Off the north-west corner of Orkney’s Mainland, the Brough of Birsay is a tidal island reached on foot across a stone causeway that only clears the sea around low tide. Historic Environment Scotland, which looks after the site, advises checking tide times before crossing, since the water returns quickly and the causeway itself is rocky and can be slippery. People have used the island for well over a thousand years. Excavations have uncovered the footings of a Pictish settlement here (the Picts were the early medieval people of northern Scotland) along with a copy of a carved symbol stone, its original now in a museum. Layered above those remains are Norse longhouses from the centuries when Viking earls ruled Orkney, and near the middle of the island stands the roofless shell of a 12th-century church, built in the round-arched Romanesque style.
A working lighthouse, built in 1925 and now solar-powered, stands at the far end, and the cliffs nearby are one of Orkney’s better spots to see puffins through the summer. Back on the Mainland shore, the ruined Earl’s Palace in the village of Birsay is a short walk away, and Skara Brae lies a few miles down the coast.
