Orkney, a group of seventy islands off the north coast of Scotland, is the ultimate escape to the edge. It covers only a few hundred of square kilometres but here you're confined only by your imagination.

Orkney has a fantastic archaeological legacy. Its standing stones, ancient houses and fortifications and the other thousand or so sites discovered throughout the island chain foster notions of time and timelessness.

Listen to the lyrical voices of Orcadians, whose accents and dialect echo the many hundreds of years Orkney formed part of the Viking sphere. Toy with evocative place names the Norse people left here and walk through the sites which record Orkney’s more recent history. Orkney offers time and space to savour its past, its spectacular coasts and seascapes, and its dynamic natural world.

Standing as it does where North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean meet and on the northern edge of Europe yet only 50 miles short of Greenland’s most southern latitude, Orkney is both a crossroads and a home for a great variety of birdlife. Vast numbers of birds nest here and large tracts are designated nature reserve land and here its splendours can be fully appreciated.

Orkney is at once a treasure house and a place which exudes hospitality. Orcadians wish you were here, and if tranquility, independence and renewal are your ideal, you’ll wish you were there.