Exploring Graemsay – A Perfect Day on a Perfect Island

Have you ever heard of Graemsay? If I was a gambling woman I’d put good money down to bet that the majority of you hadn’t.

It’s such a gem of an island, especially on a sunny day, that if it were further south or more easily accessible there would be hordes of people visiting.

As it is, it’s a tiny island off the coast of Mainland Orkney, which itself is an island off the very north coast of Scotland. A ferry goes every day, but the timetable means you have to be prepared to spend the whole day. This is great on a nice day, but as it doesn’t take long to walk round the whole island, and apart from the ferry waiting room there isn’t anywhere to get indoors, this might be a bit daunting on a miserable day.

The ferry is a small boat with some indoor seating as well as seating on the deck. Most people who catch the ferry are going to Hoy, a bigger island on which can be found a famous sea stack called the Old Man of Hoy. The ferry stops on Hoy at a convenient place for people to start the hike to the Old Man and this is what most of the passengers on the ferry were planning to do. A few passengers got on at Hoy, but they were all going back to Stromness. Hardly anyone was going to Graemsay. Not surprising really considering Graemsay only has 24 residents!

When the ferry docked three older women got off with me. They were planning to do a short walk and then catch up with a friend they buy sheep fleeces from. For the first hour we kept catching up with each other, but after that I barely saw anyone for the rest of the day.

There was a pretty good tourist map of the island on the waiting room wall. I snapped a photo on my phone so I could keep referring to it during my walk. I hadn’t bothered with my OS map as I knew there wasn’t much chance of getting lost! There are toilets and plug sockets in the waiting room, but not much else. If the weather turned bad at least you could sit inside, but unless you had a good book it would soon get boring. You can also fill up your water bottles here, but note that there is nowhere to buy food on the island so bring enough for the day plus a flask if you want coffee.

My walk started with a bit of uphill which soon levelled out. I decided to walk anti-clockwise as that way I’d get to see the things I wanted to see most first, just in case the weather turned later on. This far north you have to always plan for changeable weather no matter how the day starts out.

Gramesay has two lighthouses. I came across the first one – Hoy Sound High Lighthouse – soon after I’d started walking and began to realise just how small this island really is. If I didn’t slow down I’d have walked all the way round it and be back at the ferry pier six hours early!

Just past the lighthouse is a beach I was really interested to see. Sandside beach is, as you might expect from the name, very sandy. But … it’s also covered in shells and coral. The fine white sand is covered with so many shells and so much coral (called maerl) that in parts I couldn’t see the sand at all.

I hadn’t heard of maerl before, but the text on the map I’d photographed explained it to me:

Maerl is a chalky encrustation, laid down on pebbles by some species of red algae. Maerl beds like the one offshore here are rare and fragile habitats, but once washed onto the beach the calcium rich maerl was used as a good lime fertiliser for the island’s acid soils.

The three ladies from the boat were at the beach, collecting shells or sitting along the concrete pier having coffee. I chatted for a while and then spent quite a bit of time looking for perfect shells and bits of maerl and drinking my own coffee. There was no point in rushing after all.

Next  I walked along a lane enclosed by high grasses and dunes. When I came out the other side I was alongside another beach with views looking back towards the beach I’d just been on and the lighthouse. I could also see across the water to Stromness, the small town on Mainland Orkney from where I’d caught the ferry.

I’d already noticed that there were picnic benches placed regularly around the island and there was another one here. As I’d only just had coffee I carried on walking. The lane took me slightly uphill and past the small shack that is the community centre. There are toilets round the back, but no access to the building itself. The waiting room at the pier really is the only place to get inside or fill up your water if need be.

In hardly any time at all I came to the second lighthouse – Hoy Sound Low Lighthouse. Both lighthouses are private houses and so you can’t access the grounds, but can still get up to the gates and see them quite well.

It was when I spotted the lighthouse I realised I’d missed the turnoff for the coastal path I’d been hoping to pick up. There were several rough tracks leading down to crofts and houses so I assume one of these was the access path to get to the coast. Later on as I walked further round the island I did spot signs pointing out the ways to the coastal path, so maybe there was one here too and I just missed it. It wasn’t a problem as the lane goes so close to the coast anyway it wasn’t as though I was missing out on anything.

Just behind this lighthouse is the Point of Oxan. It was here, on New Year’s Day in 1866 the sailing ship Albion was wrecked. She was on her way to New York from Liverpool and had 43 passengers on board as well as 24 crew. Eleven people were drowned, but with help from people on the island, the rest were able to survive. One island man, Joseph Mowat, was drowned whilst trying to help. He is buried in the local churchyard. Apparently you can still find broken pottery from the boat on the beach. I didn’t find any, but I may not have been looking in quite the right place.

In more recent history, the Point of Oxan was used for a coastal battery during WWII. I spent a bit of time poking around the ruins – having recently visited Ness Battery and HMS Tern on the Orkney Mainland and having guided tours at both, I felt I knew a bit about what I was looking at and what the building remains would have been used for.

I followed a sign and tried to pick up the coastal path here, but the ground was so uneven and full of bumps and hollows I gave up and went back to the lane. The path only went a short way anyway, before turning back to the lane so again I hadn’t really missed out on anything.

