It takes a few minutes for the complexity of this place to sink in. At first glance, it’s a fortified house surrounded by a confusing variety of low walls, shallow depressions and the occasional deeper chamber. Gradually, helped by Historic Scotland’s illustrated boards, I begin to see beyond first impressions and to appreciate the huge sweep of time the structures here represent.

Jarlshof has many layers of settlement and use, from Bronze Age buildings (including a smithy) constructed more than 4,000 years ago, an Iron Age broch and Viking farm buildings, to the 17th century Sumburgh House and some later graves. Once climbed, the house gives a good overview of the buildings below and of the wider scene.

Today, helicopters are busy in manoeuvres over the tarmac of nearby Sumburgh Airport.  Dark clouds, pierced by sunshafts, are massing above Sumburgh Head lighthouse. Big waves are folding cream and aquamarine over West Voe, the broad bay that divides Jarlshof from a long, low headland. Across there, a neighbouring monument – the Ness of Burgi – shows in indistinct outline.

It was Sir Walter Scott, in his novel The Pirate, who coined Jarlshof’s Norse-sounding name. In terms of what has been learned from the site, that emphasis is surprisingly appropriate. For the sequence of development of farm buildings used by Viking farmers here, from the 9th century onwards, has given Jarlshof international significance. It’s a key place for understanding some aspects of the life of the Scandinavians who dominated the North Isles for centuries and whose legacy, in terms of language and tradition, lives on.

Beyond that, much remains to be discovered. There are many more layers within these layers.

Images: 1. Bronze age foreground - medieval background, 2. View to Sumburgh Head, 3. Jarlshof structures (1), 4. Jarlshof structures (2), 5. Jarlshof and view out to sea, 6. Looking to Scatness and Fitful Head.

Top Tips: Jarlshof is very close to Sumburgh Airport, which is one of the main transport hubs linking Shetland to both the Scottish mainland and Scandinavia. So it’s easy to find and visit if you visit Shetland by air. The site is also so close to the Sumburgh Hotel that it makes an impressive aspect of the view from some of the hotel windows. So it’s a good place to combine appreciation of a monument with adjacent food and drinks opportunities. Through spring and summer, the on-site visitor centre can provide much information to help you better understand this complex place.

Monumental thought: Many settlements have layers of occupation, but the ones at Jarlshof seem particularly close to each other and near the surface. So I wonder if what inkling the Viking farmers, or the folk that lived here a few hundred years ago, had of those who had come before?

There can be something just a little bit unsettling about ancient monuments in an urban setting. Normal town life goes on beside them. Cars queue, pedestrians chat on cellphones, joggers with headphones hurry past, dogs bark. And then there’s the structure across the street, a legacy from generations so long past that it’s hard to imagine the gulf that separates them from the present.

But that’s also part of the value of such heritage. It can make you pause and think, or surprise by the way you notice, suddenly, that something very, very old is catching the same sunlight as the walkers, joggers and cars. Clickhimin is like that. It’s a complex blend of stone structures, on a site used from perhaps 3,000 years ago to about 1,500 years ago. No disrespect to Fort Charlotte, but it’s arguably Lerwick’s defining monument.

Today, the multiple levels and layers of its drystone walls shine out against a dark hill behind and rows of modern houses nearby. Before water levels were lowered by drainage here in the 1870s, Clickhimin sat on a rocky islet, with access across an isthmus. Early in the Iron Age, a circular ‘ring fort’ was built here, followed by a broch and then various dwellings.

Nowadays, the most prominent features are a massive, low-lying structure known as a blockhouse, which guards the approach to the broch at the heart of the monument. The broch’s surviving walls rise only a few metres. But its massive stones, masterly curves and commanding setting, overlooking the loch, invite both a closer look and respect.

It’s something utterly different from everyday town life, in a setting more urban than it has ever been.

Images: 1. Clickhimin from across loch, 2. Clickhimin approach, 3. Clickhimin Stones & Walls 4. Clickhimin exterior & Lerwick 5. Clickhimin broch from blockhouse, 6. Clickhimin internal stair

Top Tips: Pedestrian access to Clickhimin is along a fine, straight path that leads from beside the main Lerwick-to-Sumburgh road across a grassy area near the loch. But don’t try to park near there. Use public parking near the Clickhimin Centre, a few hundred metres away, and walk around. Cyclists can go straight to the site.

