The day after we cycled to Stromness Mark and I rode to the Kirkwall Airport located east of the town. It was an easy ride there as it was mostly downhill. We went inside the terminal and ate our lunch and looked around the small facility.

Getting our bikes for our ride to the airport

Kirkwall airport terminal, with its name above in runes, spelling Grimsetter (Krimsitir), the airport’s original name
When we looked at the arrivals and departures, we could see a flight later in the day for Sumburgh, the main airport in Shetland. I however was more interested in two destinations displayed on the departures screen: Westray and Papa Westray, two islands in the north Orkneys. I recognized those islands’ names from the record books. The flying time between the two Westrays is less than two minutes, which qualifies as the shortest scheduled passenger flight in the world. One can take this hiccup of a flight starting first from Kirkwall. It is only a fifteen-minute flight to either Westray or Papa Westray, with a seven-minute layover. The flight across the Papa Sound to either Westray has been rounded up to the nearest minute, since seconds are not displayed in the timetable. In less than two minutes you’ve landed.
I picked up an inter-island air guide which shows the scheduled departures and arrivals (thus no schedules for flights to Aberdeen or Sumburgh, Shetland):








We saw a flight come in and the passengers walked across the tarmac and into the terminal. The terminal was full of passengers waiting to board that same plane to Aberdeen. Mark and I left to continue our bike trip when we saw the length of the runway suddenly become illuminated. It can be foggy in Orkney–as it was that day with a very low cloud cover–and I am sure there are plenty of times when the fog descends even lower. I saw the plane taxi to the end of the runway so we decided to wait on the road to watch it take off. In no time at all the plane had turned to face the runway and immediately started its race to takeoff. We were standing directly under the path of flight, and saw the plane take off above our heads.

We cycled around the Loch of Tankerness via Yinstay and Tankerness Hall Roads. We pulled up into a castle-like estate where we saw a small cemetery and attempted to go in but opening the gate seemed too much of an effort. I didn’t want to explore the area as it was private property and after we looked around a bit more I saw a man on a tractor going in so we might have been shooed away. I checked for this area on Google Maps and we were at the property right by Tankerness Pier. It is to the left of Mark beyond the stone wall:


Since we had frequent stops and also because our trip wasn’t as long as the ride the previous day to Stromness and back, I didn’t experience any numbness.