---
title: "Orkney Part 5"
type: "post"
post_id: "210"
slug: "barony-mill-and-birsay"
canonical: "https://eskerhazy.ca/?p=210"
markdown_url: "https://eskerhazy.ca/?easypress_markdown_post=210&easypress_markdown_format=md"
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txt_url: "https://eskerhazy.ca/?easypress_markdown_post=210&easypress_markdown_format=txt"
published: "2026-09-24T17:41:22+00:00"
modified: "2026-09-26T14:37:52+00:00"
author: "admin"
categories:
  - "Le peregrinazioni di Lis"
tags:
  - "Barony Mill"
  - "bere bannock"
  - "bere barley"
  - "Birsay"
  - "Skiba geo"
site_name: "eskerhazy"
publisher: ""
language: "en-US"
generator: "easyPress Markdown"
generator_version: "1.0.6"
---
Birsay and Barony Mill
----------------------

*In which Lis visits a water mill and makes* *bannock from a 5000+ year old type of barley.*

![](https://eskerhazy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/1000017899-1024x771.jpg)For the next week, this is the view from my bedroom window, out over Waulkmill Bay and the Loch of Kirbister. I’m staying in a lovely bed and breakfast called Foinhaven.

![](https://eskerhazy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/1000017917-1024x771.jpg)I went for a short hike near Birsay, along the cliffs and through farmland. The oblong hollows (nousts) in the picture above (a place called Skiba Geo) were where fishermen kept boats when they brought them up from the shore.

![](https://eskerhazy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/1000017943-1024x771.jpg)The above geo (narrow inlet from the sea in a ravine), like many coastal cliffs, had many seabirds roosting in it. The path continued around to the head of the geo and back along the other side. This was the first of many such formations on my coastal walks in Orkney.

![](https://eskerhazy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/1000017948-771x1024.jpg)That afternoon, I had booked a tour of the Barony Mill and an accompanying bere bannock-making workshop. Bere (an ancient form of barley) is possibly the oldest continuously cultivated grain in Britain, and recent genetic testing on bere discovered at the neolithic site at Skara Brae indicate that those farmers were cultivating the exact same type of here as what is grown today. Bere is milled here on the only remaining operational mill in Orkney.

![](https://eskerhazy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/1000017962-1.jpg)After the mill tour, we went to the nearby community centre to bake some bere bannocks (delicious).

![](https://eskerhazy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/1000017970-771x1024.jpg)That night I got to meet a very lovely friend, Jessie, who promptly distracted me from my laundry with nonstop purrs and demands for petting.

![](https://eskerhazy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/1000018905-945x1024.jpg)