In the summer of 2017 I unexpectedly found myself without a car. I decided to embrace this new found financial freedom and try to live a full life without it. I am lucky that I live in the small west coast town of Oban in Scotland and can walk to work and to the shops, the hospital, cinema etc. Also to the bus and railway stations! Oban has a very good rail link to Glasgow, and it is one of the most beautiful railway journeys in the world! I go up and down it regularly.

Ferry from Scrabster

In January 2018 I expectedly found myself turning 50, and one of the benefits of this was that I was eligible for a Scotrail Club 50 railcard and with it a special offer of a flat fare between any two stations in Scotland for £17 return. This immediately started me on one of my favourite pastimes - planning a trip! I looked on the map and saw that the furthest train station from Oban was Thurso in the far north of Scotland, and then I saw that Thurso wasn't far from Scrabster, and Scrabster wasn't far from Stromness in Orkney. So that is how I came to find myself in Stromness in March, on my own with a large rucksack on my back and no real idea of what I was going to do with myself for the three nights I was there! Just remembering it brings back that real sense of excitement and possibility.

Orkney is fairly quiet in March, and it is easy to see why - it is still dark a lot of the time, it's quite chilly, lots of things are closed including places to stay, and public transport is not as good as in the summer months. This restricted what I could do. Skara Brae was out for example! I was determined to get to one of the Orkney Islands (I had been to Hoy before) and initially I thought of Graemsay as there were ferries there and back, I think for the schoolchildren. However there was no accommodation on the island and I didn't fancy camping as the forecast wasn't great so it would have been a brief visit.

Stromness

I got chatting to the b&b owner in Stromness over breakfast and she suggested Rousay where there was a hostel. Rousay looked interesting and most importantly I could get there by bus and ferry so I rang the owner of the hostel. Yes she was happy for me to come and stay for £15 for the night as long as I had my own sleeping bag (which I did).

Once this was booked and the bus and ferry times sorted I had enough time for a windy walk along the coast from Stromness to Breckness with great views over to Hoy.

Stromness to Breckness along the coast

Once I had done a bit of food shopping (there are no shops within walking distance of the hostel on Rousay) I caught the bus down near the ferry terminal, and from there got to Tingwall where I caught the ferry to Rousay.

Bus to Tingwall, Ferry to Rousay

The hostel is within walking distance of the ferry terminal. It was a converted house with two bunkrooms, a kitchen/dining room and a shower and toilet. It was warm and clean. I was the only one there, although I could see the owner's house from the hostel. In the night when I was in the room on my own listening to the wind and rain outside, and it was so very dark I did have a bit of a feeling that maybe I wasn't as brave as I thought I was, but I had a bit of a word with myself and it was actually fine!

Hostel Kitchen

The next day was wet and windy. I wanted to get to Midhowe Broch which was a five mile walk there and a five mile walk back along a single track road. The weather was so miserable, I was sure anyone out and about must have thought I was a bit keen! Or daft.

The broch itself was worth the walk. It's over 2000 years old, built during the Iron Age and it faces onto the sea - in fact a sea wall has been built in recent years to protect it from the waves. It's very well preserved and good to walk round and get a sense of the skill involved in building these structures and what it would have been like living there.

There is lots more information on the Orkney Tourism site »

Midhowe Broch and St Mary's Church

On the walk back to the hostel I called into two chambered cairns - The Knowe of Yarso and Blackhammer Cairn. I was quite tired by this point and wanted to make sure I made it back in time for the ferry to the Orkney Mainland, but I decided to go and have a look as they were not far from the road, and it was worth it!

The Knowe of Yarso and Blackhammer Cairn

The ferry back to Tingwall left around 5.30 and I was expecting to catch two buses to Stromness to wait for the night ferry back to Scrabster, but a very kind woman offered me a lift to Kirkwall and we chatted about life on the island - she was an incomer but had settled there really well.

I took advantage of being in Kirkwall to treat myself to a dinner of pasta with a glass of wine. I rarely eat out on my own but it was fine, I just didn't think about it!

One more bus to get to Kirkwall then it was onto the Northlink ferry at 9.30pm as I was spending the night on the boat B&B! This was such a great discovery that this was possible - go to sleep on the ferry in Stromness harbour then sail early the next morning, so by the time you wake up you're on your way!

There was one last logistical problem - there is no easy way to get from Scrabster to Thurso without a car - the only way is by taxi. I had left it too late and all the taxis had already been booked, and I needed one so that I could catch the train at Thurso. I had a bit of trust that things would work out, as they usually do, and while we were getting off I got chatting to a couple and I told them my plight and they were also catching the same train as me, and they had been organised and booked a taxi so they invited me to share theirs! And they wouldn't take any money for it either. In the course of our chat it turned out that the man was an avid train fan like myself and he had come to Scotland to take advantage of this Club 50 flat fare and had also decided to go to Thurso then on to Ornkey. We swapped train trip tales and we also discovered that we have a mutual friend in Edinburgh - Geraldine! It always amazes me the connections you make on your travels and the help you so often receive, perhaps particularly when you're on your own.

Photo of me at Thurso station taken by the kind man I met on the ferry!

So I caught my train and got to Tain to visit my friend Lois again then onward to Edinburgh to meet up with my friend Geraldine and tell her of the coincidence before travelling home to Oban...

This is a hard trip to sum up - it was very spontaneous with limited planning. I had a bit of a framework but then made the rest up as I went along. This might be seen as brave by some people, but in fact I am very bad at committing to plans - I feel very uncomfortable about it so I try not to let this stop me by choosing to do things that are able to be more fluid. Plans are usually very fluid for me, unless they are made by other people(!), but they firm up as I the time comes when I have to make a decision, and that can literally be minutes before the thing I am doing! The best thing about trains is that you can buy a ticket which in many cases can be valid for many trains in a day, then on the return you can use it any time up to a month. For a person like me this is ideal. Planes offer no such flexibility and I find that incredibly stressful.

Also if you have firm plans you lose the ability to take advantage of things that turn up randomly, and things most definitely will!