Orkney Image Library

Transport to Orkney's outlying islands has improved so much from the 1970s.
I could not imagine loading the highly strung breeds of cattle reared in open courts that we have today on a piece of soft very breakable!! shipping rope the like of what we used tae use back then.
Very sadly I remember our very disabled Grandmother being lifted onto the Hoy Head in that same cattle box! how degrading was that!!.
Yes we have come a long way in transport since then.

I wonder if "we have come a long way in transport since then," John. There does not appear to be much disabled access on Orkney Ferries North Isles boats. A disabled friend of mine has to sit in his car. Hopefully, the next generation vessels will improve on this. I can imagine your grandmother's humiliation on being winched aboard in a cattle box.

Ah, the old Hoy Head! I remember it well! The worst boat trip I ever made was one Friday night out of Scapa pier, we left Scapa at 3pm in a force 10 swappy gale and were buffeted all the way across the Flow. We attempted to go into Flotta but were blown off the pier at every attempt to tie up, so we turned for Lyness where I was to disembark. Again we were blown off from the pier on several attemps to come along side, by now it was about 8pm and a full storm was raging! Reluctantly the crew set off for the relative shelter of Longhope Bay, we finally managed, after a battle,to tie her up at Longhope pier well after midnight! Myself being from Lyness and having no transport was now stuck on the other side of the island! Old Danny Rich was the postie at the time and had come down to the pier to collect the Lyness mails for which he was responsible, he offered me a lift home in the post van. This being the early hours of Saturday morning, he was of course well oiled by this time! That is one of the worst journeys I have ever had to make in my life, after being seasick for over 9 hours on the Hoy Head I was now crammed into the back of Danny's old post van with all my shopping,the Lyness mails and various boxes and packages also destined for North Walls and Lyness. Between the wind buffeting off the van and the state of Danny's inehbriation we wove our way homewards at all of 10 mph.It was 3pm when I finally got home to my bed. exactly 12 hours after boarding the Hoy Head for at was most a two hour journey from Scapa to Lyness!This must have been around 1972 I think !

Them were the days! I remember Danny just as you described him, he was a right character. He used to deliver mail to my grandfather at Swartland when I was out for my summer holidays. I can't help thinking that in those days people just got on with things and didn't complain, just greatful to make it home. Imagine the hoo ha today if the Hoy Head was hours late as you experienced.

I knew your grandad well David and his old Clydsdale horse prince whom he used to drive down to Lyness in an old tub cart quite regularly to the shop, post office and the pier. Also his brood mare Lilly, she was lovely, we bought one of her foals Candy who we had for many years and bred five beautiful foals out of her with Valarie Irvine's arab stallion. Sadly she had to be put to sleep as she got a bad leg infection that wouldn't heal up.

A whole book could be written about the life o Danny Ritch.

Danny was the safest drunk driver who ever lived, many was the time people came on him parked by the roadside, lights on, one wheel on the verge always on his own side, sound asleep, never knew Danny to run off the road he seemed to have a "sensory inbuilt system" that felt the verge, I never knew Danny to damage anything or anyone mind you he only drove at about 5mph when homeward bound on a Saterday night.

I doot todays drink drive laws widna look too favorable on his excellent track record.

I do remember Danny rolling a post van, running late for the Hoy Head at Lyness, goin doon roond the corner on Ore Brae, a blow out on a tyre was blamed for it...before the days o' the post vans he did the round wi a bike, and aboot xmas time left Tower House, bound for Boathouse, somebody found him ower the shore near the Martello Tower, raffled up in mailbags , and the bike on top o' him, he had been having xmas cheer during the delivery of mail, some guy, he was a worthy.....

That must have been a record of a journey that one Elaine. No matter what Danny was like the night before he told me "he never needed an alarm" A fine man and a good postman but like so many didn't reach retirement if I remember right.

When old Danny drove the Island roads in the 60s and 70s we didn't have a policeman on the island alot of the time and the times when we did he turned a blind eye to most things that went on around the place! I remember once looking for Constable Bennis.We knocked on the police house door only to be told by his wife Anita that the dot on the horizon about a mile out was himself fishing the low tide for sea trout, so we just left a message with her and went home,as it wasn't very important !

Aye John. There used to be a lot o' men like that. I used to play in bands and one of the men I played for, who took a fair bucket, used to say on the way home, "Lukk at that Sandy, sterrin' straight, steerin' straight." He was - at about 15mph. Noo adays, thir wid be a car wi' a funny colour scheme, waitin' at the end o' the Harray road, lukkin for fur somebuddy steerin' straight, at 15mph. Aye, whit a stories could be written. Why don't you try it John.

Aye Beryl Danny didna need tae sign the secrets act he widna told a word should yae hiv chapped" his taes aff.

Are there no photos of old Danny that could be posted in this archive? I would love to see some of the old well kent faces again ! Harry Berry, Dr Dunbar,Lady Skrine, Jacky Irvine,Tam Learmont, Nan Rosie, Comander Mackenzie from Hoy , the list is endless! come on folks get out your old photo albums and lets try and re-live happy times !

Hi Beryl, Danny always seemed really ancient to me, but then I was only a teenager in those days so everyone over about 30 was very old !!!(I'm nearly 54 myself now !) I think he did actually retire from delivering the post and spent most of his last days in Lyness pub! I seem to think that they found him dead in bed in his wee tin house up by the school. Nobody had seen him for a few days so a search party was sent out from the pub and that's how they found him, a sad lonely end. He had been retired less than a year, the mails were his whole life ! We always used to say that he had a wee fancy for old Violet Wilson in Lyness post office, I don't know if there was any truth in this rumor,they would have made a fine couple as the mails were her lifeblood too!

I seem to mind he was once done for drunk driving and the lawyer got him to plead that he had been lifted because he was staggering. Then the lawyer made the sherrif believe that he always walked like that, he even had him practice a limp before going to court. i think he got off.

Could that be the Orkney lawyer that was known for being the only one who could get a drunk driver off back then? ;-) Think it was the day of the Queen Mother unveiling the monument and Jock Gray was a defence witness. Jackie Irvine is here picture #25700 and Danny is here picture #21486 . Danny moved to a house in Longhope at the end of his life and it was maybe the end of him for he fell outside in the frost with a bottle o' whisky in his hand and died from Hypothermia. Likely he was trying to save the bottle and banged his head I can't remember maybe he took a turn but I'm sure John will mind on and help me out with the details.

Danny (Donald) Ritch's mother Ann Sutherland died after his birth and he was brought up or stayed with his Aunt Jessie Sutherland (1883-1949)