The following are transcripts taken from a selection of video clips from the website www.workorkney.co.uk. To view the video clips in their original full context, please click here.
It’s from the air that you get the most dramatic first impressions of Orkney. Clusters of islands many dozens of them make up this fascinating archipelago that lies just north of the Scottish mainland.
Orkney is a land of incredible contrasts. It is also one of Britain’s most outstanding environments. A place which you might at first think is off the map, out of touch. Nothing could be further from the truth.
One tenth of Britain’s energy requirements is handled through this oil terminal on the island of Flotta.
The Orkney economy has seen steady improvement in recent years so that the islands now have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.
The island capital Kirkwall, home for about a third of the population, and for one of Britain’s finest cathedrals - historic St Magnus, dating back to the 12th century.
A bustling, cosmopolitan town, which serves farmers, the country dweller, professional people, the artisan and the artist, the seafarer and thousands of visitors every year. It’s a place which is neither too big or too small and where there’s a very strong sense of community.
The islands’ economy reflects very strongly a long tradition of growing and harvesting - food from the land and the sea. More recent industries such as fish farming have joined this natural repertoire. Many Orkney businesses have been set up to exploit the potential for adding value to resources like these before they’re exported from the islands.
The reason for coming here wasn’t because of Orkney it was because of the job. When I found out where it was I was slightly shocked because I thought, I knew it was somewhere in Scotland but I didn’t realise it was this far north.
So far north that the midsummer sun sets at half past ten and you can have a beach all to yourself. But you’re not cut off.
I think it was after I came and spent a couple of days here and realised that it is cosmopolitan, it is attractive, it is busy, it’s thriving and it’s beautiful.
Well initially I’d have to be honest and say the job brought me here in the first place although I had visited Orkney previously and had been very impressed with, with the place itself and when I came up with my wife and had a look round and thought about moving up here we had no hesitation really. It just looked a great place to come to live.
Orkney is now seen by many young islanders as a place to further a career rather than having to upsticks and move away.
You could say I could have made a better move, but I don’t think I would have had the lifestyle that I have here. I think I get the best of both worlds, I’ve the country, live in the country, have the joys of living in the country but I also get to travel the world really.
Perhaps it’s the fact that it’s much easier to focus on the important things of life in Orkney that makes it so attractive. There’s more freedom to set the pace of work, to explore new ideas and to experiment.
By living in Orkney I think it can be a very stimulating place to life, there’s a very strong creative talent in Orkney and if you’ve got any business connected with creation of new ideas or concepts in an artistic sense then it’s a very good place to come.
Making the move to a new job and new surroundings is always going to be a challenge.
I have no regrets whatsoever. I like the lifestyle, I really enjoy my job, I like the people I work with, I find Orkney people very warm and friendly and I love my home and where it’s situated and I like the views that you can see from, I doesn’t matter where you’re standing I think in Orkney, there’s a wonderful aspect to be seen.
Could this be the perfect formula for someone wanting to make a real change in their life? Would Orkney suit you?
Orkney is such a pristine environment, the seas are very clean, the water’s clear, the air is fresh, it’s like drinking champagne breathing the air here, by contrast I was in London last week on a sales trip, you step off the plane or get out of the tube in London and you’re assaulted by grime and fumes and litter everywhere you look, it’s not like that in Orkney. I think people in cities get inured to that kind of thing but it’s much nicer to get accustomed to the other extreme which is the freshness and beauty of the Orkney landscape, the whole experience of living here.
By their very nature, islands are places where life is governed by the elements. Tempered by the North Atlantic Drift and sheltered by the nearby Scottish mainland, many people have been surprised by Orkney’s relatively mild climate in so northerly a location. It’s not a place where you dig in for the winter.
When I came here I think as going away presents I was given lots of woolly socks and jumpers and hats and scarves and coats and it is inclement in so far as it’s windy and it is windy regularly but it’s not cold.
It is a climate that’s full of contrasts.
