Orkney Islands

May I also suggest visiting the Wireless Museum in Kirkwall? It may not sound like the place to go for aviation, but they have interesting displays on the radar defences, as well as other aspects of the defence of Scapa Flow. Well worth a visit.

It would also be worth seeing if you can get ahold of a copy of Sky Over Scapa which is an excellent book about military aviation in the area. I don’t know if it’s still available, but if you see it, it’s well worth buying.

Thanks for the replies, I shall post pictures next week on my return 🙂 I will able to check the forum till tomorrow afternoon so any more ideas would be appreciated.

Got nothing to do with historic aviation, but visit the Italian P.O.Ws’ chapel.
Its amazing. Kirkwall Cathedral is worth seeing. Theres a memorial to the crew of the Royal Oak there, with the ship’s bell, and of course,there’s Skara Brae if you like that sort of thing.

I would agree with all the above as I visited them all 10 weeks ago, I must admit though that I came across nothing in the way of aviation history, the only things with wings I saw were plenty of sea birds, but some have an aviation connection such as: Fulmars, Gannets, Smew etc.

Der’s right – the Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm is amazing. Its the only remaining nissen hut of POW camp, but beautifully decorated inside. Lamb Holm is the right hand of the two small islands (connected by the Churchill Barriers) at the bottom of the picture. The block ships, sunk in the channels between the islands before the barriers were constructed were still visible in the 1980s.
There’s a nice memorial to Freeson (a small bronze Rapide) at Kirkwall Airport. Hatston airfield is pretty much built on, but in the 1980s there was still quite a lot to see at Skaebrae and, the delightfully named, Tw*tt airfields.
Have a look at www.alanmoar.flyer.co.uk/ for some good aerial pictures.

Got nothing to do with historic aviation, but visit the Italian P.O.Ws’ chapel.
Its amazing. Kirkwall Cathedral is worth seeing. Theres a memorial to the crew of the Royal Oak there, with the ship’s bell, and of course,there’s Skara Brae if you like that sort of thing.

I went there many years ago with One Squadron Harrier GR3’s. I remember the museum at Stromness was very interesting on the naval history of the place, scuttling of the WW1 German fleet etc