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WE have just returned from visiting our son and family in Orkney, where the weather was kind and we have a suntan, but our rain gauge here in Devon registered four inches in the 12 days we were away.

We needed to go to the small island of Eday and by chance we caught the ferry on the day of the official opening of Eday Heritage and Visitor Centre in a renovated Baptist chapel. The centre is the culmination of seven years of labour by the locals, all 130 islanders, and a splendid job they have done.

Part of the display showed the importance of Eday's position as a centre for tidal energy by unlocking the power of the sea.

A world first was achieved earlier this year when the first tidal energy produced in the UK went into the national grid.

To understand how this industry could develop in the future would be to compare the present development to that of the aviation industry, the present tidal technology would be the equivalent of the first flight by the Wright Brothers.

European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) was set up to provide developers of tidal and wave energy devices with a purpose built performance testing facility and over £15 million has already been invested. Orkney was an obvious choice with its ranging tides, pounding seas, high winds, safe harbours and expert local knowledge.

It ticks all the boxes and as the works' are on the seabed, there is very little visible above the water line.

Orkney's population of about 20,000 people gets nearly 50 per cent of its electricity from renewable resources.

The lambs on Eday looked well, as do the thousands of rabbits we saw that day. Orkney has had a dry spring.

On our way North we stopped in the Cairngorms at a B&B and at breakfast we were joined by a town living couple on holiday.

They wondered why on earth we should go to Orkney and we told them that our son had been a dairy farmer in Devon, but was now doing beef and sheep in Orkney. The man said: "That would be much easier because the animals would be turned out into the fields to look after themselves, so our son would need plenty of hobbies."

We met another lady who sympathised with farmers regarding badgers carrying TB, but thought badgers were just carriers and had not realised that they also caught TB and could suffer long lingering deaths themselves.

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