I really couldn't be bothered to get up that morning, and suddenly I realised why: I was hungover, probably for the first time all month! I had a breakfast of smoked haddock and poached egg, which soon got me going again. Slowly I got ready, and retrieved Mercury from the beer shed. He looked hungover too. I reclined the seat as far as it would go, for the first time. I figured this would give me the greatest opportunity of slicing through the Orcadian gales! It felt strange at first, but I soon got used to it.

At the tourist information I bumped into Markus, who didn't look too good either. He said he'd hardly drunk on his trip, so last night really hit him! He went to board the Shetland ferry at 11.15, and I headed for Skara Brae - I'd ridden all the way from Cornwall just to see Skara Brae, so there was no chance of me not seeing it, no matter what the weather did. And the weather was on the turn. Gone was the sunshine, and in its place there was a strong Westerly wind and solid cloud cover. On the road to Skara Brae, I absolutely flew along, assisted by a very powerful wind. I was cruising at well over 20mph, yet my flag hung limply off the back, and there was total silence in place of the usual roar of the wind in my ears - so I figured that the wind speed was exactly the same as my ground speed. Quite impressive stuff. Now if only I could have rigged up some kind of spinnaker! A fairing probably would have done the trick…

So, the moment finally arrived. Skara Brae.

Skara Brae

I had wanted to go there since my earliest memories of archaeological awareness. Skara Brae is a Neolithic site, occupied for about 600 years between 3100 and 2500BC. This makes the site older than the Pyramids at Giza or Stonehenge. What is more remarkable about the site is that it was an ordinary settlement, unlike most of the grand monuments which survive from these ages. It therefore contains much more human elements, which make it easier for us to identify with our ancestors of 5000 years ago. It is one of the earliest known villages in this part of the world, farmsteads in previous times having been isolated settlements rather than groupings of different families. And the site's state of preservation is the icing on the cake: as the sea encroached on Skara brae, the village was covered by sand dunes, which preserved the contents of the buildings wonderfully. Only when a great storm swept the dunes aside in 1850 was Skara Brae discovered, and the efforts of the local landowner, living in an age of great interest in archaeology, preserved the site. Had the site been exposed 200 years earlier, there is no doubt it would have been ignored and thus left to be destroyed by the elements.

The main reason why so much of the village survives, including the fixtures and fittings, is the fact that wood was a luxury on Orkney at the time, so everything was made of stone. Beds, furniture, cooking utensils, everything. So the houses, built of stone in an age when most houses in (Northern) Europe were made of wood, mud, etc, are still fully furnished, left almost as they were the day the inhabitants moved out, 4500 years ago.

Even more amazing, this site did not exist in isolation. There is strong evidence of trade with other areas. Stones found only on Hoy are found at Skara Brae in abundance, and, more mysteriously, the designs on much of the earthenware are very similar to those found on contemporary earthenware found in the Wiltshire plains, such as near Stonehenge, but nowhere in between these two areas. Is this coincidence, did the two communities trade with each other, or was this pattern commonplace in the UK at the time, but all evidence has been lost in Northern England and Scotland? And to cap it all, it is possible that they did use timbers to support their roofs. Timbers from the great forests of the Appalachians. Which washed ashore on Orkney as driftwood…

I got in half price, remembering my English Heritage card this time, and had a quick look around the shop (full of souvenirs which were far less tacky than the usual selection at such sites. I was tempted by a set coasters based on designs on pottery found on-site) and then went into the exhibition area, which was very well laid out, with loads of interactive displays. Very enjoyable, but I was distracted by the desire to walk straight through the display and charge over to the site! A quick peek into the reconstruction of one of the houses, which looked very cosy, and then the long walk down to the village. Along the way, great milestones of history were marked by stones, starting with man on the moon and passing back through time, past the Romans and Greeks, the Egyptians and Stonehenge, until you arrived in Skara Brae, 2500BC.

I was dumbstruck. The site was awe-inspiring. In my opinion, it knocked spots off Stonehenge, or just about any other site I'd been to. My advice to anybody who hasn't been there is to catch the next flight to Kirkwall and get someone to drive you over there, because this is one thing that you should not miss. First of all, the scale of the site stunned me. The layout was much as I had expected, but everything was much bigger than I imagined. The dressers in each of the houses, focal points of the living area, always looked quite small in photographs I had seen. I expected them to be no more than 80cm high. In fact, they stood chest-high, with everything else scaled up proportionally.

