The rusting hulls of blockships sunk between 1914 and 1942 still show above the water at Water Sound, which separates Burray from South Ronaldsay, beside the fourth of the Churchill Barriers, the wartime causeways that link Burray on to Orkney’s Mainland. The changed tides beside that barrier have since built up a wide dune beach of pale sand.
Burray village, a former fishing port on the south-west coast, has the Orkney Fossil and Heritage Centre, set up in converted farm buildings, which holds a large collection of local fossils alongside displays on the building of the barriers. A further causeway, sometimes counted as a fifth barrier, links Burray to the small island of Hunda at its western end; it too was built during the war to close a gap in Scapa Flow’s defences, and today it is a quiet walk with views back over the Flow.