I’ve been here a year now and since the middle of March we’ve had the most glorious weather. We have had very few days that have been filled with rain and one of the things that does effect the Island is fog in the Summer again for flights coming in and out but this year there’s even been a minimal amount of fog so I must say that as far as I’m concerned the weather has been glorious.
It’s usually the spring and autumn - the tuning points of the year - that bring the dramatic changes in weather. Certainly there have been occasions when storms might restrict activities, but the old island adage ‘if you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute’ is frequently borne out. Short winter days can be spectacularly brilliant.
If you go to a place called Yesnaby which has got lots of cliffs and it’s very wild the sea actually washes up rocks onto the cliffs so it can be a very wild and stormy place but that’s part of the excitement it’s, it’s very evocative it’s not about a Mediterranean climes it’s, the weather is part of Orkney and yes it’s windy but it becomes part of Orkney after a while, part of your life.
It’s all a matter of accepting the climate - as generations of Orkney people have always done.
The weather can be a wee bit driech but the towns were built a few hundred years ago and once you’re on the street the winds whistling above you on the rooftops but you don’t really notice it much.
It’s wonderful, I mean we have a wonderful; we have a wonderful climate here. We’ve had a great summer and even when the weather’s not good it’s, it’s really nice to get wrapped up and get out and there’s nothing better than going for a walk in a force 10 you know with horizontal sleet and it’s very invigorating. So the weather can be interesting and it just helps to make life in Orkney generally more interesting.
Island communities like Orkney depend on having good transport links. The inter-island services, whether by sea or by air, are among the best in the country. And getting to and from the Scottish mainland is routine here. There are comfortable, modern ferries which ply between Orkney and the south, and there are links to the Shetland Islands in the north.
The islands’ internal network of roll-on, roll-off ferries shuttle regularly each day from the Orkney mainland to the outlying communities. These are the lifeline services - carrying everything from fuel to building materials, fertilisers to fish farm equipment, the milk and the mail.
The days begin early at Kirkwall’s airport. The first flights have already arrived from the south, bringing cargoes of newspapers and the mails. Close behind them the scheduled services that link Orkney to Scotland’s principal airports and gateways to the rest of Britain and Europe. Changing planes is the Orcadian equivalent of crossing a railway station platform. Short flights from the islands connect with regular mainland services. Orkney even has a flying banking service to the outer islands. These services, along with modern terminal facilities are the result of a rolling programme of investment in the islands’ infrastructure.
I think we have excellent transport links. I think they’re much better than places on mainland Scotland. We have flights every day of the week and we have several ferries and you can either drive or obviously take the train from the north of Scotland.
If you have to go to London for appointments twice a week then Orkney is probably not the place to do it but if it’s once a month or every couple of weeks it’s okay.
The transport costs are a factor if you’re travelling away when you look at the overall budget for a year, they don’t usually amount to very much of your total turnover and I speak as somebody that does do quite a bit of travelling in my business.
And any time that I’ve had to go back to mainland Scotland I’ve managed to do that quite easily and in fact I’ve never been able to get totally away from it because since about March of this year right through till September I’ve had constant visitors from south, I’ve had family and friends, I’m actually thinking of turning my house into a bed and breakfast, charging them for it.
A summer morning in Orkney, and this is rush hour in Kirkwall.
My drive to work in the mornings really sets you up for the day, I drive down the hill, past our neolithic stone circle, the Ring of Brodgar, which is a world heritage site, over the causeway between our two lochs locally with a big watch stone standing there, past Maes Howe which is a neolithic burial chamber and then off to the sunrise actually, depending what time of year it is, over to the sea and the islands stretching out into the distance and then I finally reach the Kirkwall bay, it’s a very stunning drive to work.
There are no traffic jams, I mean the biggest traffic jam I had one morning was delayed because a family of ducks was crossing the road and were taking there time, there was about 6 ducklings following the mother and I think that’s the longest it’s ever taken me to get to work in the morning.
