Egypt of the north

Intrigued, I approached the small stone-built ivy-clad building in the grounds of Woodwick House. The wooden door was garlanded with white paper flowers and I pulled a piece of string which operated a latch. Inside was a little chapel. Bench-style pews with kneelers faced a screen behind which, on the altar, was a carved chest of drawers and candelabra streaked by melted wax.

A sign on a chair reads: "Quiet is the home of natural sounds." The walls were lined with pigeon-holes as if for sorting letters, two of them containing framed poems, while long lengths of ivy and a shaft of light cascaded in through the roof. It was magical. The discovery set the tone for a day of opening mysterious doors.

I caught a ferry from nearby Tingwall, on Orkney mainland, to spend the day cycling around the 13-mile perimeter road on the Isle of Rousay. Most of the other passengers headed off clockwise to visit the main attractions but I went in the opposite direction and, that way, had the place to myself.

A slow, grinding climb took me to the north side of the island. To my right, I could see the circular steel cages of a fish farm. In the distance, on the island of Wyre, were the ruins of the wonderfully named Cubbie Roo's Castle and, on neighbouring Egilsay, I spotted the round tower of St Magnus Church.

I reached the summit round the corner on north side of Rousay. I gazed out towards Westray and the other North Isles while standing on a giant white sculpted block with a fishing-net design and the inscription: "Gods of the earth. Gods of the sea."

There followed a lovely, long gentle descent to the only sandy beach on Rousay. The setting was pleasantly pastoral but unspectacular, in keeping with most of the scenery on Orkney. I left the bike briefly to walk to Saviskaill Bay to watch the seals.

Lunch was sandwiches sitting on springy heather overlooking the deserted island of Eynhallow. All I could hear was chatter of the oystercatchers, calls of the gulls and churn of waves in the ferocious currents off Scabra Head.

To my right was a great swathe of land occupied by crofters before the Highland-style clearances of the 19th century. Earlier on my circuit of the island, I'd come across a poignant roadside plaque in honour of a James Leonard who was banished from Rousay by the laird, General Traill-Burroughs, following the evidence he gave to the Royal Commission on crofting in 1883.

The chairman of the commission asked Traill-Burroughs to promise not to take retaliatory action against any crofter who spoke out against him. He refused – and evicted Leonard.

"I will not be cowed down by landlordism. We are telling only the truth," the plaque quotes Leonard as saying. The tale seemed so far away from such a benign day in the 21st century.

Traill-Burroughs built Trumland House, a Jacobean-style mansion, as his residence and its gardens are open to the public.

Of much greater historical note is what's called the most important archeological mile in Scotland, which also forms the Westness Walk. I again left the bike to explore it. Top of the bill on this sort of historical seafront promenade is Midhowe Broch, a fortified family house dating back to the Bronze and Iron Ages. It has two rooms, each with its own hearth, water tank and quernstone for grinding corn. Next door is what looks like a large modern barn.

Open the door, though, and you enter Midhowe Cairn and the stillness of a cathedral – or "great ship of death" as it has been described. The tomb measures 32 by 13 metres and contains 12 compartments separated by stalls formed of slabs of rock.

When it was excavated, in 1932-33, the remains of 25 people were identified. Skeletons were found on the benches, eight lay crouched against the tomb wall and the bones of six were in neat heaps. You can't actually walk around inside the cairn because of its fragility and age – it dates back to 3,500 BC – but view it from a gantry suspended from the roof.

Further along the walk are the remains of a Viking farm and the 16th-century church of St Mary's Swandro. In its yard I came across the grave of James Sinclair, who drowned, aged 75, in 1883 while crossing Eynhallow sound with the mailboat. Next to the church stands the Wirk, a square tower attached to a rectangular structure thought to have been a two-storey Norse hall.

The final ruins on the walk belong to Skaill farmhouse, dating back merely to the 1700s. In the latter part of that century, half of it was occupied by a farmer, his wife and seven children and the other by a joiner, his wife and eight children. It must have been cosy. The last tenants were evicted by – you've guessed it – Traill-Burroughs.

I got back on the bike to check out some more cairns. There are lots of them on Rousay and throughout Orkney. The compartments of the burial chambers are similar but the means of access novel.

First up in the trio of cairns was the Knowe of Yarso which, from the outside, is neatly fenced like an electricity sub-station. The bones of at least 29 adults were found here – 17 skulls were separated from the skeletons and arranged facing inwards.

You enter Blackhammar Cairn, the second in the series, via a submarine-style hatch in the roof and then down a ladder into what's like a nuclear bunker.

Taversoe Tuick, meanwhile, is novel in that it has two storeys, the upper reached by opening a wire-mesh door and the lower by heaving open a wooden door.

My lasting reflection, though, as I waited for my return ferry, was the importance of death to the living in Neolithic times. Orcadians rivalled Egyptians in that respect, and I fully understood why it is called the Egypt of the North.

WHERE TO STAY AND WHAT TO DO

Bike hire: Trumland Farm hostel. Tel 01856 821252.

Recommended accommodation: Woodwick House, Evie (on Orkney mainland, close to the Tingwall ferry terminal). Excellent food and a wonderful Bohemian ambience. Tel 01856 751330 or woodwickhouse.co.uk

Ferry: Orkney Ferries. See bit.ly/rousayferry

For Paul Kirkwood's film of the Woodwick House dovecot, see bit.ly/dovecot, and for his film of Taversoe Tuick, see bit.ly/taversoe

YP MAG 4/9/10