Saturday 20 June 2015

Sunday Times Where Was I ? Holiday Competition

Near as I can figure it, through the possibly flawed perceptual filters of my own reality tunnel, the most likely answers this week, seem to me to be:


Q1. Hoy

Q2. Lamb Holm


The initial clues seem to place us at Kirkhope cemetery, near Osmondwall, on the island of Hoy (name derived from the Norse word Haey, for 'high island'), in the Orkneys. If you convert thirty five thousand, five hundred and eighteen acres into square kilometres, you get around one hundred and forty three and this is the figure given for the area of Hoy, in some of the sources I checked. The highest point on the island, from looking at the OS map, seems to be Ward Hill, at four hundred and seventy nine metres, or one thousand five hundred feet, in old money. The puzzle author has been a little crafty here, by calling the site of the memorial to the Longhope lifeboat disaster, which took place c 17 March 1969, a churchyard, as the map does not show a church in the vicinity, thus making it more difficult to locate. A solitary bronze statue stands in the graveyard, looking out towards Cantick Head, where the Longhope lifeboat 'TGB' capsized in a force nine gale, en route to rescue the crew of a Siberian freighter (some references claim that it was 'Liberian') called 'The Irene', resulting in all eight of the crew being lost. The crew of the freighter were rescued by auxiliary coastguards, who fired lines to the ship with rockets. The Cantick Head lighthouse appears to be around seventy two feet high and was constructed by David & Thomas Stevenson c 1858 (not to be confused with the 'Ruff of Cantick' light, which is listed as a navigational beacon).

The writer probably gets the ferry from the port of Lyness and then passes the sparkling sounding island of Cava. The Cava light is listed as being thirty six feet high in some references, not twenty nine but the destination of the ferry north from Hoy, is the port of Houton, on the island of 'Mainland'. After driving east from Houton and passing the naval graveyard of Scapa Flow, you would reach the principle settlement on Mainland, which is Kirkwall and driving six south south easterly miles to the third island, over the causeway on the Churchill barriers, you would arrive at the island of Lamb Holm and a church which was cobbled together from two Nissen huts, by Italian prisoners of war c 1943-1944. The roman numerals MCMXLIV are set in mosiac, in or on the edifice and mean '1944'. Mr Churchill ordered the barriers constructed, after a uboat (U-47), sneaked in to Scapa Flow c 1939 and torpedoed the battleship 'HMS Royal Oak'

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