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?