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.