read about it here .

Comments
Add NewSearch
Only registered users can write comments!

Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.


<< Prev - Next
Last Updated ( Monday, 22 January 2007 )
 
Next >
[ Back ]
© 2012 www.craglife.com
Joomla! is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL License.