I had been told before coming to Graemsay (and it was mentioned on the map) that although there are coastal paths round some of the island, they’re not maintained and so can be quite difficult to use.

It was still really early and I’d already walked round half of the island and seen most of what I wanted to. Time to slow down a bit more. I walked up the lane to a slightly higher point, found a picnic bench and sat down to eat my lunch whilst gazing across at the hills, coves and beaches of Hoy. Hoy is the only really hilly island in Orkney. From where I was sitting the dark peaty hills made a dramatic backdrop whilst the Hoy Sound ran a deep blue in the foreground. Bright green grass rolled down to the sea and the few small beaches formed splashes of white in amongst the rocks.

After my lunch, I got my flask out again and poured a coffee to drink whilst reading my Kindle and enjoying the view. It was so calm and tranquil, warm enough to be in short sleeves. I spotted the Hamnavoe making its way across from Scrabster in Scotland to Stromness in Orkney. This is the car ferry that makes the journey a couple of times a day and that evening I would be on it.

Had I mentioned this was my last day in Orkney? I was so lucky to get a lovely day. There weren’t even any midges! Coming to Graemsay on my last day would have been special no matter the circumstances, but it was actually even more special than just my last day. Graemsay was the last inhabited island I had to visit on both Orkney and Shetland. Now that I’d made it to Graemsay I’d seen them all. At least that was what I believed until I got back on the ferry and the three ladies from earlier pointed out that there are a few islands that have one couple or one family living on them. As they have no ferry links and you need your own boat to get to them, I hadn’t thought to count them. But I suppose I should. So I’ll change my boast to ‘I’ve visited every inhabited island that has a ferry link in Orkney and Shetland’. I’m still pretty proud of it!

After a while I continued walking and turned off towards the old church and graveyard. The church is derelict and not safe to enter and the graveyard is very small, so it didn’t take me long to see both.

I found another bench and sat with a different view of Hoy. A car came down the lane with two older ladies in it. They’d come to visit the graves. As they arrived I was getting up to leave and they were concerned they’d disturbed me. I assured them that it wasn’t them that had disturbed me, but the heavy black cloud that had appeared over Hoy and seemed to be heading in my direction.

This was a part of the island where I did want to walk along the coast as the road climbs and goes across the centre rather than sticking close to the coast. But although the path was marked it seemed to be blocked off. I thought maybe erosion had made it unsafe and I’d better not try it especially with those heavy clouds speeding towards me.

Instead I headed across the top of the island and ended up near the first lighthouse again. As I knew I wasn’t that far from the ferry waiting room if it did start to rain, I took the opportunity to sit on the bench I’d passed earlier. The clouds were now behind me and seemed to have changed their mind about coming to Graemsay anyway.

I sat looking out on the most perfect view. A gorgeous house with a white beach and crumbling old stone barns to the side and the lighthouse behind. I could live here. Apparently there’re also usually seals on the beach, though I hadn’t seen any. I actually think they’ve all been eaten by orcas this year as I haven’t seen nearly so many as I usually do and there have been several pods of orcas spending a lot of time around Shetland and Orkney.

I tried to think of disadvantages of living in the perfect house. I suppose the lighthouse flashing and the seals barking all night could create quite a bit of disturbance, but you know what? I wouldn’t care.

I sat on the bench gazing at the view for quite a long time until I felt the sun really start to burn the back of my neck. Then I slowly wandered back to the pier to take shelter in the waiting room, not from the rain, but from the sun!

On my way past the perfect house, the same car as had been at the graveyard drove past me, with only one lady in it this time. She stopped to chat for a while. She had been born on the island, and without any prompting, told me it was a pretty perfect place to live.

“We’ve got peace and quiet, but Stromness is only over there and there are ferries, so when we need something we can just go over. We don’t feel isolated at all.”

I noticed near the ferry terminal in Stromness that there is a special parking area reserved for residents of Graemsay so they can leave their cars there to use when they visit Mainland rather than having to pay to take them on the ferry each time. The cars that I saw on Graemsay tended to be ‘island cars’.  These are cars that anywhere else would be condemned. They don’t need an MOT or tax (or at least no-one bothers with it) and have wing mirrors and doors hanging off and bonnets held down with string. As long as it still moves then it’s good enough to be an island car.

I still had about an hour to wait for the ferry. I filled my water bottle, drank it all and refilled it. I’d not realised how thirsty I was. I also took my boots off and peeled my socks off letting my feet cool down on the cold floor tiles. Then I sat and read some more until the three ladies reappeared. I went outside to chat to them whilst we watched the ferry chug over from Stromness. Once we were on board we had to go over to Hoy to pick up the hikers before heading back to Stromness.

As all the hikers got back on board at Hoy they all seemed pretty happy. I knew they would have had a great day because I did that walk myself last year and it really is well worth doing. However, I couldn’t help feeling a little smug because I’d also had a great day visiting an island that really is special and yet hardly anyone knows about it, let alone gets to visit. And I’d ticked off my last inhabited island in Shetland and Orkney (that has a ferry link).

Have you ever been to a little-known and seldom-visited island? Would you like to visit Graemsay if you’re ever in Orkney? Share your thoughts in the comments below. 

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