Farewell to Stromness Shopping Week

Well the sun has shone, ice cream has been eaten, crabs caught, and doughnuts devoured - all the ingredients of a successful Stromness Shopping Week! Tomorrow is the final day of festivities, culminating in the fancy dress parade through the street to the Market Green ,where the prizes will be presented by the Shopping Week Queen.

But before the riot of colour, costumes, and caustic satire of the floats and fancy dress there is a day of heroic sporting activities to take part in (or in our case enjoy as a spectator). At 10.30 am there is the Holms Race when intrepid swimmers will brave the icy water, and the attentions of the remaining crabs from Wednesday's Crabbing Championship, to swim from the Holms back to the Pier. Then at 11am the Ferry Inn 10K Fun Run starts from the Pier Head, following a route around the town.

Trophies for the Holms Swim and 10K Fun Run, along with those won at Friday's Swimming Gala, will be presented by the Shopping Week Queen at 12.30 followed by the first ever outdoor competition for "Orkney's latest watersport craze" Canoe Bat Polo. Gosh we feel exhausted just thinking about all that activity!

We hope everyone enjoys themselves and the sun manages to hang around for the parade, or at least the rain which has made an appearance in previous years, stays away. As always we will be staying up way past our bedtime to watch the fireworks at 10:45pm, before saying farewell to another happy, fun-filled Shopping Week!

photo by Cecil Garson



Crabbing Championship - the result!

Thanks to Radio Orkney's Facebook page we can tell you that the inaugural Scottish Crabbing Championships held this morning were a great success with forty youngsters tacking part.  The winner with 5 crabs was Kieran Wilson and here he is receiving his trophy.

photo from Radio Orkney Facebook page, more here



Kieran looks pretty please with the result, as he should, but we're not so sure about the crabs:

Crab 1: "This isn't what I had in mind when you said we were taking part in Shopping Week" 
Crab 2: "Don't blame me, I thought we were entered in the Doughnut Eating contest!"

Crabbing

We hope you are enjoying Stromness Shopping Week so far, there has even been some sun - enough to tempt us along to the Pier Head for our annual shot on the bouncy castle and 99 ice cream cone; we have learnt our lesson about the order in which these events should happen!

But there is more excitement to come before the week is over. We are particularly looking forward to the Crabbing Competition, which is a new event for 2012, as it reminds us of our childhood attempts to catch crabs at Ness, which usually ended with the crab letting go of the bait before we could land it. We are sure the competitors will be much more successful at tomorrow's (Wednesday 18th) competition, which starts at 11am  at the OFS Ponds on the Pier.  It is open to children under 16 and there will be prizes for the greatest number of crabs caught and the largest crab caught during the competition.

Competitors are also encouraged to wear crab and lobster themed fancy dress, for which there will also be prizes. It will be interesting to see if anyone manages to claim the £50 prize offered by Orkney Fishermen's Society for the first lobster caught on a handline during the competition. Lines, nets, bait and buckets will be available, although competitors may bring their own bait - for those of you who have a secret recipe for attracting crabs!

The organisers are taking no chances that the crabs will fail to make an appearance, as we note in the competition information that "OFS will be releasing several hundred kilos of green crabs into the basin on the morning of the competition".

For those of you too old to enter the competition but inspired to try your hand at crabbing we have several cookery books with instructions for cooking crabs and lobsters should you be successful!

image from http://www.orkneycrab.co.uk/gallery.php