Lunches & Evenings

The Driftwood Cowboys – Duncan McLean, Iain Tait, Brian Cromarty and Douglas Montgomery – pick up musical flotsam from the Orkney shores and build something unique from it, connected by stories, reflections and conversation. Country, blues, swing, bothy ballads and traditional fiddle combine in tales of island life.

High in the south of Slovenia, near Italy and the Adriatic Sea, rises the great plateau of the Karst, a mass of limestone shaped by water. Join Dr Edvard Kobal to see images and find out about the landscape itself and the food it produces in the loamy terra rossa soil, including the red wine known as teran and the air-dried ham pršut.

Astronomy is one of the rich mix of influences on the Scottish composer Eddie McGuire, in conversation here with astronomer Dr Anne-Marie Weijmans and trumpeter and conductor Bede Williams, both from St Andrews University. He has also played for more than 40 years in one of Scotland’s most distinctive traditional music groups, the Whistlebinkies, and a group of Orkney traditional musicians will help to celebrate the occasion.

The story of the hurricane-force winds of 1953, told through recordings past and present and archive photos. Dr Tom Rendall is joined by Ailsa Seatter (Westray), Billy Cardno (Kirkwall), and Donnie Grieve (Harray), and recently recorded accounts from Isa Stanger (Kirkwall), Jim Pratt (Shapinsay) and Jim Lennie (Sanday). Sarah Jane Gibbon reads a description from her grandmother, Bessie Skea (Countrywoman).

Meet friends old or new and enjoy the best of Orkney cheese, meat, fish and baking. The One O’Clock Toast today is in memory of Rae Phillips, lightkeeper at various stations and miller at the Barony Mills for many years. It is given by Keith Johnson.