It’s hard to believe that our last guests have left and we only have one more month left!
My friend Andrea (who has been my friend since Kindergarten, and who is a farmer’s wife, with hardly any holidays) came to visit me with a friend and I was delighted, not only to share this beautiful place with her, but also to have four days together!
They were so excited and enchanted by Orkney and the Orcadians and have totally fallen in love. The start was a little rocky, as the B&B we had organised was not ready, but then we found lovely Sidney, who put his caravan up to the Community Centre and they had a great stay there!
The weather was not the best, but will still had some sunshine now and then - and they made the most of the long days, visiting Mull Head once after leaving us at 9pm (as we went to bed) and then again, on their last day at 5am, just because they wanted to see the lovely cliffs one more time!

We went to Yesnaby and Marwick Head and waited for the fog to lift, which took a while but then was well worth it, as they did not only see all the thousands of birds but also some puffins!


Sunday we went to watch Matt being a long jump official at the Junior Inter-County. This is a big weekend in which junior athletes, netballers, swimmers and footballers compete against their “rivals” from Shetland. It is an amazing event with many talented young people - and Matt probably was the only official with his own fan base!
He received a “coach” pullover in return and was over the moon!
(And it made up for him missing the Hoy Marathon which he had to cancel because of his aching foot...)


(Can you spot the most handsome coach?)

Continuing the sports Sunday we headed over to our friends to watch Switzerland beat Ecuador. We do miss our large screen at home - and all the friends coming over to watch games with us - but we did enjoy sharing this with our new friends and will head over again tomorrow - and of course we’re hoping for another victory!
Our visiting Swiss friends also came by to have dinner with us and see the amazing buffalos, who we have all fallen in love with - they also visited some other farms and were amazed at the differences between Swiss and Orcadian farming.

Now that we only have one more month left (and no more visitors) you’d think life would be a little quieter. But far from that! We still have soo many things we’d like to do:

Visit the Orkneyinga Saga Centre, the Unstan Tomb, eating a Stenness Monster, climbing the Mountains of Hoy, visiting Happy Valley and exploring the closest (but still unvisited) site to our house: Mine Howe. There are still some islands we want to see: Egilsay, Wyre, Auskerry and the one closest to our house: Copinsay. And there is one more location for our music video we want to film at: St. Magnus Cathedral. Matt is a little shy about filming when other people are there, so this might be a tricky one. Although, we have filmed at the Ring of Brodgar and were asked by a ranger what we were doing. She now wants a copy of the video when it’s finished :o) We are thinking of a very early film session, but we will see how it goes!


But realistically we will have to postpone some of these things to future visits, which we hope will lie in the close future...

We have all fallen totally and utterly in love with this place and are hoping to return soon and regularly!