Walking on the causeway to the Brough is a piece of cake, at low tide. Just time it so you're not stuck there, though I have seen people wading back in a few inches of water after the walk is covered. No big deal. They kind of looked like Jesus. The ruins on the Brough are wonderful, but to me I like best to walk up the hill, over to the right, and peer over the edges at the birds. One time we were there with a group of about five or six. My daughter, laid down on her belly and crept to the edge, which is very tricky as the ground slopes down towards the cliff edge. The cliffs are very high at this point. Everyone else shouted for her to get back, she might fall, but she stuck her head over the edge and shouted "Puffins" and there was a mad rush of the others to see. I thought the whole lot might go over. It is one of my favorite places on Orkney - that and Yesnaby. Tuck On Sep 26, 2007, at 4:18 AM, Norman Tulloch wrote: > Frieda, > > Sigurd Towrie has several pages on the Brough: > http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/broughofbirsay/index.html > > I don't think anyone normally uses a boat to visit it. After all, it's > easy enough for an able-bodied person to walk across the causeway at > some point during the day, so why pay a boatman? In any case I think > that, because of the cliffs around the island, there's really only one > point at which one could get onto it, and that's more or less at > the end > of the causeway. I suspect that even at high tide there wouldn't be a > great depth of water there and that it would be very easy to damage a > boat on the rocks. > > You mention Picts, Christians and Vikings. There is certainly > archaeological evidence of the Pictish occupation of the island, and a > lot more of the Viking presence. I'm not sure if the Picts were > Christian (though they probably were, as far as I can gather) but the > Vikings most certainly were. > > Sigurd Towrie says, "The earliest settlement on the Brough is > thought to > date from the fifth century AD, perhaps Christian missionaries." I > don't > know what evidence there is for that. I can't see any mention of it in > Anna Ritchie's "Historic Scotland" booklet on the Brough, but the > copy I > have dates from 1988 and there may have been more recent > archaeological > evidence of a pre-Pictish settlement. > > I'm not aware of any caves on the Brough, or of pirates using it. > Neither was there any building on it after Viking times, apart from > the > lighthouse (built in 1925). > > Norman Tulloch > > > _______________________________________ > Orcadia Group Photo Album > http://tinyurl.com/28bx9x > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ORCADIA- > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message