Discovering Orkney
Finding Your Reset Button
“We have to go to Orkney together.”
My husband isn’t one to exaggerate about places he visits. If anything, he undersells. Because of this, his enchantment with Orkney surprised me. After spending a week there in April 2022, attending an acting workshop, he came home and informed me that it was ‘the most magical place’ he had ever seen.
This is why the following year, I decided to get him a two-week summer trip to Orkney as a gift for his birthday. I booked the tickets and rented an Airbnb for the two of us. The idea was to escape the heat of Europe, the crowded beaches, and enjoy some mild spring weather, cold nights and stargazing. Romantic, right?
Summer of 2023 was said to have been one of the hottest summers in the history of Europe… unless you count the UK. The UK had the coldest, rainiest July in the last six years at least! Orkney, being in the very north of Scotland was one of the extremes.
We tried to keep up with the weather forecast, but quickly learned that it was unreliable — it rained whenever it wanted to rain and the wind blew almost all the time. So while my Instagram was full of photos of friends frying in the sun next to a pool in Ibiza, we were in our hats and coats.
