Day 11; June the 14th. The chimney challenge!

Today is Saturday and the day of the chimney challenge!

The chimney is a very steep climb uphill. When there were still military on the island, the run was a populair workout. Now the leaders of the workparties like to organise the challenge. The times are officialy recorded by the people from Qinetiq.

The chimney

David arranged some men from Qinetiq to give the start and record the timing.

It's not just Mike and me who are running; Liz, Martin, Helen and Rachel will also participate.

The start is a bit sudden as you can see in this picture; Mike is still setting his watch, and I haven't put on my jacket yet. I like the sheer fun Martin shows, Helen, who made the effort to make herself a personal running"shirt"and Rachel who was persuaded to run just a couple of minutes before the start.

a disorderly start

The first 200 metres or so are flat, but than we have to climb uphill.

Mike is ahead of me. Halfway there is a large stone. Once you passed that stone, the steepest part of the climb starts. 

A though climb

                                     

I manage to pass Mike, because I'm much lighter in weight. Cath shows me the way to the cleit, where Steve encourages me to make a final sprint. As soon as I touch the cleit Steve announces this in his walkie talkie, and my time is recorded. I managed to do the run within a quarter of an hour, which is not a top time, but at least it is the goal I reached for.

Day 10; June the 13th

It is Friday the 13th; an very ordinary day on St. Kilda for a workparty.
Cath and I finish the church and schoolhouse. In the afternoon Cath, Steven and I help Kevin to clear down a blackhouse from rubble, stones and sods down to a layer of 1957. A lot of stuff was burned in that period, so the ground is black. We have to put back sods on that layer for later parties to do the actual archeological work.

We do find some bottles from soda from the sixties or seventies, a lot of roof covering and Steve finds an exciting looking artifact that looks like a sword of some kind, but turns out to be a hinge from a door.

Had a swim! Or rather, have been overthrown by an ice cold wave. I take a warm shower and it"s time for dinner again. After dinner Kevin, Paul, Rachel and Janice are playing music in the museum. Paul and Janice play the violin, Rachel plays a small instrument called concertina and Kevin plays flute and guitar.

The Netherlands played football today against Spain. I take a peek in the pub, but the game is over. They won 5 to 0. The guys from Qinetiq give me an update about the game. They are very enthusiastic about the Dutch  team.

On my way back I meet Flo, who is about to the pub. I accompany her and have a drink. No alcohol and not too late in bed, because tomorrow is the day of the chimney challenge!

St. Kildan wren

One of the habits I enjoyed very much was to sit on the bench outside number 1 and listen to the wren. On St. Kilda there are two endemic bird species. Just recently the snipe on St. Kilda is recognized as a subspecies from the snipe on the mainland. The other species is the wren  (Troglodytes troglodytes hirtensis).

The St. Kildan wren is bigger than the Eurasian wren from the mainland. They also differ in color, and their song is said to be different too, although he sounds like a wren in my ears.
I filmed "our" wren while singing on the chimney;

There are about 115 pairs on Hirta, but they are also present on the other isles of the archipelago.
Because the wren is exclusive for the archipelago, it was almost extinct by the end of the
nineteenth century, after a rush for specimens by collectors. In 1904 the wren needed to be protected by law. Fortunately, the numbers increased quickly.

Day 9; June the 12th

It has been a while since I wrote my last post about daily life on St. Kilda. I got to day 9; it is Thursday the 12th of June. The weather is not very good; it's cloudy and rainy. But we have a workday today, so it doesn't really matter.

First, Martin and me go out to finish the door in the ammunition store. I paint the door post and the sign on the door. On the backsite of the sign we leave our signature for future workparties to discover!

In the afternoon I clean the church and the schoolhouse together with Cath. The church and the school is in fact one building. The school is a room in the church.

The school

The church

In the lectern in the school is a copy of a book with the names of the children and some information
about them. Some children deceased at a very young age, others left the island for Harris or Skye. The classes were very small, but the ages differ between five and ten or eleven. There are no children older than twelve.

We clean the windows, the floors and we polish all the copper we can find. The work is not very hard because the school and the church aren't really dirty.

Cath is a very friendly woman. She comes from Liverpool and I love her accent. Along with Steve she almost forms a comical duo, and a real challenge for me to understand their conversation!

After dinner we visit the pub again. I'm starting to feel very much at home on the island. I love the company of my fellow workparty members, and some habits become very trusted like eating together and the regular visits to the pub.

The Fulmar

The largest number of birds on St. Kilda is the Fulmar (Fulmaris Glacialis), there are about 64,000 (1999) on St. Kilda. It is also the bird you will see the most on Hirtha. Although their numbers are decreasing.

