Hogmanay on Hoy - Amy Singleton

A few days in a wee cottage on Hoy seemed like a perfect way to see in the New Year with some close friends. We understood that the Orkney Islands were pretty far north and that it would take a fair while to drive there, but we had no appreciation of the epic journey that was to ensue…the mission of making it before the bells!

It began deceptively easily with an early morning drive up to Scrabster, a few miles east of John-O-Groats. Beautiful blue skies, sunshine and snow-covered scenery made it an easy drive, despite constant warnings on the radio to stay off the icy roads unless journeys were absolutely necessary. The ferry crossing to Stromness was also pretty uneventful, comfortable armchair, coffees and Christmas-time catch-up chats.

As we docked in Stromness the weather changed for the worse. The winds picked up and the seas became rough. We bundled off together with our bags of gear - warm clothes, games, lots of food, and loads of booze (oh, and of course Nick was also weighed down with his climbing gear as he and Alasdair were obviously going to climb the Old Man of Hoy…. yeah right, in the freezing cold and most likely pissing rain …they just needed to be seen to have the intention of climbing it!). Anyway, things weren't looking good for getting a wee boat across from Mainland Orkney to Hoy. The helpful tourist office lady kindly informed us that the big ferry we had just taken had cancelled its return journey back to the mainland and ALL small ferries heading to the islands further north were also cancelled. "Noooooo!". We had to make it to Hoy; Lynda, Tristan and Alasdair were already there - we couldn't spend Hogmanay freezing our tits off in Stromness. We had to make it to our cosy cottage. So the kind lady phoned Stevie of 'Stevies Boat' who was due to sail to Hoy in 2 hours. We were told we'd just have to watch the weather and see what happened.

We set up base camp in a pub at the harbour to begin our wait. Beer was drunk and news came from Hoy (the wonders of mobile phone technology) that candles were needed as they were now experiencing an island-wide power cut. We watched and waited (I know it was only 2 hours, but I'm trying to make this sound a bit dramatic!). The weather worsened as the storm blew in. It was blowing a hooley! The boats in the harbour were all over the place, waves were crashing over the sea walls onto the road and passing cars.

Half an hour before the boat was due to sail, Nick ran out to do a recky. Stevie informed him that it was pretty bad (yeah, even us city slickers could see that) and the hardest thing would be docking on Hoy where the pier was really exposed to the storm force southerlies. But he said in his thick Orkney accent, "Aye, well we'll give it a go".

So at 4 o'clock we dragged ourselves and our assortment of bags down to the boat. Apprehension was definitely rising inside me, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to have all that beer sloshing around inside for this part of the journey. The boat was bobbing rapidly in the rising swell as we jumped on and secured ourselves to a seat.

What ensued was one of the longest half hours of my life. We rocked and swayed and dipped and dived our way across the sea. You could see everyone's faces slowly turn paler and paler as they calmly tried to focus their attention on anything other than the pre-vomit feelings they were experiencing. There was no hope in hell of steadying our gaze on the horizon, all you could see was blackness, the pitch dark of a winter's night in the far north. Then it began to snow.

It took Stevie several attempts to steady the boat alongside the pier and we had to act quickly to get off as it was too risky to keep the boat there for long. We chucked our bags up to these mysterious hands that appeared from above - people who had come to help, wrapped in waterproofs and absolutely soaked from waiting in the torrential rain. Then we had to jump to the land - quite a scary manoeuvre - balance on the slippery wet edge of the boat and just leap onto the pier as the boat went up and down, up and down. It was pretty chaotic getting everyone and all the bags off, so it was quite a while before I realised that the helpful hands were those of Lynda, Tristan and Alasdair. Yippee - we had made it and we were all together!

But we still had to get from the pier to the cottage. Lynda persuaded a local Orcadian with a big land rover to drive us to the cottage. He was pleased to help and it wasn't till all 7 of us were crammed into his vehicle that I realised the situation we had gotten ourselves into. He now had to reverse back up the icy pier that had no railings, in the pitch black, in the rain and sleet to get to the road…and did I mention he was drunk.

Anyway, to give the guy credit, he made it onto the road and drove us to safety, (even without windscreen wipers) constantly chatting in his totally incomprehensible Orcadian accent. We ran into the cosy warm cottage to a wood stove, candlelight, dinner on the go and open wine just waiting for us to consume.

Phew! We had made it. What an adventure. A great way to end 2003 and now the only pressure was to enjoy ourselves for the next 3 days. Oh, and then contemplate the journey home….