Monumental thought: Shetland’s largest leisure centre (also called Clickhimin) has a great view of its ancient namesake across the loch. So as islanders exercise and play there, the old walls can be part of the backdrop. It’s a fair bet that the various generations of island dwellers who used the monument and added to its complexity had few worries about general fitness. So I wonder how a Bronze Age or Iron Age team would fare against a contemporary one, assuming equal understanding of whatever contest was chosen?

I don’t think I know of any other downtown shopping area with so many cannons overlooking it. Princes Street in Edinburgh, famously, has the castle and the loud One o’Clock Gun overhead. But that weaponry is high above. Here in Lerwick, the artillery pokes out just above the level of the old town buildings.

I peer along the body of a cannon, out over the sheltered waters of the Sound of Bressay. A ferry is directly in my sights, but the cannon, nowadays, is purely for historical ornament. The waters here have been an important place over the last few centuries, both as a hub for the lucrative trade in herring with the Dutch and as a harbour that could be strategically useful to friend or foe.

In the wars with the Dutch and with the American colonists seeking to overthrow British rule, this fort could have been of great national value. The earliest surviving parts of it are from the mid-1600s, when the Dutch tried to capture Shetland. Intriguingly, its design uses ideas inspired from Dutch and French military engineers, who favoured pentagonal fort layouts in the 17th century.

The nature of the hillside overlooking the harbour meant that the British builders couldn’t stick to the pentagonal plan. So the fort’s seaward wall zigzags, while only the landward side has bastions (fortified projections which would ideally have jutted out around a five-cornered shape). By the time it was built, some new ideas about fort design were also finding favour elsewhere.

So Fort Charlotte was something of a swansong for the old ideas. As I explore, herring gulls glide overhead, their calls echoing like laughter from the walls.

Images: 1. Fort Charlotte entrance 2. Fort Charlotte entrance and houses 3. general view 4. battlements from street 5. cannon and Bressay ferry 6. Fort Charlotte and Lerwick houses

Top Tips: Lerwick as a whole is quite a relaxing place to visit, provided you keep alert for traffic when walking down the shop-lined streets in the heart of town. These look, at first glance, like pedestrian precincts. But they’re not. You may need to pause and flatten yourself against a shopfront to let a vehicle pass. In this context, Fort Charlotte is a very peaceful place, with a big area of greensward and a grand view (of course) over both town and harbour to the neighbouring island of Bressay.

Monumental thought: Coastal artillery batteries such as this seem, bizarrely, to have made some people think of female royalty. In the mid-1400s, James II gave the one at Ravenscraig, in Fife, as a wedding gift to his bride, Mary of Gueldres. Work here at the Lerwick fort began in the mid-1660s and resumed during the American War of Independence, in the late 18th century. That’s when it was named in honour of Charlotte, wife of George III. As a patron of the arts, music lover and amateur botanist, I’m sure she would have been thrilled.

‘Fair Isle, Faroes, South-east Iceland: southwesterly storm force 10, increasing violent storm 11 to hurricane force 12 soon. Squally wintry showers. Visibility moderate or poor.’

It’s twenty past five in the morning. I’m 90 per cent asleep, but awake enough to hear the BBC radio announcer’s words plainly enough. His diction is slow and clear. What he describes is precise, intended to be heard and understood by all who seek to go on the sea, or who are (poor souls) already out on it.

And the upshot is inescapable: no one would risk beginning a journey across the briny deeps in those conditions. The words have also come at the end of the forecast for all sea areas around Britain and Ireland. Maybe I’ve dreamt it, but it sounded as if every single one of them is already storm-lashed, with the risk of hurricane-force blasts to come.

No chance of my fitting in another trip to Orkney at the moment, then. And so it continues. This has been one heck of a winter in terms of high winds and rain – one of the worst I can recall.

Storm after storm also makes it hard to plan ahead for island-going. But that’s part of the challenge – perhaps even the fun – of trying to get to some of the wild and windswept places around Scotland’s edge.

One of these weeks, the winds will ease. One of these Shipping Forecasts, the voice will bring the music of force 2 to 3 and good visibility. Normal blog service will be resumed.

We can alert you when that happens. But for now, batten down the hatches.

