Can we find the Mirk Hole on Eday?

Transcript of MumDeeDoes video #4:

​Hello my Darlings and welcome to Mum Dee Does. I am Dee, a mum who does it all and today I invite you to join us on an epic adventure! 

The story goes, that back in the day, in 1700’s or so, the Navy used to come to these Orkney Islands and take all the able-bodied young men to the Navy service. Some of the young boys did not want to leave the family farms and responsibilities and so they used to go and hide. They knew local island better than the Navy officers and so they were able to hide in all the caves and cliffs and secret hidey holes. One such hidey hole is called the Mirk Hole. 

Mirk Hole is one of the locations that people used to hide from the press gangs in, so it is going to be our job to find it and see if we can do better than the Navy officers did. We know roughly where it is. It should be somewhere near the Red Head and we do have the coordinates but there are no pictures on the internet and no further information about it so we're hoping to be the first to document this amazing new discovery and we invite you all to come with us and join us and see if we can locate it.

We are at Eday lighthouse which marks the halfway point between our house and the cave that we're trying to find. It's a beautiful landmark, we see it from our house and it is an actual working lighthouse - it actually flashes! James would know what it means, I don't. It probably just says that there's rocks under here somewhere or that it's safe to go that way. Onwards and, in this case, upwards as well! Onwards and upwards!

This was like a geocaching expedition: we found the coordinates and we know we were at ground-zero but we just could not find what looked like a sensible cave for boys to hide from these evil Navy recruiters. It's all fenced in, and for a good reason, as the cliffs just open to a rather raging ocean down below and so we did not fancy risking our lives (and you should not risk yours!) in order to find this obscure hole - and it probably is just a hole somewhere...

So we will leave this challenge untamed and finished, if you like. Mission failed! But it was a really good walk and we have not been here since you [Ron] were tiny and Ron had a good time and we found a ball what might have been our ball - it was just on the beach and he's been carrying it ever since and yes, yes, good walk, good views, good day and very good cliffs. Nonetheless, thank you for coming on the walk with us. Eday is definitely worth exploring and it's perfect for walking even off roads. 

So yeah, so thank you for joining us today. It's been a pleasure, subscribe down below to find out what Mum Dee Does next week. Ta ta for now! 

Ronnie: Bye bye bye