The lonely grave of Betty Corrigal, abandoned and ostracised by her community
OUT AND ABOUT WITH RALPH: A visit to the magnificent Rackwick Bay on Hoy to revisit a classic circuit of the high hills
The grave of Betty Corrigal lies on moorland high above Scapa Flow on the parish boundary between Hoy and South Walls.
Pregnant and abandoned by a sailor, shame and ostracisation by the Hoy community led her to suicide.
A cold church and an uncaring landowner then refused her burial on consecrated ground. Two hundred years later, peatcutters discovered her preserved body, and later a sympathetic minister provided a tombstone.
Now the little white enclosure is often visited by passing tourists.
I’d escaped the downpours until now, but coasting down the hill on the bike the temperature dropped 10 degrees and sheeting rain drove in. Fortunately I’d seen it coming and put on waterproofs; regretting the lack of gloves I pedalled on, hard.
It had cleared by the time I reached the Hoy centre where I was staying the next two nights, and as the sun came out again in the early evening I set off on a ride to Rackwick.
In the good old days when the St Ola ferry overnighted in Caithness you could have a long day on Hoy if you caught the 6am from Scrabster and came back on the 8pm from Stromness. The Moaness ferry connected well, you could have eight hours on Hoy and still leave time for a chip supper in Stromness (perhaps not such a good idea on a rough night!). Now, you need at least two nights away to spend any time on Hoy.
The high hills of Hoy were bathed in low sun and deep shadows, Rackwick was magnificent as usual with breakers rolling into the wide bay of rounded boulders.
In the 1970s the population of this former crofting and fishing community dropped to one. Since then numbers have crept up and many of the houses have been converted to holiday homes. Now it can be quite a tourist hotspot.
The next day I set out again for Rackwick via my favourite circuit of the high cliffs. The walk begins with a steep climb up Cuilags, the second highest of Hoy’s hills, then crosses a stony plateau where arctic hares run, and skuas dive-bomb in summer.
A gentle descent in rough tussocks leads to the dramatic edge of the highest vertical sea cliffs in Britain, a sheer 1200 feet drop from St John’s Head. Scramble onto the Head itself if you dare, it’s not hard but there is a very, very long way to fall if you slip. This time I didn’t dare.
A wet, narrow path leads downward near the cliff edges towards the Old Man, the sea glittering far below. Most people walk along a good path from Rackwick to see the famous “man who was never a boy” and to watch the climbers, two of whom were indeed just reaching the 400-foot summit.
Cloud had cleared after a cold morning to hot afternoon sun and everyone, including me, was carrying far too many clothes. A path takes you from Rackwick back to Moaness – this is the “old road” which even 100 years ago was only passable on foot or by pony, before being replaced by the current road.
It is a lovely path through the hills, initially through regenerating birch and rowan scrub, passing Britain’s most northerly native hazel woodland at Berriedale. But it is very rough, and in the heat I was glad when the blue waters of Sandy Loch under Cuilags eventually appeared again. This was such an easy round walk when I first did it 46 years ago!
Heading homewards the following day, I couldn’t resist a last visit to Rackwick before taking the road to the Lyness ferry terminal. It’s a bay I so often look across to, from Olrig Hill or Dunnet Head, and even from that distance you can often see the salt-haze from breaking waves.
Just off the Rackwick road is the famous Dwarfie Stone, a neolithic tomb carved from a monolithic boulder under the broken crags of the Dwarfie Hamars where sea-eagles now nest.
It’s all quite a contrast to the huge World War II anti-aircraft batteries of Lyrawa Hill where shells could be fired to heights of 33,000 feet and where stationed servicemen dug up the body of poor Betty Corrigall more than once.
Even on Hoy, you can’t escape the ambivalences and paradoxes of this contradictory world.
