Flotta still has the gun batteries and searchlight positions the Royal Navy built here during both world wars to defend Scapa Flow, the sheltered anchorage where its fleet lay. A signposted wartime trail crosses the island to the Port War Signal Station at Stanger Head, from where naval staff coordinated the guns covering the Flow’s southern approaches; matching batteries stood across the water on Hoxa Head in South Ronaldsay. Below the signal station, the Cletts are a pair of sea stacks close to the old searchlight positions.
Orkney Ferries runs a car ferry to Gibraltar Pier from Houton on the Mainland, calling at Hoy on some crossings. Flotta’s other landmark is more recent, an oil terminal built in the 1970s that still receives North Sea oil and gas by pipeline.
