Scottish History Podcast’s Owen Innes
Owen Innes has been interested in history since he was a youngster and for the last eight years has been working as a tour guide bringing history to life.
His podcast means he can share his love of Scottish history with more than just the folk on his bus trips.
“It's always got to be the Orkney Islands. The Orkney Islands, to me, especially someone who's interested in history, the Orkney Islands just seems to have everything really from the start of time, or the start as far back as we can really trace humans to as recently as World War One, World War Two, and then potentially in the future, they might be the first of the kind of Scottish islands to declare its independence.
They're wanting to retreat back to Norwegian rule apparently, so that'll be fun. Be interesting to see whether I need to take a passport on tour with me every time I go up there.
On my podcast, I covered Orkney, so for me, 24 hours in Orkney I couldn't see any further than that.
If I think about places up on Orkney, so like some of my favorite places, you know, you've got like the burial tombs, the burial chambers, there's one called Unstan in particular, and Maeshowe. When I started as a tour guide Orkney was where I always wanted to go to. I had to wait a full year of working for that company before they sent me there.
So I finally go up there. And I'm looking forward to Skara Brae. So Skara Brae is, you know, a Neolithic village. It goes back to 3500BC, so 5500 years old. And each little house has a bed, it's all made out of stone, but, you know, they've got a bed and we've got this lovely presentation tables and things that are all just made out of stone.
It's beautiful. Absolutely phenomenal. And there's so many of these buildings. I think there's 10 surviving but there's probably more that were lost in the sea because the sea's quite close to it now. That's what I was looking forward to because that's what I'd seen on the TV.
Every documentary that I'd seen about Orkney, that's what made me want to go. But then we turn up to this Maeshowe place and I'm like, what on earth is this? You know, I knew nothing about it. So I was going in technically for the first time so to speak.
And I go into this place and it's just this amazing preserved burial chamber, you know, the history about it is all about the Neoliths and where they would bury people and things.
And then it sort of got abandoned, just left behind. And then the Vikings find it. So the Vikings break into it and they carve like Viking runes on the walls.”
Owen’s perfect day:
Where: Orkney Isles, including visits to Skara Brae and Maeshowe
Food and drink: Porridge with strawberry jam, Cullen Skink, chicken Balmoral, Kirkjuvagr Orkney Gin
Music: Manran, Skippinish
