Summer has arrived in Orkney. Somehow we didn’t expect the weather to be this nice in summer. We have had so much sun in the past two weeks and temperatures of nearly 20 degrees, which is perfect for us.



The 30-35 degrees in Switzerland we read about just make us think that we’d like to stay here for a little longer. The colours of the sea, the grass and the heather are so intensive when the sun is shining. We wonder if one ever tires of looking at them.

Deerness as a place to live has taken a bit of beating in our minds because occasionally the sea haar (fog that builds up as the warm air moves over the cold water) just lingers around here while in West Mainland it’s sunny and warm. Especially when visitors are here, it is really annoying having to tell them that, down there would be the sea. On the other hand, we’ve also had a few days when it was pouring down in West Mainland and it was beautifully sunny in Deerness. Because Deerness is so far east, the thunderstorm clouds that build up over mainland Scotland don’t touch this part of Orkney when the wind is from the South or Southwest.

The last visitors arrive tonight. It’s been great showing everyone these great islands, but it also took away a lot from our everyday lives. Today is only my second completely free-to-do¬-whatever-I-want day, if you include mowing the lawn under that category. We haven’t done anything new in the past couple of weeks, but there are still a couple of islands we’d still like to visit and a few other things that we would like to go and see.

What really has changed in the past two months is the amount of tourists everywhere. In April it was not unusual to be completely alone in a top notch tourist attraction. Now you have to be lucky to find parking. And you can hear the annoyed German tourist silently bitching about the stupid idiots who spend too much time in the centre of the standing stones and why don’t they get the h*$! out of there so she can take a photo. It’s tough to tour Orkney in a day ....

Last weekend we helped our neighbours with their Open Farm Sunday. There wasn’t really anything planned for us to help with. In the end Natalie spent about 5 hours in the catering trailer selling drinks and cashing in money, Jenny, her sister, spent 4 hours frying onions and I spent just as much time running between the kitchen and the trailer and to the shop to get more, yes, onions. It was still a lot of fun to be part of such a successful day. The weather was absolutely breath taking and the cars kept coming and coming. We could hardly believe our eyes when saw how many cars had parked in the field and the queue to get food was incredibly long. But, in the end everyone agreed that the food was worth waiting for.



In other news I have decided not to run the Hoy Half Marathon. My Achilles tendon has been bothering me for a while and my training sessions have been few. I don’t even feel too bothered about it because I’ve seen it coming and as an alternative I can now help officiate the long jump at the junior inter county athletics Orkney against Shetland. I’m looking very much forward to being part of that.

There is also a new newspaper article we wrote here (German only).