The other aspect was the human element in the remains, just as I had noticed at Maes Howe. These were not some abstract people, living in some distant past with no relation to today. These were real people, people I could identify with. Their houses, unlike sites like Stonehenge, contained everyday goods, the beds in which these people slept all those years ago, dressers on which they showed off their prized possessions.

I spent a long, long time walking around, absorbing as much as I could, and looking at everything and every building from every possible angle at least twice. House 1 received a lot of my attention. It's only the second-best preserved house, but as the best one has a modern glass roof over it to protect it, I found House 1 to be easier to identify with and cast back to its inhabited phase. House 7 is just that bit too well preserved, having been restored a little.

I had a quick chat with the warden guarding the site, a very convivial chap. I told him that this was the highlight of my journey, and how awe-struck I was by the site, and he seemed quite happy. All things considered, it's the finest site I've ever visited: wonderful archaeology, a well presented visitor centre, and knowledgeable staff. Top marks! I stopped in the café for another haddock, this time in a burger, and then moved on.

The headwind coming back out of Skara Brae was ferocious. I was glad to have my seat down as far as it would go, as even then it was hard work. Naturally I took a wrong turning almost immediately, but it wasn't too serious an error, and I could correct it by taking a little lane over a massive hill. Soon I got to Marwick Head, off which Lord Kitchener went down on HMS Hampshire in 1916 when she struck a mine while taking him to Russia on some secret mission. What the hell they were doing steaming out of Scapa Flow in a horrendous gale is beyond me, but it cost the life of virtually all the ship's crew. The Orcadians had erected a big tower on the cliffs in memory of Kitchener, while down by the nearby car park stood a deck gun salvaged off Hampshire as well as a plaque erected by the Kitchener Glorification Society (or similar - they certainly talked a lot of drivel and didn't mention any of his colonial cock-ups and atrocities). I took a walk up to the cliffs, which appeared to be great birdwatching country, if you're into that kind of thing. As I can't tell a Tern from a Skua, and always mix up Cormorants, Shags and Snogs, I was out of my depth here.

Next stop, the Brough of Birsay. I had checked the time of the tides that day to make sure I got there with plenty of time to spare, as the causeway to the island is tidal. The site was very interesting, but it was difficult to get an overview of the site on account of the convex slope on which it was built. Standing at the top, I couldn't see the buildings at the bottom. The guide book wasn't too clear in identifying particular buildings either, and there were no signs indicating what was what, so I was often unsure whether I was looking at the right building. I did find one house which may well have been a Viking sauna.

The road out from Birsay was hellish, as it rose quite high (Orkney certainly is NOT flat!) and I was battling a fierce headwind. And then it started raining. Gurness broch, one of the finest brochs anywhere to survive, lay about 11 miles away, and it took me about an hour to reach it. At one point I encountered a lady leading a Shetland Pony, which didn't like me at all, so I had to stop and wait for them to pass. Meanwhile, most herds of cows just stood and stared as I went by (apparently that experience was not unique to recumbent riders, as I discussed it with a couple of upwrong riders the following day, and they had seen the same thing). Those cows only spotting me as I rode by would jump up, startled, and often ran away. The local birdlife was not too friendly either, and I often had Oystercatchers and Curlews, and the occasional Common Tern, flying in circles around me chirping angrily. Did I say I knew nothing about birds? Well it's true - I only know what they were as I bought myself a little book on birds in Thurso on my way home, in order to identify the culprits while they were still fresh in my mind!

At Gurness, the weather was truly awful, so I didn't linger for very long, which was a pity, as the site itself was wonderful. A broch is a fortified tower, in which the local populace could seek refuge whenever raiders (usually Norsemen) came by. The raiders would burn the village surrounding the broch, but wouldn't waste much effort attacking the broch. They were after easy pickings, and weren't into siege warfare.

Heading back towards Stromness by way of Finstown, the weather was horrid, the view minimal due to the heavy rain, but the road was straight, well built and quiet. As I approached Finstown, the wind dropped a little, but it was still enough to propel me across the mainland past Maes Howe, and I reached Stromness in next to no time at all. I stowed Mercury away, freshened up (and dried out) and went for dinner at the Hamnavoe restaurant, what appeared to be one of Orkney's finest restaurants, yet which, curiously, accepted no credit cards, only cash. I had a delicious meal of home-cured salmon, Orcadian sirloin steak (the filet being off) and a clootie dumpling. What a civilised end to a wonderful day!