My next trip as the title of this Blog suggests was again north of Scotland: not Norway this time but up past the Faroes to Iceland. The first scenic cruising was up past John o' Groats and Duncansby Stacks (where the weather was predictably poor) and then the Orkneys where it brightened for a while just in time to see the stack of rock called the Old Man (of Hoy). For a while there was some great light which showed the interesting rock structure in relief. From a ship, the Old Man didn't actually look that tall but at 137m it's high enough and 20-50 people make the ascent each year.
The next stop after the Orkneys was Tórshavn (pronounced Torce-shawn), the capital and largest city of the Faroes and located on the island of Streymoy, one of the 18 islands of the Faroes, of which 17 are inhabited with a total of 55,000 people. What did I know about the Faroes? Not a lot to be honest but I do now know that they a self governing land of the Kingdom of Denmark although half the islanders would rather be independent and although Denmark is part of the EU, the Faroes are not.
The language of the Faroe Islands is Faroese, with Danish taught as the second language and English the third. Like northern Scotland and Iceland, the weather is very changeable with the statistics stating 210-280 measurable days of rain per year, plus a lot of wind and frequently overcast.