Kirkwall; Wednesday, 09 August, 2006

It had taken 23 hours to get to Kirkwall (I could have done it in a little over 4 if I'd flown, but where is the fun in that!) and so at 9:15 I left the hotel ready for the even longer journey home. Admittedly, the journey up didn't include a 5 hour stop for a spot of sightseeing.

I caught the bus out to the airport and the plane down to Aberdeen. This was my third visit to Aberdeen airport, but the first time I had actually left the terminal building. I picked up the bus to the station in the centre of Aberdeen where I dropped off my luggage before heading off into the city to do some sightseeing.

First stop was the old Tolbooth house which now houses the Aberdeen civic history museum which has small displays on the growth of Aberdeen, the Tolbooth itself, the life of an Aberdeen PC and crime (reflecting the Tolbooth's previous existence as a prison)

After looking around the Tolbooth I wandered around the corner, just in time to catch the hop-on-hop-off open-top tour of Aberdeen. The tour takes in the main parts of Aberdeen and has a comprehensive pre-recorded guide, though the city's traffic appear to have serious effects on both time keeping and producing long quiet periods.

The next stop was the Provist Skene's House. This is one of the few medieval buildings that survive in Aberdeen and the interiors have been reconstructed to show what life was like at various times during the buildings existence.

The final stop was at the maritime museum which has lots of displays on shipping and for some reason that escapes me now North sea oil... Then it was back to the station to pick up my luggage and back onto the train for the next leg of my journey, closing the loop that had started by heading north to Thurso, I caught the train west, back towards Inverness and the sleeper south.