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Out of Doors: Ormiston Yew Tree and George Mackay Brown in Orkney

02/01/2016

Ormiston Yew Tree and George Mackay Brown in Orkney

BBC Radio Scotland - Out of Doors, Ormiston Yew Tree and George Mackay Brown in Orkney

Mark Stephen explores the Orkney Islands through the work of writer George MacKay Brown.

Mark Stephen spends the night under the Ormiston yew tree in East Lothian, plus he explores the Orkney Islands through the work of writer George MacKay Brown.

Between 6.30 and 7.00 am, Mark Stephen goes on a microadventure and spends the night under the Ormiston Yew tree in East Lothian with Warren and Esther Sanders. The couple gave up their jobs a few years ago and decided to cycle round the world. Mark hears about their adventures and picks up some valuable tips on how to travel light. Plus, how the Scotland Outdoors podcast is a great deterrent for bears!

And after 7.00 am, Mark visits the Orkney Islands, the birthplace of George MacKay Brown. Orkney was his muse, the place he loved and the place he wrote extensively about in his poetry, prose, drama, fiction and journalism. Mark begins in his hometown of Stromness, which has long been a stopping off point for sailors and travelers and still retains a medieval feel to it. We then head over to Kirkwall and the 'ark' of the islands, St Magnus Cathedral, a place which inspired George Mackay Brown to focus artistically on the character of Magnus the Saint. It also influenced his conversion to Roman Catholicism. And up to the Broch of Birsay on the North West Mainland, where Magnus' bones once lay and where people came to be cured of their ills. But it was Rackwick on the island of Hoy which was George's favourite place, a huge expanse of a bay surrounded by towering sandstone cliffs. People have lived in that fertile valley for centuries but George could see a magic and a sadness there, a kind of lost world, which he wrote about extensively. After a chance meeting with George, the composer Peter Maxwell Davies also fell in love with Rackwick and ended up living there for 28 years. We end close to Stromness in Warbeth Cemetery, George Mackay Brown's final resting place next to the sea but within the shadow of the Hoy hills.

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