Hoy's name comes from the Norse Háey, meaning "high island"

Hoy is just a short hop on the ferry from Orkney’s Mainland, with ferries leaving from both Houton and Stromness. The island is largely undeveloped and has a very different feel to it than the Mainland – while much of the Mainland is flat, green and carpeted with arable farming, Hoy is more like the Outer Hebrides with moorland and hills. It is well worth a visit, with a truly fascinating archaeological site and a wonderful, cliff-bound bay.

If you only visit one thing on Hoy, make it the Dwarfie Stane. This site is as unassuming as it is unique – if you weren’t looking for it, you could well miss it. Yet it really is one of a kind! A huge (8.5m long) rock lies on its side in the heather. At some point between the Neolithic and the Bronze age, inhabitants of Hoy carved into the stone to make a hollow chambered cairn – thought by many to be the only example of its kind in Britain. What is really remarkable is that those people only had rocks, antler and their own muscle power to achieve this! A large rock lies at its entrance, once used to seal the cairn, until it was raided at some point in the last 500 years. Inside, two bed-like hollows are perhaps where the rock got its reputation as a home of dwarves!

Hoy’s main attraction for climbers is the famous Old Man of Hoy, a 449-foot sea stack. This is ascended by around 50 people a year (a log of which is kept in a Tupperware box buried at the top!), the youngest of which was only 8 years old who summited the stack in 2016.

On the western coast of Hoy is Rackwick Bay. Here, a pretty hamlet sits by a part-sand, part-pebbled beach. It truly feels like a step back in time, with just a scattering of croft houses surrounding the shore. To the south, the beach is bordered by a series of spectacular cliffs, making the view from the beach spectacular, even by Orkney standards!

Orkney is also the site of a sad tale, marked by a sark white roadside grave. It is the final resting place of Betty Corrigall. In 1776, Betty was 27, unmarried and pregnant – something of great shame in her day. Desperate, Betty committed suicide – but because of her ‘situation’, she wasn’t allowed to be buried on church ground and was buried in an unmarked grave on the lonely moors of Hoy. Tales of her burial got out, and she was found in 1930 and again in 1942. A concrete slab was put on top to stop ghouls digging her up for a look – very well preserved in the peat. In 1976, a visiting preacher from America built a fence and put on a wooden cross. He performed a service for her. Since then a fibreglass headstone has been added, as a stone one would sink into the soft ground. A very moving place, where she now has so many visitors and is remembered.

We highly recommend a trip over to Hoy if you’re visiting Orkney – its contrast to the Mainland’s landscape lets you see a different side to Scottish islands, and its attractions truly are second to none.