The Churchill Barriers, the four causeways built during the Second World War to close off Scapa Flow’s eastern approaches after a German U-boat sank HMS Royal Oak in 1939, run south as far as South Ronaldsay; Italian prisoners of war did much of the work, and the road in crosses Burray on the way. At the island’s northern tip, St Margaret’s Hope is a harbour village of old stone houses that hosts the Boys’ Ploughing Match and Festival of the Horse every August, when girls parade in elaborate costumes made to look like harnessed horses and boys compete to plough miniature furrows in the sand.
On the clifftop at Isbister, the Tomb of the Eagles is a Neolithic chambered cairn, a burial mound raised over an inner stone chamber, where excavators found human remains alongside the bones of white-tailed eagles; a community trust bought the site and reopened it to visitors in September 2025. Pentland Ferries sails from Gills Bay on the Scottish mainland to St Margaret’s Hope. Hoxa Head, at the south-western tip, has coastal gun batteries built to defend Scapa Flow’s southern entrance, matched by others across the water on Flotta.
