Window on the World

The Burnmouth Bothy at Rackwick Bay. Rackwick means ‘wreckage bay’, in the Old Norse language of early Viking settlers, the name reflecting the terrible fate suffered by many ships as they attempted to cross the Pentland Firth, even in more recent times. The Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown called Rackwick ‘Orkney’s last enchantment’ and ‘the hidden valley of light’. The Burnmouth Bothy is an early-nineteenth century, single-storey, roughly rectangular-plan former crofthouse with a heather thatched roof; adjoining the northeast gable is a lower three-bay former byre with a flagstone roof. Burnmouth was used by the BBC in 1970 for an adaptation one of McKay Brown’s stories, and was later renovated by the Hoy Trust to provide shelter and accommodation for campers and hill walkers. The bothy is sited right above the cobble-strewn beach and you can lie awake at night listening to the unforgettable sound of the North Atlantic rollers pounding the shore. This is a focus stack of two captures