The four-day festival was approaching the end, and after my friend’s departure I figured I’d better head back to Kirkwall and see if I can find more puzzle pieces for my study, but I just couldn’t face the stones again. Not yet.

I headed north instead, not really sure about the destination, and followed the road until it reached the shore.

Living on an island offers one the unique experience of being bound by a circular water line: no matter what direction you travel in, you are soon stopped by the edge of the sea.

This makes some people feel closed in, in ways that start wearing on them as time passes, but for the true lovers of island living there is no greater comfort than the sight of the sea, and its effortless proximity always puts them at ease.

The sea gives life, and it takes it. Brings riches and bounty, reveals and conceals what it chooses and keeps jealous guard over her secrets.

For four thousand years the village of Skara Brae was just another green bluff battered by the whims of the sea, until 1850, when a deadly storm stripped the grass and the topsoil off the ruins of a stone settling, perfectly preserved by the sand for millennia, a time capsule of Neolithic living.