Diary of a Shopkeeper, 15th March

There was consternation in the shop on Friday, when we got a request to make a Mother’s Day delivery to a farm up beyond Evie. That’s a fair way to go, especially as we’d have to do it after the shop closed. But it was a generous hamper, worth the diesel, even at this week’s prices. Anyway, if K&G is to be a key part of someone’s celebration, whether Mother’s Day or Christmas or a birthday with a zero at the end, we feel the responsibility to go the extra mile. Or the extra 20 miles in this case.

I took the order, jotted down the address, and put the payment through. I assured the dutiful son on the other end of the phone that him being in Costa Rica and his mum being in Costa Orkney was not going to spoil her Mother’s Day. And that was that. Easy. It was only later we found there was a problem.

I was busy filling a hamper with wine, chocolates, and other tasty things, so asked Ingrid to find the farm for me: the address I’d taken down was Toom Pooches, Costa. We’d never delivered there before, so we’d have to locate it and print out a map before I left with the delivery. As I slotted the lid into place, I heard Ingrid calling me from over at the computer. ‘Eh, Duncan…something’s not right.’

‘What’s up?’ I said, going across to look over her shoulder at the map on the screen.

I frowned. There wasn’t a map on the screen.

‘Click on Orkney Core Paths,’ I said.

‘This is Orkney Core Paths,’ she said. ‘It’s not working.’

‘I used it short ago,’ I said.

‘So did I,’ said Ingrid. ‘It worked then but… it’s gone.’

‘Hatston, we have a problem,’ I said.

The Orkney Core Paths website is, I suspect, one that’s used with great regularity by a small number of people and unknown to the majority. In case you’re one of the latter, I will quote what it says on the council’s website: ‘Under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, Orkney Islands Council had a duty to prepare a Core Paths Plan. The purpose of the plan is to identify a system of key routes for outdoor access in Orkney. The Core Paths Plan for Orkney was developed through extensive consultation with a range of stakeholders including local communities, access user groups, local organisations and agencies, land managers and visitors to our islands.’

One set of regular users is made up of keen walkers and hikers. Probably horse-riders and off-road cyclists too. They want to know where publicly accessible paths start and finish, where they connect with other paths, and what lies along the way. They could buy the relevant Ordnance Survey maps and mark the paths themselves, but how much better to have them all laid out on one handy, zoomable webpage. Especially useful are the updates due to damage or works, which might alter your plans. At the moment, for instance, there’s the following alert: ‘Please be aware that sections of core paths WM31 (at Warbeth), WM26 (Outertown Road), WM29 (at Sandy Hill), WM29/30 (at road junction west of Brinkies Brae summit) and WM27 (Quarrybanks Track) will be closed until the end of March 2026. This is due to construction works for the Nexan Cable from Stromness to Finstown.’

The second group of users is folk like us, shopkeepers and other businesses, who make deliveries across the county. There’s no better way to find out where you’re going than the Orkney Core Paths site: every single house is named, which even large-scale OS maps don’t do. Six years ago, when lockdown struck, we transformed K&G into a delivery service bringing food and drink and a cheery, masked greeting to housebound folk across the county. But we struggled. How to find these houses and farms and even roads we’d never heard of? The solution came from a local freight company: do what we do, look it up on Orkney Core Paths. We did, it changed our lives, and we’ve used it hundreds of times since.

But on Friday we couldn’t. As usual we did what we were told: ‘You can view the Core Paths Plan on our interactive map by selecting the link in the ‘Related Sites’ section.’ But when we clicked, a message popped up: ‘This link has been retired.’ What remained was a series of documents from 2008 detailing a Strategic Environmental Assessment of the paths, and a 56-page document from 2018 detailing the purpose of the Core Path Plan, listing each path with brief description. It ended with a series of reproduced OS maps of the county, with the paths highlighted in neon colours. Sadly, these maps are low-resolution, non-zoomable, and useless for navigation purposes.

What’s happened to the Core Paths Map? Is its disappearance a technical glitch, or a victim of council cost cutting? Whatever, I hope it hasn’t gone for good.

And if Mrs McX is reading this, I’d like to apologise again for turning up with your hamper very late on Friday. By the time I found Toom Pooches, I’d put in so many miles crisscrossing Costa, I might as well have driven from Costa Rica.

This is the Core Paths page, minus the all-important interactive map. But check back next week for an exciting update…

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 19th March 2026. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.