There was quite a crowd of us on holiday together in the north of Scotland. This made it difficult to enjoy time on my own with my Canadian cousins NT and DT, who had crossed the Atlantic to spend a couple of weeks with us during the heatwave.

Then I came up with a plan. I would suggest a day trip to Orkney with my cousins. There were two problems with this, however. First, news spread that I was organising a day out and others were now interested in joining us. Second, the ferries no longer ran from Caithness to South Ronaldsay. The proposed trip was doomed before it even began.