Breeding fulmar on Oiseval (Hirtha)

Fulmars are not related to gulls, but they very much look alike. Fulmars belong to the family of procellariiformes or tubenosed. To defend themselves, they can squirt a foul smelling oil from their stomach through the tube on their beak. This oil can damage the wings of other birds so they can't fly anymore. According to Kevin and Jean you can throw your clothes away if the oil hits you.

On Hirtha the birds are breeding in the cleits, and sometimes we were forced to renounce from repairing a cleit because of the breeding fulmars.
On our walk to the tunnel I made a small detour because of a breeding fulmar, who looked like he was ready to spit.

The fulmar lays only one egg per season. They won't relay a harvested egg. The St. Kildans didn't harvest fulmar eggs for that reason.

Outside the breeding season, fulmars are pelagic, which means that they live on open sea. Fulmars can, like all tubenosed seabirds, smell a sulfur compound in the ocean which differs according to the depths, currents and temperature of the water. This way they form a map in their heads about the ocean which tells them were the good feeding grounds are and the way to their nests.

In Norway I heard the story that in earlier days sailors thought that Fulmars were the spirits of deceased sailors, because they like to fly along with ships, and they don't make a lot of noise.

Day 8: June the 11th

Today it promisses to be a nice day. Breakfast is in silence after the late whiskey night of yesterday. Before tea I walk beyond the featherstore to see puffins. I see some, but not good enough to take a picture, but I do take a good picture of a Fulmar.

Tea is at eleven and after tea Stephen, Cath, Helen, Anthonie, Mike and me make a hike up to the tunnel. It is a lovely walk, with impressive views.

The tunnel is  at the other end of Hirta at Glen Bay. The sea is constantly breaking off  parts of the island, until it eventually will break open. A few years ago a large stone fell off in the tunnel, and since that time, it is no longer allowed to pass the tunnel to the other side.

The seals are very inquisitive and playfull, they don't seem to have any fear for us.

Down at the tunnel is very pretty, but slippery. I'm not going in.

Stephen, Cath and Helen return to the street, while I join Mike and Anthonie further along the coast to the radar and the highest point of the isle at Conachair. Here we find parts of the  Beaufighter.

Sometimes the isle is covered in a cloud, a few minutes later the air will be clear again.
It was a lovely walk today, the longest walk you can make.

Day 7; June the 10th

Got up early for another workout uphill. At breakfast the work of the day is distributed. Martin and I are assigned to paint the door of the ammunition store, because "this was not appropriately done". The door was discovered yesterday and off course David and Paul thought it funny. Kevin  takes a look and he also finds it funny. He will make a remark over it in his report on the website.

Before repainting the door Flo takes a picture of Martin and me masked like activists while painting the door. We call ourselves "St. Kildan bandits". Flo wil sent the picture in for the "most funniest picture contest". Hopefully she will, because I haven't seen the picture since.

We will only work in the morning. Kevin needs more people for repairing the cleits, and instead of repainting the door, I will join his group. With historic pictures of the cleits we try to find the right stones to put them back in the same place. This too is a jigsaw puzzle and great fun. Although in my opinion stones sometimes look very much alike, and when they fit, why not put them there instead of discussing about it? The St. Kildans certainly didn't!

This afternoon we have an extra! There are visitors on the island, and Angus, the man who cares for the crosses to St.Kilda is prepared to make an extra tour around the island with us!
It is wonderfull to see the cliffs from the seaside and instead of looking down from them, we have to look up. Some cliffs are extremely high.

I take a lot of pictures, but none expresses the beauty of the island. It was a lovely afternoon, thanks to Angus Campell!

After dinner we go to the pub. Martin, Liz and me chat a bit after closing time, and when we return to the street there is still light in no.1. Kevin, David, Stephen and Mike are drinking Whiskey and Rum and are having one of those high brow banter evenings Kevin talked about. I join for a while, and then go to bed.

Day 6; June the 9th

Today I've got kitchen- and cleaning duties.
Martin is mainly helping Flo in the kitchen, and I am to do all the dishes, setting the table, serving and cleaning, including the ablution block.
Off course we are exited about our door being discovered, but nobody seems to do so.

After lunch I am allowed to help rebuild the wall around the manse under supervision of Brian, one of the "wallers". Brian and Greg are appointed to rebuild the walls on St. Kilda according to the way the St. Kildans did. Dry stone walling without mortal is making one big jigsaw puzzle in which you need to find the best fitting stones to build up the walls and filling them with the best fitting stones to make as little holes as possible.

