Chris Read

Accredited Professional Orkney Tour Guide & Qualified Archaeologist

I first came to Orkney in the summer of 2000. My partner and I were digging at the site of a Pictish Monastery in Easter Ross and decided to take a two week cycling tour of the islands at the end of the season. We based ourselves at the camp sites in Kirkwall, Stromness and Evie and cycled extensively around Mainland – visiting Skara Brae and Maes Howe as well as some of the smaller tombs, the stone circles at Brodgar and Stenness, the Neolithic village at Barnhouse, the Brough of Birsay and the Broch at Gurness. We also travelled to Hoy, for the Dwarfie Stane and the Old Man of Hoy, to Rousay for Mid Howe tomb and Broch and to Westray and Papa Westray for Noltland Castle and the Knap of Howar. All of this and much more besides, we managed to fit into a 12 day cycling tour and I simply fell in love with the islands.

Almost as soon as we returned home to York we began planning our next holiday to Orkney. We returned again in 2001 and 2003 and in the spring of 2004 we decided to take the plunge and move to the islands permanently. As soon as I secured work with Historic Scotland – initially at the Brough of Birsay and latterly at Skara Brae and Maes Howe – we packed all of our worldly goods and moved North.

It still stands as the best decision we have ever made. Rarely does a day go by without something – be it archaeological, meteorological or topological - stopping me in my tracks. The quality of the light, the ever changing weather, the magnificence of the archaeological sites and the mind-blowing vistas and seascapes regularly take my breath away. There is nowhere else I would rather live and work and the opportunity guiding affords me to share my passions with visitors to these glorious, mysterious and awe-inspiring islands often seems to be an archaeologist's dream come true.

Please contact me if you require any of the following:

·Tour with Driver-guide or Step-on Guide

·Town or Country Walking Tour

·Orkney and/or Shetland Holiday for groups & individual travellers

·Cruise Ship Shore Excursion

·Itinerary Planning

·Group Tour Director

·Corporate Hospitality Services

·Media or Press Liaison

Contact:

Chris Read

Wildabout Orkney

Tours, Holidays & Shore Excursions

4 Gunns Close

Kirkwall

Orkney

KW15 1DU

Tel/Fax: +44 (0) 1856 877737

Promoting the highest standards of guiding within Orkney

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