Images: 1. stormy waters, Orkney 2. stuck indoors

Top Tips: Sign up as a follower of this blog to be alerted when journeys resume and new posts appear. If you’re planning some island trips, check those Shipping Forecasts (but take care with the one at 0048hrs – it’s very easy to drift off to sleep to the sound of the ‘Sailing By’ tune that precedes it).

Monumental thought: Not one of the people who built and used the monuments I’m trying to visit would have had the benefit of broadcast meteorology. I can only wonder at the courage of those who first landed on the islands, or who made regular journeys away from them. Their reading of weather signs must have been fine-tuned. But they must also have trusted to luck. No wonder fishing communities, by tradition, are deeply superstitious.

I defy anyone with an interest in history and an ounce of romance to visit a castle and not create mental pictures of what might once have happened there. It’s part of the pleasure of going to these monuments. Some have documented histories occasionally so rich in detail that those words can add life, colour – passion, even – to your own ideas.

Caerlaverock is one such place. Not only is its situation – surrounded by a moat and broad greensward – ideal for taking time to sit, ponder and tell stories. But its history includes an unusually detailed piece of medieval writing.

Composed around 1300 and written in French verse (but possibly by an English Franciscan friar), Le Siege de Karlavreock tells how Edward I besieged the castle with a force of 3,000 men, plus 87 knights. When the garrison surrendered after attack and bombardment from siege engines, the assailants realised that a mere 60 soldiers had withstood their army’s might.

That in itself is the stuff of heroic tales. But it’s the detail that is breathtaking. Each knight is given a thumbnail word portrait, including a description of his coat of arms. There was Roger de Montaigne, for example ‘who bore yellow with six blue lions’ and William de Cantiloupe who ‘has at all times lived in honour’. He had a red shield with an alternating pattern on it, ‘with three fleur de lis of gold issuing from leopard’s heads.’

The list runs and runs, ending with an account of the fighting and surrender. As I look at the castle walls, on a day of bright sun, my mind’s eye fills with colours.

Images:  1. Trebuchet

Top Tips: Caerlaverock is a place where the layers of story and architecture are so rich as to amply repay a bit of reading before, during or after a visit. The Historic Scotland souvenir guide, available from the all-year-round shop and visitor centre, can add a great deal to appreciation of the castle and its surrounds.

Monumental thought: 'Siege engines', including a mighty catapult called a trebuchet, designed to fling missiles with great force, were an important part of the battery used by Edward I to break down the castle’s defences. In 1300, trebuchet technology was relatively new and could have been a clincher in quite rapidly ending the siege. More than seven centuries later, I can almost feel the defenders’ spirits plummet when they saw such a device being trundled into position.

It might seem to be stretching definitions to class Caerlaverock Castle as an island monument. But with its strategic position and sheer magnificence of line, I couldn’t turn the other way on a visit to the Dumfries area and ignore this stronghold.

You could argue that this ‘new’ castle – built to replace an earlier one, prone to flooding and slightly nearer the coast – is on an island. The moat that surrounds it was hacked from solid rock, with the resulting spoil piled up as a base for the castle structure.

And what a structure it is, combining an elegance of geometry with an undoubted impression of power. I can’t think of another fortress in the whole of Scotland that combines these elements with such style. Uniquely among Scottish medieval castles, it’s triangular. ‘In shape it was like a shield,’ runs a much-quoted phrase from a 14th-century writer, ‘for it had but three sides round it, with a tower at each corner … And it had good walls and ditches, filled up to the brim with water.’

The approach downslope from the Historic Scotland ticket office leads to the narrowest point of the ‘shield’, where a pair of towers, divided only by the entrance passage of the castle gatehouse, looms over the moat. The paved path continues, to bridge the gap once spanned by a drawbridge. As I walk across and enter the dark space beneath the towers, I can’t help but be in awe of this fortified place.

Inside, there’s a complexity of building work from different periods, including the 17th-century ‘Nithsdale Lodging’ with its magnificent carvings. But somehow, the outer triangle trumps everything within.