Housing in Orkney is very cheap compared to most cities down south. You see all the holiday makers queuing outside the solicitors offices in Kirkwall gawping at the prices of four bedroom houses you know in the countryside in Orkney you know a four bedroom house for £40,000 or something like that they’re calculating they could sell their house in Edinburgh and live for 10 years on the profit. If you want to live smack dab in the middle of Kirkwall or in a really characterful house in the middle of Stromness then you know you pay a reasonable price for that but really housing is very affordable in Orkney.
We thought originally that we would buy a croft but the right croft didn’t come up in the place that we wanted to live so eventually we, we’ve bought a plot with a reasonable sized garden and a very small field where we can put our sheep and it has a lovely view right down Stenness Loch to the sea to Scapa Flow and it was actually an old house that we got planning permission to knock down and we are building our own house there, one that we’ve chosen and that we can have our conservatory on the front which will capture the view.
I used the, the websites of the local estate agents and, and they also sent me some information as well prior to moving up. I live in Tankerness, it’s on the east side of mainland Orkney out past the airport and I have this uninterrupted view of Loch Tankerness and my nearest neighbours are cows.
There’s certainly a difference in price I mean some houses you can put on your credit card, they’re so cheap and you don’t need a mortgage but I think that the housing is variable in that if you do want for example to go for an older property then there will be some investment in getting it to a good standard but even with that investment it’s still going to be cheaper than buying a house south I mean I have a house still in Winchester which is worth £200,000. My house in Orkney, which is bigger, has far more land is a fraction of the cost, it’s a fifth of the cost of that so I mean I think it that way housing is a lot cheaper if your selling something to move to Orkney then you’re certainly going to have, you know some money in the bank.
This is Kirkwall’s principal shopping street. Small, friendly, and where if what you need isn’t in the window or on the shelves, the shopkeeper will be pleased try and get it for you. No rush, no crush.
We have things like Jewsons and we have have supermarkets that are there that and again sort of supermarkets like large hardware stores that have electrical goods and all sorts of things. You can order things direct and so you don’t have to go and jostle people in the high street to try and get to a shop or stand in queues or whatever. Yes I mean those things perhaps to some people might be a draw back but then you can actually plan for having a nice weekend away to do shopping and you know stay somewhere in a hotel or a bed and breakfast and go out for dinner or see a show or something in Edinburgh or Aberdeen you know plan it round something like that so it’s actually more of an enjoyment thing rather than a chore.
Well one of the things I’ve certainly developed, found here which you perhaps wouldn’t have got anywhere else is internet shopping I mean the internet is a fantastic tool and you do tend to go online a lot and so you do have access to a lot of other services, you can go to Next, you can go to Argos or wherever and you can certainly get all the, all the things that people can get, all be it you’re not going into the shop so again you get away from the queuing aspect. Sometimes they have things in Orkney that you don’t get elsewhere I mean for example designer clothing here, if you want anything to do with designer clothing then they have that here on the high street and it’s cheaper than you’d get in any store down south.
It’s actually a positive thing for me because I think you can get too used to stepping into the shops and I think it keeps things in perspective to be away and you know look at what really counts in life which is making things last and also just not being materialistic, looking at the views and you know other things in life and that’s part of the move to Orkney.
I think the biggest thing is, one thing you read in the newspapers all the time is stress and I don’t think it’s necessarily stress at work I think it’s stress within the home environment, it’s the stress of queuing, you know getting stuck in a traffic jam on the M25 for 4 hours and you’re desperate to get to go and se somebody or your going to see a relative, it’s going into a supermarket and you’re having to queue just to drive into the supermarket, let alone walk around the store, so the one thing you’ll find when you come to Orkney is that day to day living is very unstressful.
There are very highly educated level, population in Orkney but there’s also occasions when you need to bring new blood in. In our own business we’re quite specialised in terms of the technical expertise that you need and therefore from time to time we need to think about bringing someone in and attracting them to Orkney.
