Lord Kitchener and Marwick Head

Ms Gable and I managed to natter for 2 hours over coffee yesterday without using the word 'Blipfoto' too often.
We have met before in Edinburgh, but there was still much to catch up on and we had to be prised from our seats to fulfil deadlines with our respective partners.

Today Lord Kitchener needed us and so we paid a visit to his memorial monument at Marwick Head. With his slogan 'Your Country Needs You", he lured a generation of young men to an early grave in the slaughter that was WW1.

He himself was lost at sea when the ship, the HMS Hampshire, carrying him to an advisory meeting with the Russians, our allies at the time, struck a mine off the coast at Marwick and practically everyone on board was lost.

The date was the 5th June 1916, so he didn't live to see the carnage of the Somme which began in the July of 1916 in which most of the young lads who had responded to his call were lost.

We had a magical walk along the cliffs, high rise nesting area for thousands of sea birds, but not one puffin made itself known to us.

The grassy cliff top was a carpet of wild flowers of all colours, but the predominate one was the pink of Thrift, in clumps reaching to the furthermost reaches of the cliff edge.

Another path further down the road lead us on foot beside fields with cattle knee deep in buttercups and daisies and oyster catchers darting across our way, to the Birsay Palace tearoom for soup and a cheese scone.

And all the time the sun shone on an impossibly blue sea with the bright white of the lighthouse on the Brough of Birsay standing like a beacon in the distance.