Westray

The ferry from Kirkwall to Westray takes two and a half hours, passing out through the eastern approaches of the archipelago, the flat islands and their farmland visible at close range before the more open water of Westray Firth opens ahead. I went in late May when the gorse was still running yellow across the hillsides and the light was doing the thing it does at this latitude — arriving from a low angle, stretching shadows, making everything slightly cinematic. The pier at Pierowall is small; the village is small; the road that runs north to Noup Head is single-track and requires pulling in to let the occasional tractor past. The island has a population of around five hundred and fifty people and an atmosphere of permanent, self-sufficient calm that I found I was still thinking about weeks later.

Noup Head RSPB reserve at the island’s north-western tip is the reason most people make the journey to Westray, and it is one of those places where the wildlife is so abundant and so close that the experience tips into something close to disorientation. The cliffs hold one of Scotland’s largest seabird colonies — guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, fulmars — and in May and June the puffins are on the cliff-top grass, nesting in burrows, standing on the footpath essentially at eye level. They do not scatter when you approach. They look at you with an expression I can only describe as philosophical. I crouched beside one that was standing two feet from the path and we regarded each other for a moment. It blinked, turned, and went back to its burrow entrance with the air of someone who has decided the meeting was sufficient.

Noltland Castle, on the south side of Pierowall Bay, is a Z-plan tower house from the sixteenth century that was never finished and has been ruinous for three hundred years. It has a peculiarly intense atmosphere — the empty window frames, the great fireplace open to the sky, the staircase that climbs several floors and ends at nothing. The Westray Wife, also called the Orkney Venus, was found near here in 2009: a small carved stone figurine about 5,000 years old, with a face and breasts, considered the oldest depiction of a human face in Scotland. The original is in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh; a replica is in the Westray Heritage Centre in Pierowall, which is worth an hour of your time even if, like me, you are not usually drawn to heritage centres.

When to go: Late May through June is the sweet spot — puffins and other nesting seabirds at Noup Head, gorse in flower, long light. The ferry from Kirkwall runs twice daily in summer and the crossing is part of the experience. Accommodation on the island is limited; book well in advance if you want to stay overnight, which I would recommend over a day trip.