Sights in Hoy
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Scapa Flow Visitor Centre
Lyness, on the eastern side of Hoy, was an important naval base during both world wars, when the British Grand Fleet was based in Scapa Flow. It isn’t a pretty place, but this fascinating museum and photographic display, located in an old pumphouse that once fed fuel to the ships, is a must-see for anyone interested in Orkney's military history.
Take your time to browse the exhibits about WWI and WWII, and have a look at the folders of supplementary information: the letters home from a seaman lost when the HMS Royal Oak was torpedoed are particularly moving. You'll find the story of the first-ever landing of an aircraft on a moving ship in 1917, and the construction of …
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Longhope Lifeboat Museum
At the southern tip of Hoy, near the causeway to South Walls, Longhope’s former lifeboat station houses a small museum centred on one of the old boats itself (the modern lifeboat is moored afloat off Longhope village). If it's not open, call the caretaker to have a look.
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St John's Head
The northwest coast of Hoy has the highest sea cliffs in Britain, rising sheer from the ocean to reach 346m. Like the Old Man of Hoy, it's been the scene of extreme rock-climbing adventures, from its first ascent in 1970 (a seven-day epic) to the first free ascent by Scotland's leading climber, Dave MacLeod, in 2011.
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Old Man of Hoy
Hoy’s best-known sight is this spectacular 137m-high rock stack that juts improbably from the ocean off the tip of an eroded headland. It was first scaled in 1966 by mountaineers Sir Chris Bonington, Tom Patey and Rusty Baillie; the climb was repeated the next year for the BBC's first-ever televised rock-climb.
There are walks to the Old Man from Moaness or Rackwick, but if you don't have time to visit, you can see the Old Man as you pass on the Scrabster–Stromness ferry.
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Lyness Naval Cemetery
Established in 1915, this beautifully maintained cemetery contains the graves of more than 650 WWI and WWII servicemen, including sailors lost on the Vanguard, the Hampshire and the Royal Oak, as well as 14 sailors of the German High Seas Fleet that surrendered in Scapa Flow in 1918.
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Hackness Martello Tower
On the south headland of Longhope Bay stands a Martello tower, built in 1814 to protect convoys heading for the Baltic during the Napoleonic Wars (there's another, less well preserved, on the bay's northern headland). The tower and its adjacent gun battery have been extensively restored, and house exhibits detailing 19th-century barrack-room life.
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Dwarfie Stane
The 5000-year-old Dwarfie Stane is the only example of a neolithic rock-cut tomb in Britain, hollowed out of a huge sandstone boulder dropped here by a glacier during the last Ice Age. It lies a 10-minute walk east of the road through Rackwick Glen (signposted from a parking area), beneath cliffs that are loud with nesting fulmars in summer.
An opening in the west side, a metre square, gives access to two small, rounded burial chambers; a large block of stone that once sealed the entrance sits just outside. A concrete repair on the roof (dating from the 1950s) marks where the tomb was plundered at some unknown time in the distant past.
The stone is associated with Viking …
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Betty Corrigall's Grave
Betty Corrigall was a local girl who was made pregnant and then abandoned by a visiting sailor in the late 18th century. Shamed and ostracised by the tight-knit community, she hanged herself – but as a suicide, she was denied a burial in hallowed ground. So poor Betty was interred on the high moors near the parish boundary.
Her resting place lay forgotten until the coffin was accidentally unearthed by peat cutters in 1933. Beside the main road, halfway between Moaness and Lyness, it is now marked by a simple white headstone and planted with flowers, the loneliest and most poignant grave in Scotland.
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