The Scapa maps took me back a bit. In the early seventies we took a couple of Pumas up to Ness Battery. This was a barracks used by an Artillery unit guarding the westerly approach to Scapa Flow. It's new use was as an exercise centre for the Army but the dining room still had all the murals painted on the walls by the wartime occupants. Ther main theme seemed to be small cottages with rose archs over the front door; something not to be found in the Orkneys.
The guns had gone but the magazines, empty, were much as they had been during the war. Double walls of concrete and even the blast shutters, designed to stop a hit on the gun position effecting the ammunition, were still working.
There is a photograph of a Puma, not me, perched on the top of the Old Man of Hoy. I had a look at it but I didn't let there be too much weight on the wheels in case this million year old structure plummetted into the sea. I would not have been very popular.
On the Island of Hoy there was several abandoned buildings somewhere near the centre. They were connected with the main fleet fuel store and it was in the process of being emptied. The fuel oil was kept in an underground complex and I had a wander down the tunnel for a couple of hundred yards then I was chased out for not having a safety helmet.
It is common for Her Majesty's aerial conveyances to visit parts of the UK where exceptional standards of food can be purchased. Machranhanish for kippers, Rathlan Island for lobsters, Channel Islands for duty free but we found one in Hoy for lamb.
The Orkneys produce more lamb than they can eat so once a year a ferry full of livestock trucks all baa baaing away departs for Aberdeen. We were fortunate in meeting a farmer who had some that had missed the boat, as it were, and were available at a very advantageous rate. A few phone calls back to Odiham and we had a group of buyers. Several lambs fell over and a butcher packed them into the requisite number of freezer packs and we punched oft daun sauf.
It was a long way back to Odiham and we had a planned night stop at Leuchers. A bottle of Orkney malt persuaded the NCO i/c airmans mess to put them in their refrigeraters overnight and they were in excellent condition and ready for the freezer at Odiham.
Any sort of mess function, officers or sergeants, would require copious amounts of Deutsche Sekt. We had a CAAP (Components Accelerated Ageing Programme) aircraft that you could take anywhere as long as you burnt off the hours. Gutersloh NAAFI was the obvious choice and certain arrangements may have taken place with them in the portcullis hats.
You cannot do it now. I was on a visit to my old squadron recently and every minute of flying has to be accounted for.