The opportunities here work wise are quite vast I mean the actual experience that you get working in a remote and rural area and also the team work that you experience because you don’t have hosts of people that you can call on or rely on so you have to be quite resilient and you also have to rely on the limited team members that you have and I think the experience that can be gained here on the opportunities for training and development and because it’s a smaller workforce as well I think those opportunities in fact are probably far better than working in a large teaching hospital or in a large community.
The final decision came down to work, work, working in the south of England was from my point of view becoming untenable, partly because of bureaucracy, partly because of changes of policy within government which meant that there were more and more, there was more and more bureaucracy put in the way, there was a lot of politics, internal politics going on and I felt that that was detrimental to patient care so I think that was the driving factor.
There are lots of opportunities for people locally and we want to encourage that in the Council and NHS Orkney. I am responsible for our Social and Vocational Qualification Assessment Centre here in Social Work and we’re planning for the future to recruit people locally and enable people from school or from the community to be able to train locally to become social care workers. I think there’s quite a mix of people up here, I think that’s what makes it exciting, I think some incomers contribute a great deal to the community and to developments, business and I think there are lots of opportunities as well for Orcadian people to train here and to develop careers here, so yes there are opportunities for both in comers and Orcadian people.
It’s a great place to come to learn your trade if you’re a teacher and once you’ve learned it and honed you’re skills here you’ve got an excellent chance of progressing on to, to promoted posts in other parts of the country I think they’re delighted to, to take teachers who have done their initial, have gained their initial experience within schools in Orkney.
So prospects of life and work in a community where traditional values are still highly rated and family considerations will inevitably be uppermost when a move to Orkney is on the cards. But what about a partner, how might a move affect them?
When we were coming up here he decided that this would have to be a career change for him and he’s now a market gardener, he’s self employed, he’s enjoying every minute of it, also satisfaction out of it, but it was hard at first. We were going from having two very good salaries to just having my salary coming in and using the little nest egg that we had to start up a business. It’s taken a while but each stage comes and we enjoy his triumphs and he’s become well known for his vegetables.
Setting up a business in Orkney is no less challenging than anywhere else in Britain - but for anyone who needs freedom in which to develop and grow an enterprise, then there are few equals.
Traditionally I worked as an environmental consultant mainly in the oil and gas section but since we’ve set up Aquaterra we’ve branched out into producing environmental communication products such as CD Roms and websites and we also print a lot of environmental materials, promotional materials for people and also we’re starting to produce educational materials as well. By living in a rural community and in a peripheral community you actually get a competitive advantage because you’re much more familiar with the problems that small communities have and you can probably relate to the issues that affects small communities in a better way. The environment of Orkney is particularly rich and it’s also got a vibrant community here and there are some attributes in terms of renewable energy, there’s an oil terminal here, there’s an active fishery, so there are many issues connected with the environment and managing the environment which are interesting to study in Orkney.
Orkney’s reputation for high quality food & drink products has led to significant growth for local food companies, with the creation of many new jobs each year. Traditional companies have been diversifying and expanding into new markets, others are developing new products with added value.
I think also there’s a creative environment in Orkney which is stimulating for creating new ideas, new ways of doing things, innovative ways of doing things that are particularly suited for more remote and peripheral areas but that doesn’t mean they’re not applicable to a more urban setting as well so it’s not just catering for the local community you can export services to a larger centre as well.
Helping to create and develop viable businesses is the remit of the local enterprise company, part of the Highlands & Islands Enterprise network. It’s been a key agent in the successful establishment of many new businesses - whether local or from inward investment.
There’s not point in persuading people to move here if their business is then going to struggle and then they move away again feeling bad about the place a year or two later. If anyone is thinking of moving here I would suggest that they look carefully at all the bonuses but also the downside of living here. You can run any business you like from here.
Duncan McLean, together with his wife Ingrid are responsible for one of Orkney’s leading craft and design enterprises. Their very individual styles are much sought after by London and overseas fashion markets. Orkney was only place that seemed natural to set up their business.
