Meet the Flintstones

It just kept going around in my head:

Flintstones, meet the Flintstones
They're the modern stone-age family
From the town of Bedrock
They're a page right out of history.

The Neolithic landscapes of Orkney were a feature of our day but first up was World War II. We drove south to the Churchill barriers, roads which connected the islands at the eastern end of Scapa Flow and ensured u-boats could not repeat attacks like the one which sank HMS Royal Oak. 

Most of the labourers on this project were Italian POWs. They also turned a humble Nissan hut into a beautiful Chapel which is rightly maintained to this day.

From there we went backwards few thousand years to the Ring of Brodgar. A diminutive Orcadian ranger gave us a fascinating tour of this pre-historic site. Had we not been freezing in, what she called, "a lazy wind" it would have been even better. 

After lunch the tour continued on to Skara Brae. This immensely important site is a small Neolithic settlement complete with stone walls, stone floors, stone furniture and a beach view.

Nearby is the ancestral home of the local laird. We explored that too. Lyn loved the sunken gardens there which were designed to get the flowers, vegetables, croquet and tennis out of the Arctic winds which torment these islands.