She draws many contrasts between the 24 hour stimulation of London life and the solitude and wonder of nature in Orkney. The winter is long and dark and showing no signs of abating and Amy’s descriptive language helped me to fall in love with Orkney all over again as I endure the last few weeks before Spring. I picked the perfect time to read the book, during the peak of a particularly rough storm. All these things little facts combine to fascinate me. my house was built by a neighbouring farmer. My house looks down onto the bay that Amy describes and I can almost see the farm she describes from my window. Living in Orkney, and only a mile away from The Outrun and farm Amy grew up in, we share the same view. Strangely much of these fleeting glimpses into Amy’s life weaved their way into The Outrun and I now know why she was catching a plane to Papay. We briefly touched on similar stories in that we were both fairly recently divorced or separated and spoke a little of our experiences. Our paths never really crossed again other than the occasional sighting around Orkney but I later put two and two together and realised we followed each other on Twitter and further still I knew her mother who I met when I came up to Orkney for a first visit several years earlier, and she kindly invited me to lunch. For some reason, I know not why, I decided she must be a locum doctor or something. Tall and slim with long blonde hair, I remember thinking she looked a little out of place to be travelling one way to Papay and wondered what she might be doing there. Amy is difficult to miss as she is so striking in looks. While we waited at Kirkwall airport for our plane I was intrigued by a young woman also waiting for the plane who I now know to be Amy, the author of the book. It isn’t very touristy to take this flight in January, even the pilot commented so, but we’re not tourists and clearly my husband wanted to beat the rush. We would never set foot on the island but the flight from Westray to Papay is the shortest in the world, and we were doing it for the novelty/bucket list factor. On a bleak January morning in 2013 my husband decided to surprise me with a trip to Papa Westray.

The outrun amy liptrot review