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Day 7 - The Italian Chapel.

Friday is your last full day at Annie's Place, so start early along the Kirkwall road, then on down towards South Ronaldsay and across

The Churchill  Barriers

Orkney Churchill Barriers 1 Custom

 You will come to The Italian Chapel situated on the small island of Holm. There you can have a glimpse of a very special place where Orcadians and Italian prisoners of war came together to create a place of peace and understanding.

Orkney Italian Chapel 6 Custom

Lunch at The Fossil Centre on Burray is always appetising, run by the community and with a shop for last minute holiday gifts. Just open for 2016 is the UK's most northerly Crazy Golf Course where you can negotiate the ball round "The Ring of Brodgar" or through "Maes Howe".

On the way back to Kirkwall, as you enter St Mary's, look out for The Totem Pole, carved by local Orcadians and Squamish First Nation Indians as a community project in 2007. As you enter the city, you may wish to visit Highland Park Distillery or a short distance away, Scapa Malt Distillery which is newly opened in 2016 for whisky tours.

But don't delay all afternoon in the East Mainland, for you still have not completed your holiday week in Orkney at Annie's Place until you have walked across from Birsay Palace to the tidal island, The Brough of Birsay. Take care to get back before the tide washes over the causeway, (tide times and forecast) but once across it is a wonderful cliff walk where you will see nesting fulmars, guillemots, puffins, razorbills and kittiwakes and maybe, if you are lucky, whales and dolphins and passing gannets out to sea.

Puffins Brough of BirsayFulmar Brough of Birsay Custom

 

There is also the ancient Norse village and chapel on the Brough, where St Magnus stayed as a young boy, and plans are afoot for a new Orkney Pilgrimage route....St Magnus Way to be opened next year, the 900th anniversary of The Martyrdom of St Magnus.

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