Stromness

I came in by sea, which is the only arrival in Stromness that makes narrative sense. The ferry from Scrabster deposits you at the pier with no ceremony — one moment you are on the boat, the next you are standing on the quay in a smell that is half salt and half diesel, with grey stone buildings rising immediately behind the harbour wall. There is no buffer between the landing and the town. Stromness begins at the water’s edge and climbs the hill from there, and the first thing I did, bag still over my shoulder, was follow the flagstoned main street north to see what it amounted to.

The main street — which is, essentially, the only street — is paved entirely in flagstones worn smooth by several centuries of foot traffic. There is no pavement in the conventional sense; you walk on the old stone directly, and the surface undulates gently with age. Hudson’s Bay Company recruiters used to work this street, signing up Orcadians for the fur trade in Canada, and before them the whalers stopped here to take on water and crew before heading north toward the ice fields. None of this is advertised. There are no heritage plaques every ten metres explaining what you are walking through. Closes and lanes drop off the main street toward the water at intervals, and at the bottom of each one you can see the harbour — a reminder, as if you needed it, that the sea is what this town was always for.

I stopped at a bakery near the southern end of the street and ate a meat pasty that was genuinely excellent — short pastry, a filling that was dense and properly seasoned, clearly made by someone who takes the thing seriously. Later I had a pint of Dark Island in a pub where the fishing boats were visible through the window and the barman watched football on a screen with the sound off. The Pier Arts Centre, in a converted warehouse at the harbour end, is one of those unexpected cultural concentrations you find in remote places — a serious collection of twentieth-century British art displayed without fanfare in good north light. I walked in thinking I’d give it twenty minutes and stayed for an hour. Stromness is like that: it keeps producing things you didn’t expect.

When to go: May through August offers the mildest weather and Orkney’s extraordinary low-angled light. The St Magnus International Festival in June brings classical music and visitors. Winter — January through March — pares the town back to its working self, the pier active with fishing boats, the pub more available and the conversations longer.