I highly respect these guys and their speciality; I felt pretty clumsy, but it is fun to do.

After lunch I'm back in the kitchen.

There is a group of tourists on the island, and they are getting a small guided tour by the warden, who leads them to the gun and ammunition store. But still we get no comment from any of the tourists or Paul the warden. Didn't they see our beautiful piece of artwork?

Day 5; June the 8th

On a Sunday St. Kildans didn't work, and neither do we.
We will make another excursion, this time to Dùn. Dùn is the island on the other side of Village Bay.

On our walk to Dún we pass the Lovers Stone. This is another rock above the sea. Young St. Kildan men who wanted to get married had to perform some dangerous pose on the edge of the stone. Had they done this, they could marry the woman of their choice.

This excursion is not too long. We have plenty of time to sit and enjoy the view on Dún and -once again- the lovely weather.

Martin wants to paint the door of the amunition store with green polkadots. I think it's a funny joke and I promise to help him. In secret we collect the necessity's; paintbrushes, paint and a pencil from the workshop. In the centrifuge we find a template we use for two sizes of polkadots.
Jut before dinner we slip off to the amunition store and we paint the door. The result is wonderfull, if I say so myself. We bring back the paint, the brushes and the template, wash our hands thoroughly and we are back in time for dinner.

Now the excitement of being discovered starts, although Martin can't really keep it a secret. He tells almost everybody, only not to David, Kevin or Paul.
Again we visit the pub and go to bed.

Day 4; the walk to the Cambir

On the 7th of June 1944 a Sunderland airplane crashed at Gleann Mòr; at this day exactly seventy years ago. The debris is still scattered all over the site. What a waste of young lives!

This was one of the three crashed airplanes on St. Kilda in WWII. In Februari 1943 a Wellington bomber crashed on Soay. With much effort we can see some remnants of this plane from our view on Soay.  In June 1943 a Beaufighter crashed on Conachair. This plane fell partly into the sea, and the bodies of the victims were never found. On another walk over the island we will find debris of that plane too.

None of the crew of any of these planes survive the crash. I am to polish their memorial plaque in the chapel within a view days. But I don't know that yet! 

The memorial plaque of the victims of the planecrashes during WWII

On our walk we pass the Mistress Stone. This is a big rock which leans on two other stones in the form of a door. If you look down, you look straight into the sea.

Mistress Stone

I have no fear of heights, but it is very windy, and I'm a bit reluctant to stand on the stone. Steve offers to hold me. This results in one of the funniest picture I've got. We call it "Steve's proposal".

Today was a very nice day. The weather has been wonderfull, the walk very pleasant and Flo prepares a lovely dinner again. We visit the pub a while and then go to sleep.

The Bonxie

The great Skua (Stercorarius skua) is generally called Bonxie in West Scotland. It is  a large gull and not a bird of prey, although they chase other birds. A very well known technique they use to catch fish is to assault Gannets and force them to drop their catch, which they will take for themselves.

The Bonxies on St. Kilda also eat other birds. We saw Bonxies chase Oystercatchers, Puffins and Pigeons. They try to wear them out over sea and then push them in the water until they drown. 

Only on St. Kilda Bonxies chase by night on Leach's storm petrels. This behavior is very remarkable for seabirds.

Bonxies were not on St. Kilda in the 19th century. The first recorded breeding on St. Kilda is in 1963.The breeding population increased steadily until 1990 and now the colony is the second largest and fastest growing colony in the UK.

Bonxies can be furious attackers to humans, especially when defending their nests or their young.
By crossing Mullach Mór and Gléan Mór, there were a lot of nests and small Bonxie chicks. We usually took a large stick with us, so the Bonxies would attack the stick instead of our heads.

Not a very good picture of a Bonxie attack

Despite their brigand reputation, I can't help to admire these birds. They seem intelligent to me, because they learned to adapt to an environment where they were not common before.

Day 4; June 7th

Today is Saturday. We have breakfast and will only work for half a day. In the afternoon we will make an excursion to the Cambir.

This time I will work together with Martin. We have to paint the sign and the bolt of the door of the ammunition store, and we are supposed to paint a sill of the church.
But since the door of the ammunition store is in a bad stage, Martin asks for permission to paint the entire door. It is not a matter of "no" or "ok"; we have to wait for official permission from the National Trust. In the meantime we gather the necessary tools. At teatime the only thing we've done is remove one screw from the sign! After morning tea we sand the door and put it into the primer.

I'm not sure who came up with the idea, but we are in a rebellious mood because of the bureaucracy of the work. We suggest to paint the door with a nice pattern instead of the prescribed green. First the primer has to dry, but the idea gets stuck in our heads.