Images: 1. classic exterior 2. window & tower 3. interior 4. interior 5. nithsdale lodging 6. pigeons

Top Tips: Try if possible to have a walk around the whole rim of the moat. In 1640, Covenanters keen to prevent any further trouble from the Catholic Maxwells shattered the south wall to make a lasting breach in the castle’s defences. The benefit of this demolition job is that you get a great view of Caerlaverock’s interior architecture from the outside – a 3D cutaway in the tradition of many a good Historic Scotland painting, but set in stone and several storeys high.

Monumental thought: Caerlaverock is a place where some great efforts in building were made, only to be abandoned. It happened when the old castle was completed in stone by 1250, then replaced by the new castle after less than 30 years. Much later came the Nithsdale Lodging, completed in 1634 and enjoyed for a mere six years before the castle was partially dismantled. Then, as now (and fortunately for all of us), power and prescience don’t come as a double package.

At first, it’s the elegance of the arches that draws me in. The west door of Inchmahome’s priory church is like a fanfare of them, with curve after curve nested in its carved stones. Through it, another large arch is framed. Lay visitors would have entered the church to get access to the nave from that north side.

Undaunted by this knowledge, I step through the main portal. That’s how Augustinian canons would have entered, on special occasions during the centuries from the late 1200s until the 1500s when this fine set of monastic buildings was in use. The view down the nave to the east end (choir and presbytery) where the altar would have stood seems surprisingly long. It ends in five tall, thin windows, soaring up beneath another curve in the wall.

The sense of exaggerated perspective is not an illusion, since the nave tapers inward slightly from west to east. I process down it, my progress unrestricted by dividing screens that would have partitioned the church in medieval times.

Outside, only the footings of walls remain on two sides of the cloister garth. But there’s an impressive set of buildings to the east, including a tall chapter house.

Converted to a mausoleum in the 17th century, it now houses a superb collection of effigies from medieval tombs. Unusually, these include a 13th-century double carving of a lord and his lady – Earl Walter Stewart and Mary – linking arms and facing each other.

Their effigy brings a surprising sense of warmth to the cold stones – a simple humanity communicated down the centuries in carving.

Images: 1. arches b&w 2. arches 3. face on masonry 4. grave 5. grave effigies 6. West wall church 

Top Tips: The ferry crossing to and from Inchmahome, coupled with exploration of the priory buildings and island, is well worth setting aside a couple of hours or more to enjoy. If heading east from here, Doune Castle could be a convenient second monument to visit during a single day.

Monumental thought (this time it’s a quote): ‘I’ll just give Colin a hand to throw covers over the effigies,’ announces Lynne the ferrywoman, before the last boat leaves. ‘There are bats in the chapter house.’

‘Following in Mary Queen of Scots’ footsteps’ sounds a bit of an old chestnut of a phrase. But for once, both phrase and chestnut ring true. The place where they come together is Inchmahome, a gorgeous, richly wooded island in the Lake of Menteith.

‘I hope you fall in love with place,’ smiles Lynne McKeggie, the Historic Scotland boatwoman who ferries me across Scotland’s only named ‘lake’ to the largest of its three islands. ‘Stand under the official tree when you want to go back,’ she adds, pointing to a tall fir near the jetty.

Once I’m ashore, Colin (who had been the morning boatman) advises a stroll along the edge of the isle before savouring the delights of the 13th-century priory. As I walk, I see the paving stones of a medieval path underfoot. The path enabled nobility who lived on nearby Inch Talla to walk dryshod to the priory church after landing.

In her girlhood, Mary Queen of Scots stayed here for three weeks and may have joined those high-born worshippers. Beyond, there’s a bower of box trees said to have been planted by her (though those I see are Victorian replacements) and many ancient sweet chestnuts, some looking old enough to have given green shade to the youngster while she visited and played here.
 
The trees, old and contorted as the ones that Arthur Rackham drew to illustrate Peter Pan, make a kind of anarchic avenue to flank the approach to the priory from this direction. Dappled sunlight is dancing on the walls of the ancient building as I draw near. Love? I don’t know. But there’s something in the air here …

Images: 1. Island from boat (blue mood) 2. boat & boatwoman 3. medieval path 4. sweet chestnut tree 5. Lake of Menteith & fisherman

Top Tips: I can’t do better than repeat Colin’s advice: sample the fringe of the island, as well as the buildings at its core, and you’ll notice some subtle, historic details. More prosaically, the loos are also near the approach to the medieval path, just beyond the ticket office.

