Description
The dramatic coastline of Hoy greets visitors travelling to Orkney by ferry from the Scottish mainland. It has extremes of many kinds: some of the highest sea cliffs in the UK at St John's Head, which reach 350 metres (1,150 ft); the impressive and famous sea stack, the Old Man of Hoy; some of the most northerly surviving natural woodland in the British Isles; the remote possibility that Arctic Char survive in Heldale Water and the most northerly Martello Towers, which were built to defend the area during the Napoleonic War, but were never used in combat.
The highest point in Orkney, Ward Hill, is found on Hoy.
The main naval base for the British fleet Scapa Flow in both the First and Second World Wars was situated at Lyness in the south-east of the island. Some rather incongruous art deco structures nearby date from this period.
An unusual rock-cut tomb, the Dwarfie Stane, lies in the Rackwick valley in the north of the island. It is unique in northern Europe, bearing similarity to Neolithic or Bronze Age tombs around the Mediterranean. The tomb gets its name as it is very small and was said to be carved by dwarves.
In Norse mythology, Hoy is the location of the never-ending battle between Hedin and Högni.
Orkney Ferries serve the island with two routes. One links Lyness on Hoy and Longhope on Walls with the island of Flotta and Houton on the Orkney Mainland. The other links Moaness in Hoy to the island of Graemsay and Stromness on Orkney Mainland.
Hoy is part of the Hoy and West Mainland National Scenic Area, one of 40 in Scotland.
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“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)