We have the afternoon off and we are going for an excursion to the Cambir. From the Cambir you'll have a nice view over Soay.

It is a pretty brisk walk through the nesting area of the Bonxie. There are many nests with eggs or chicks, and the parents bomberdive us furiously.

In my next post I will tell something about the Bonxie on St. Kilda.

Day 3; June the 6th

I got up before breakfast to go for a run. I want to do the chimney challence; a race of about 200 metres along the road, then up a very steep hill called the chimney. On top of the chimney there is a cleith which you have to touch. Once you touched the cleith, your time is set. The people from Qinetiq will record the time.
But I am not used to running uphill, so I need training. I run about half an hour up the only road there is on St. Kilda then back again; I'm exhausted. I need more exercise if I want to do the chimney within a quarter of an hour!

On my way back I meet Steve who is doing an early walk. We talk a bit while walking back to the street. I got a warm shower and an sturdy breakfast.

Today my job is to help Steve to repair the roof of the school and the church. I wear an overall which is twice my size and according to Steve I look like a Teletubbie.

  

I learn how to cut slates. Even in Dutch I don't know many tools by name, let alone in English. And in Steve's Scottish accent the misunderstandings are hilarious! We have a lot of fun together. Steve is a real nice person: I like him very much.

  

This turns out one of my best working days on St. Kilda. I enjoy the slate cutting, the marvelous weather, the company of Steve and the view.

Today is Martin's birthday and Flo exceeds herself with apple cinnamon cake and coffee.
After dinner we hit the Puff Inn.

Work Party Two in the Ranger's Diary

Kevin wrote a small but very nice post about our Work party in the Ranger's' Diary on the official
St. Kilda website: Goodbye  Work Party Two!

What Kevin told about the history of St. Kilda

Kevin gave us a tour around the village of St. Kilda, showing us interesting places and told us something about it.

An underground cleith, dating from the Iron Age

The story of the habitation of St. Kilda starts about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.

According to Kevin St. Kilda was never as isolated as generally is believed. Even from the Bronze age the inhabitants must have had contact with the other isles of the Outer Hebrides. They cultivated crops and traded with them. One of the oldest artefacts Kevin shows us is an old Celtic cross; one of the oldest in the entire UK. It was found on a stone that is used as pavement near a house and hardly visible. So Christianity also reached the isles in an early stage.

In the Middle Ages the inhabitants lived primarily from the cultivation of oats, barley and rye. The exploitation of the enormous amounts of birds became important in the 19th century, when feathers and down became popular for clothes and pillows.

The stories about the harrowing poverty of the inhabitants of St. Kilda were not exaggerated, but compared with the other isles of the Outer Hebrides the St. Kildans were not bad off. The first better houses were built on St. Kilda, while some people on Harris still lived in Blackhouses until the first half of the twentieth century.

Day 2; June 5th

As breakfast, morning tea, lunch, midday tea or diner is served, we ring a large bell. It is Thursday and today is our first day of work. The bell rings at eight o'clock for breakfast.
David, the leader of the workparty is responsible for the division of the work to be done.
Kevin the archeologist needs a group of people to repair the roofs of some cleiths with new sods.
Another group will repair the slates on the roof of the church, schoolhouse and the rangers' house.
I'm in the group with Kevin. First we need to remove old sods, dig out new ones and put them on the cleiths. The holes we leave by digging out the new sods need to be refilled with sand.
The weather is nice, the work not to bad and the morning teabreak soon.

After lunch we don't work, but Kevin takes us out for a tour around the old village. He has got a lot to tell in a heavy Glasgow accent and he hardly keeps his mouth shut. But his stories are interesting and they shed a different light on the usual story of St. Kilda. I will tell a bit more about that in another post.

In the meantime it has started to rain and listening to Kevin wears me out.

Evening diner and after diner chat is very nice and sociable. First sips of whiskey.

Day 1; June 4th

Today is the day; we will finally go to St. Kilda! The weather is perfect; sun and calm blue sea.

The journey takes about four hours, and then there it finally is St. Kilda;

The first thing you see are the military buildings of Qinetiq. Which is not a pretty sight, but they are part of St. Kilda's history.

Since 1957 there is an army base on St. Kilda. The base is still in possesion of the army, and not accesible for tourists. But the radar is no longer being operated by the army, but by Qinetiq, a
defence technology compagnie.

The departing group waits for us on the pier together with Kevin, the archeologist. They help us with our luggage. All the luggage together with all the food needs to be brought up to the village. The people of Qinetiq give us a hand by using a large forklift.
Rachel and I help Flo, our cook, to check the supplies. In the meantime the boats all disappeared from the bay, and the island is for the first time "ours". We enjoy the lovely wheather and the view over the bay.