Monumental thought: As visitors made their way along the medieval path, there might come a point where the sound of singing would reach them from the priory church. I wonder where that point was, and what trees were overhead when they reached it?

‘If walls could speak.’ The ones in Inchcolm’s fine buildings are mute as any, of course. But at least some of the words that were written and sung here have survived. That includes the Inchcolm Antiphoner – a collection of plain chant which reveals what music the canons here would have raised in worship.

Thoughts of that singing are in my mind as I walk the abbey’s many covered spaces. The chapter house roof, its octagonal sections divided by fluted arches, is like a stone starburst overhead. The refectory, above the south walk of the cloister, seems almost cosy.

The bell tower, from many angles near and far the defining structure of the whole abbey compound, is massive and square sided. The climb up it is tricky, using a narrow, curving staircase; the view over the Forth from the now-roofless top worth the effort.

But the room that makes the biggest impression on me is one of the most modest. It’s a small chamber on the first floor, north of the bell tower, which may have been where Walter Bower, Abbot of Inchcolm from 1418 until his death in 1449, wrote the Scotichronicon.

Described by the National Library of Scotland as ‘probably the most important medieval account of early Scottish history’, this adapts and extends an earlier work by John of Fordun, taking the story of Scotland forward to the 1440s. At times frustratingly verbose, it’s nevertheless a priceless survival – a record both of events and attitudes from the time of the abbey’s heyday.

‘Thank heavens for small miracles,’ I think, as I look out of Bower’s study window to the waters beyond.

Images: 1. abbey, island & forth 2. window & stair 3. bell tower 4. Walter Bower’s room 5. outlook

Top Tips: There are many ins and outs to Inchcolm’s buildings, and the structures themselves can hold some surprises, such as the way bell tower shows where former roofs, archways and screens were once placed. A Historic Scotland guidebook is always a good purchase. But here, it can be invaluable as a way of finding your way around and understanding some of the complexities of the buildings.

Monumental thought:

Silent contemplation was an important part of the life of the Augustinian canons of Inchcolm. But part of the legacy of this place is bringing sound from the Middle Ages to the present: the sound of simple music; the voice of someone, proudly Scottish, describing both the grand events of his times and some of the gossip.

Somehow, the proximity of the Lothian and Fife coasts gives an extra pleasure to a trip to Inchcolm. They’re near; and yet … Arthur’s Seat and the shapes of Edinburgh buildings to the south; the Forth Bridges, Dalgety Bay, Aberdour and other Fife towns to the west, east and north seem wholly other.

What matters, on a journey such as this, is the feeling of separation from the everyday. It’s a voyage to a place apart. And as the buildings of Inchcolm draw near, both the grandeur and the strangeness of the island begin to be revealed.

The main buildings here are the finest surviving group of medieval monastic structures in Scotland. Their walls and windows, chambers, cloister, vaults and bell tower are testament to Inchcolm’s long occupation by Augustinian canons, from the 12th until the 16th centuries.

Part of the island’s strangeness comes from structures derived from both conflict and worship. The abbey buildings themselves were fortified in the 1400s to help the monks defend themselves against repeated attack from the English. And in the 20th century, Inchcolm was an important military base in both World Wars.

Heavy-duty guns here guarded approaches to both Granton and Leith docks, and to the nearby Rosyth naval base. Parts of gun and searchlight emplacements and some wartime buildings still stand. But one of the most intriguing military structures is a WWI tunnel that leads through the hill east of the abbey.

Many visitors seem wary of entering this dark passage, where voices and footsteps echo. I brave its deeps, and emerge, blinking, in bright sunshine where gull calls rise in communal scream.

Images: 1. Inchcolm Abbey from the Forth 2. Inchcolm Abbey 3. gull 4. gulls and bridges

Top Tips: Between April and late October, boats go to Inchcolm from both North and South Queensferry. Many visitors leave from the latter, but be warned: South Queensferry can be very, very busy on sunny days. So allow plenty of time to find a parking space, if you’ve come by car, and to buy a ferry ticket. Allow several hours for these preparations, for the boat journey and for island exploration.

Monumental thought: Latin inscriptions carved on some of the abbey stones can give plenty of food for thought. I’m especially taken with the one that translates as: ‘May this house stand until an ant drains the flowing sea, and a tortoise walks around the whole world’.