Riff

Kirkwall was a favorite stop. I contacted Craggies Taxi with a list of places we wanted to visit. They were wonderful! They made reservations for us to visit Maes Howe. They were on time and our driver was very informative. They are the largest cab company in the area. That being said they have 12. The best part is they charges 35 pounds an hour for the 4 of us, with nothing in advance.

Just to cast a bit of light on the tour operators policy re private tour cancellations in Kirkwall: local taxis don't take money upfront because if you book a tour with them & then don't show, they can legally take the next passengers off your ship instead & so won't lose money.

Local tour guides offering tours have private hire licences, which allow them to take pre booked tours only: so if you don't show up for whatever reason & they haven't taken money up front, they are not legally allowed to take anyone else out on tour so they lose out completely.

They've probably also turned down tour work unrelated to ships in order to take your booking, as there are very few qualified Orkney tour guides who have their own vehicles & so they are in demand, not just from cruise ships.

Hope this helps,

I just returned from the cruise that stopped in Kirkwall along with two other cruise ships. The amount of passengers completely overwhelmed the public transportation system. By the time we got to the ticket office for the T11 bus, all tickets for the day were sold out. As were all the ship's tours. We walked around the bleak and dreary town (all the buildings are a brownish gray color) and then took the tender back to the ship.

 

Not a very interesting port for us.

Bleak & dreary town?

Thanks everyone. I emailed all the car hire companies and each of the tour agencies listed on the tourist information site. All automatic cars and all guides were booked. I like the local Stagecoach bus and downloaded their brochure. I only hope we can get seats. I guess all we can do is get off the ship as quickly as possible and hope for the best. I emailed Stagecoach asking if tickets could be purchased in advance to assuer space but no answer. That was about 10 days ago and again yesterday.

 

Again thank you.

Hi guys,

If all the ships in port on July 5th are full there'll be 7000 pax in Kirkwall that day - I live in Orkney & saw the queue for the Stagecoach bus last year - 3 times round the bus station! It is usually a double decker bus which is fun but I think it's a max seats of about 78 with about another 25 or so allowed to stand up - they were like sardines last year. It's buy tickets on the bus on the day - no advance bookings

Really really strongly suggest that you pre book a tour/taxi/hire a car before you arrive or else take a ships shorex