Hoy

Hoy is an island in Orkney, Scotland measuring 143km2 & mdash; ranked largest in the archipelago after the Mainland. A causeway, the Ayre, links to much smaller South Walls; the two islands are treated as one entity by the UK census. DescriptionThe dramatic coastline of Hoy greets visitors travelling to Orkney by ferry from the Scottish mainland. It has extremes of many kinds: some of the highest sea cliffs in the UK at St John's Head, which reach 350m;; a light-stone precarious sea stack taller than the facing cliff - the Old Man of Hoy; patches of northernmost scattered, hardy woodland and the remote possibility of locally extant Orkney charr documented in 1908 at Heldale Water. The most northerly Martello Towers stand here built to defend the south entrance to Scapa Flow at Longhope in 1814 towards the end of the Napoleonic War, never used in combat. The highest point in the archipelago, Ward Hill, is on Hoy. The main naval base for the British fleet in both the First and Second World Wars, Scapa Flow, was at Lyness in the southeast of the island. Some rather incongruous Art Deco structures nearby date from this period.

Hoy is an island in Orkney, Scotland measuring 143km2 & mdash; ranked largest in the archipelago after the Mainland. A causeway, the Ayre, links to much smaller South Walls; the two islands are treated as one entity by the UK census. DescriptionThe dramatic coastline of Hoy greets visitors travelling to Orkney by ferry from the Scottish mainland. It has extremes of many kinds: some of the highest sea cliffs in the UK at St John's Head, which reach 350m;; a light-stone precarious sea stack taller than the facing cliff - the Old Man of Hoy; patches of northernmost scattered, hardy woodland and the remote possibility of locally extant Orkney charr documented in 1908 at Heldale Water. The most northerly Martello Towers stand here built to defend the south entrance to Scapa Flow at Longhope in 1814 towards the end of the Napoleonic War, never used in combat. The highest point in the archipelago, Ward Hill, is on Hoy. The main naval base for the British fleet in both the First and Second World Wars, Scapa Flow, was at Lyness in the southeast of the island. Some rather incongruous Art Deco structures nearby date from this period.