Well Tait and Style is a textile manufacturing company but really based on textile design for accessories for the home and furnishing markets and it’s quite, well it’s really very craft based business, lots of hand knitting, felting, embroidery, lots of different techniques. The way the business started I actually started with so much work, commissioned work that I couldn’t, I didn’t have a studio in London, I just had a flat, I didn’t have space and I needed lots of people, the orders were too big for me to fulfil myself so I had to get other people to help me do that and of course I knew lots of people in Orkney and it made sense to come to somewhere that where I knew people would be happy to do work.
The other business we’re involved in is Ola Gorie Jewellery which is a long established jewellery business based in Kirkwall here and we export quite a large quantity of gold, silver, platinum jewellery throughout the UK and beyond. I was in the opposite position from Ingrid because I wasn’t coming back into something that I knew well, I was really using Orkney as the launching pad to start something new and exciting. We in common with quite a lot of other Orkney businesses believe in the merits of staying local, employing local people who have a great reservoir of skills and a great loyalty to the company and to the products. We also like the lifestyle of living here; Ingrid has used the word already, that’s a very important one.
Over the years, Duncan and Ingrid have watched many others establish themselves in some form of enterprise in Orkney. It’s never going to be easy - but determination brings its rewards in many different ways.
You do make your business life a wee bit more difficult for yourself in some ways by being based in Orkney but the advantages you gain in the rest of your life, far outweigh the disadvantages.
One of the questions that was always asked of me when I went back and people said to me why are you, what are you going to do when you go to Orkney, have they got electricity, have they got television and my stock answer to them was what do you do during a normal week and they’d say well I go to work, in the evening I may have an evening class, I’ll go swimming, I’ll go cycling, I’ll go to step aerobics, I might go to the cinema, I watch a lot of telly, I’ll go out to a restaurant and I’d say well I can do all of those things in Orkney and I don’t have to queue.
I’m involved in any number of things; the hard thing really is not get involved in things. There are so many activities in Orkney that you could get involved in if you just had a time, there’s a hundred more things I’d like to do, if it were possible, I’ll get round to them some day.
Well my keen interests are rugby; I’m a member of the rugby club here and still try and turn out when I can. I also enjoy walking and just getting out into the countryside, I’m a keen photographer and I enjoy water sports, canoeing and boating, fishing. I think the one thing I miss is probably the hill walking, there’s not too many high hills in Orkney and getting to them is quite a challenge. I’ve grown to enjoy folk music in particular from being in Orkney, it’s something I wasn’t familiar with really before I came here but there’s a very active folk scene here in Stromness, there’s a folk festival every spring in May and, so that’s one of the things that I’ve gained from coming here.
My husband’s in the Sandwick Singers and he also goes, you know sings in the pub in a folk group and I go to an art course which is run by Jane Glue who is, she runs a shop and she’s a very talented water colour artist and that’s been a real, a real highlight of my first year I think to realise that I can fulfil myself in a way I haven’t before doing art.
My wife and I have always enjoyed hill walking, although there’s not too many hills here we do like getting out, out and about at the weekends and there’s tremendous opportunity to do that, lots of different places and one of the surprising things about being here is that you’d think for somewhere so small you’d very quickly use up all the available opportunities but there are always new places to find and we’re still discovering new walks and new places outside. So the walking aspect of it is very good. My daughter is very much into horse riding and she has dragged me kicking and screaming into the horse riding world, it’s not something that either myself or my wife knew anything about beforehand but Alison was determined from an early age that she was going to get a horse and get involved in horse riding so I think from the age of about seven or eight she’s been involved in that and I have provided her with the necessary backup, financial and otherwise to enable her to do that and here it’s easy, it’s very, very easy, although I’m joking about the financial aspect of it, it’s not expensive here, not nearly as expensive as it would be in other parts of the country.
I’m a member of the archery club here which meets weekly and I also go to the gym and I’m about to embark on harp lessons and in fact there’s so many things to do that it tends to be conflicting I mean I find that things again it’s about finding the time to do things when you’re working full time.
