Stromness Museum

Crammed with fascinating artefacts from maritime and natural-history collections covering whaling, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the sunken German fleet in Scapa Flow, this is a superb museum where you can easily lose a couple of hours nosing around the display cases.

Among the more unusual exhibits are South Sea Islander artefacts left here by the survivors of Captain Cook’s final expedition to the Pacific in 1776–79, and the tiny inflatable boat used by Dr John Rae in his Arctic explorations.

Across the street from the museum is the house where local poet and novelist George Mackay Brown lived from 1968 until his death in 1996. Further south on the main street is Login’s Well, where famous ships such as the Discovery and Resolution stopped to take on water.