The Churchill Barriers

摘要

I had occasion recently to visit the Orkney Islands, a beautiful part of the country built by Devonian sedimentary rocks. The landscape and sea cliffs of these windswept isles are dominated by flat-bedded flags and sandstones formed in the Orcadian Basin, The Pentland Firth that separates Caithness from the 'mainland' of Orkney is reputedly one of the roughest stretches of water in the world, so it was with relief that I could fly into the delightful town of Kirkwall, paved with Stromness Flags, similar in form and formation to the Caithness Flags, on the nearest piece of neighbouring mainland Scotland, Caithness itself. But it was travelling from Kirkwall to the island of South Ronaldsay that I came across a largely unsung piece of engineering geological endeavour from the wartime years.