Finding time for all the available leisure activities can be a challenge no matter what your circumstances. Orkney has a wealth of resources to suit all ages and interests and if you prefer something more leisurely we can provide that too.
Someone said to me when do you find the time to work and I said it’s not about when do you find the time to work it’s more about when do you find the time to sleep because there’s so much to do.
We were aware that Orkney has the best state schools in Scotland. The feature at the top of the league table so the education system is excellent and the council puts a lot of money, extra money into education.
If you want to bring up a child you can’t bring up a child anywhere better in the whole of the United Kingdom, I mean the education here is second to none.
Teachers coming here have an opportunity to do what they came into the profession to do and that is to spend most of their time teaching.
We have a very good education department here with an advisory service and director and assistant director of education are extremely supportive and are very good at keeping us in touch with what the main developments are. There are advantages in being in Orkney and being separate from the mainland of Scotland because since we’re such a small educational community we’re able to make decisions for ourselves that suit Orkney that might be slightly different from the same kind of decisions that would be made in the rest of the country.
Orkney attaches great importance to the inclusion of learning facilities that are no longer freely available elsewhere in the country. Whatever the level, education here is completely integrated. The aim is to provide as comprehensive an education as possible on the islands, and tailor made to the needs of the community.
The local enterprise company and the colleges run an active programme of training, starting with basic office skills, through marketing and sales and if there’s interest in a particular area then they quite often develop a course or bring somebody up to develop a course in that area as well. People are quite highly trained here, they’re multi skilled, people are usually very adaptable and that comes out of a more rural and community orientated population.
They’re encouraging access to a much wider range of opportunities, training opportunities and qualification routes. We certainly work closely with Orkney College to look at social care and health care qualifications and Orkney College is obviously changing to adapt to employment needs here in Orkney.
It’s still in it’s early stages I think there’s a lot more that the colleges and University can and are planning to do and I think that’s for the positive in Orkney and I don’t think you can totally discount the distance learning that can be had and that’s from a number of Universities as well and again it’s about how we develop I think we’re not the only place that has to do that. I think a lot of Organisations have to look at how they’re going to tie in with the Universities and the Colleges and the distance learning to maximise that training for their staff and also for potential recruits in the future. We also have the video conferencing potential so that again meetings and conferences elsewhere can be video conferenced here and we have email and again there’s the internet and you know it’s about maximising the resources that we have.
It’s a tremendous place for young people to grow up and they can get an amount of freedom here in Orkney especially when they’re younger that they wouldn’t, I don’t think be given anywhere else in the UK. Within the school, yes we have our challenges, we have our interesting characters but life would be very dull without them but we have by in large a large group of extremely committed, well mannered, well behaved young people who understand the importance of education and who work hard.
The support services are really very good here, and they’re very easily accessible and I think one of the nice things I’ve found about coming here compared to where we lived in Scotland before how easy it was to get to know the people providing these services as individuals and knowing them as individuals I think helps, helps them to provide you with a service and it certainly helps you to be more comfortable making use of that service whether it’s dentistry or general practitioner.
On a day to day basis the local doctors have much more time to spend one to one than they would you know south and they get to know, they get to know everyone so they have much more idea of who they’re dealing with, they remember your names, you feel like you’re one of many, you feel like an individual.
I think we have a very good health service here, there’s a lot of services on Orkney that are less accessible for some people living on remote areas on the Scottish mainland.
There has been extensive investment and redevelopment of Orkney’s hospital and primary health care services. This means that patients have a high degree of local access to acute services, as well as to centres of medical excellence on the mainland. Orkney has more doctors per head of population than anywhere else in Britain, and hospital and surgery waiting times are low.
You can get a GP appointment that day if it’s your child and you’re concerned about your child, you can normally see your own GP within twenty four hours.
Well previously to this year I haven’t had great cause to use the health services but this year I had a problem with my gallbladder and that started in London and I was exposed to the health service provision in London and then was fortunate enough to get back to Orkney to have the operation and I can assure anybody that the services here are far better than you can get further south.