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Out of Doors

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Out of Doors: 07/07/2018

07/07/2018

BBC Radio Scotland - Out of Doors, 07/07/2018

Mark and Euan visit Papa Westray, one of the smallest islands in Orkney.

Mark and Euan visit Papa Westray, one of the smallest islands in Orkney. Mark also explores mainland Orkney through the work of writer George MacKay Brown.

Mark and Euan pay a visit to Papa Westray, one of the smallest islands in Orkney. To get there, they take the UK's shortest scheduled flight, one and a half minutes in duration from Westray to Papa Westray. On Papay, they take a tour of the island, visit The Kelp Store heritage centre and the oldest known standing settlement in north west Europe, The Knap of Howar.

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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