Sunday, August 23, 2009
(Previous entries available here)

And it’s the open day on site and yes its raining and quite windy – miserable start to the day but low and behold the gods are shining upon us, or rather the sun, as by the time of the first tour – a special for members of the Orkney Archaeology Society – the sun has appeared.

With time quickly running out, and the Cardiff students having left at the weekend, it’s all hands to doing the final plans and bits of recording. Even with the less than clement weather this is proceeding well as the whole site is split up into sections, so that everyone has been allocated a bit. Strings and tape cross the site so that all the plans can be located on the site grid and then fitted together back in the office to form one overall site plan.

And still the crowds keep on coming. There is a very steady stream of visitors that once there is a reasonable crowd gathered they are escorted around the site by members of the dig team or the wonderful Historic Rangers, Keith, Sandra and Elaine – their enthusiasm shines through and most visitors seem to be leaving with the same sense of awe and wonder as the excavation team experience every day.

Anne the finds supervisor continues doing a fantastic job, busily cataloguing, drying and boxing the entire vast array of finds that make their way to her finds hut. This is only their first port of call before being taken back to the Orkney College for further sorting.  From there they will be sent off to various specialists across the country for further analysis and reporting, before coming back to Orkney where the finds will finally reside.

Anyway the crowds are gathering again so better get back out and relieve the other guides.

At the end of the day and the official count was just over 500 visitors – not bad when considering the weather - so off home now to nurse an extremely hoarse voice with a medicinal glass of Highland Park!

Time is running out if you wish to visit us – only Tuesday or Wednesday as tomorrow we are all having the day off .