There are 6 houses restored for the workparty; number 1 is the common room, with a kitchen and diningroom, number 2 is the "ladiesboudoir", number 3 is the museum, number 4 is the gents' room, number 5 is the workshop with all the tools, and number 6 is the room for the workpartyleader and office.

Me at the ladies' boudoir

We make a short walk up the hills to "the Gap", from where you have a wonderfull view on the cliffs and over Boreray.

Flo is making us a wonderfull dinner and after dinner we go to the pub, the Puff-in, then up to bed.
Our first day on St. Kilda is over.

Finally!

Isn't it a great accomplishment to write about an island for months on which you've never set foot? Tomorrow it will finally be. But if you would expect a huge amount of posts from me I'm sorry to disappoint you. On St.Kilda there will not be wifi nor internetcoverage. From tomorrow on there will be silence on my blog until at least 18th June.
But I will keep a diary, so I will have plenty to write about when I get back!

The Scottish Hebrides

Friday I arrived in Stornoway. I'm staying in Hebhostel; a very nice hostel near the harbor. Stornoway is  the main town of Lewis. Lewis is one of the isles of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. 

The "Hebrides" is an archipelago in Scotland  consisting of the Inner and Outer Hebrides. The Outer Hebrides are the Western isles. The largests are -from North to South- Lewis and Harris; which is one isle, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra. St. Kilda belongs to the Outer Hebrides.

The Outer Hebrides have long been influenced by the Norwegians. Until 1266 they belonged to Norway. In contrast to the Inner Hebrides - of which the larger, more well known isles are Skye, Mull, Raasay - here is relatively little tourism.
The real Scotland is found on the Outer Hebrides. Here is the last stronghold of the Scottish-Gaellic language. The official name of the Western Isles is Na h-Eileanan Siar. 

I visited the Outer Hebrides in 2009. In my first post of this blog (of november 2013) I explained my fascination for St. Kilda dates from that time.

There is not much to do in Stornoway, but it has a pretty colorfull harbor, and there are good opportunities to make long walks in the park surrounding the castle.

Saturday I went by bus to Callanish Standing Stones; an impressive stone cirkel of more than 4000 years old. Older than Stonehenge but just as impressive.

In the evening it was very agreeable in town with the pubs playing live music, but today it is Sunday, and almost everything is closed. There are even no buses going anywhere.  

I made a run and a hike in the park, and I went up to war memorial site for the soldiers of World War I.

Myths about St. Kilda

Today I bought a book named "St. Kilda Myth & Reality". It is a publication of a discussion session entitled "writing about St. Kilda: Myth and Reality", which was held here in Stornoway in 2006.

The speakers examined how the huge amount of publications about St. Kilda affected its image. They assume the image is too romantic. The St.Kildans are described as some kind of "noble savages", and the landscape being supreme, because of its remoteness and its dramatic past.

It is pretty interesting to read about St.Kilda from a different point of view, and I hope to keep a critical eye to see the history in its perspective.

Kit list

A very short post today. Tomorrow I'll be flying to Stornoway. The adventure is about to begin!

I'm preparing myself for the trip and packed my backpack. I have to keep under 20 kilogram with my luggage. I had to cancel a few things, but now I've come to a satisfying equipment. The luggage in the backpack is now about 15 kilogram, and the hand luggage weights about 5. 

Here is my kit list:

luggage		hand luggage
toiletbag with:		camera
	Nivea	binoculars
	suncream	waka waka
	body cream	sunglasses
	toothpaste	reading glasses
	toothbrush	toiletbag with:
	anti midgetcream		toothbrush
	deodorant		lipbalm
	toothsticks		comb
	shampoo		paracetamol
	earplugs		tickpin
	elastics		pincet
	comb		eyebrowpencil
	flos		kayal
	paracetamol	chewing gum
	shavingknifes	small soundbox
	nailclipper	Iphone
mittens		IPad
cap		purse
pyama			bank card
pillow case (2)			credit card
clean underpants			drivers licence
bra’s			public transport chip card
sportsgear:			money
	runningshirt (2)	book
	sports bra (2)	two clean underpants
	runningcoat	clean T-shirt
	runningshoes	raincoat
	running socks	e-ticket
	running band for my Iphone	information pakket
T-shirts short sleeve		passport
T-shirts long sleeve		etui with cables for recharging etc.
sweater
raintrousers
raincoat
jeans
outdoortrousers
socks
shoes
towels (2)
sleepingbag