Incredibly friendly fast and affordable laundry service for those who need fresh clothes on your…read morelong journey through the UK. I turned them in when they opened and was able to easily pick them up during our lunch break before our evening activities. Such a nice thing to be able to do in the area so that I can shop and enjoy the rest of my journey with clean clothes!

Reasonably priced laundromat and dry cleaners. Very clean and in the heart of downtown Kirkwall…read more You can pay and put your wash in, do some window shopping, and come back and throw your clothes in the dryer before heading out for a coffee. The owner is very nice and will get you tokens for just what you need so long as you have cash. No frills cleaner so nothing extra, but just what you need for ordinary washing needs.

The St Magnus Centre is a great centre situated just behind St Magnus Cathedral. It has a wee…read morecoffee shop (great fresh coffee) with the best view of any of the coffee shops in town - a huge glass window looking straight out onto St Magnus Cathedral. There's a film about the life of St Magnus - which is free. And there's always a volunteer on duty who is happy to chat about St Magnus or about Orkney in general. The Centre is also available for hire by local community groups - there's meeting rooms, one of which can be blacked out and used for slide shows. There's also a kitchen, and the hire prices are very reasonable.

The centre has a lot of different rooms, bookable by community groups and used for a variety of…read morepurposes, including exhibitions, concerts and music lessons. There's a huge variety of room sizes, from the big ones on the first floor to the small ones up at the top. There is a lift, so disabled access is not a problem. The main 'town hall' part is worth a look on design grounds, and there's an information board giving all the previous Ba winners in the foyer. The centre has a cafe, which gets very busy at lunchtimes. It does good home made soup and filled rolls. I got SEVERAL hairs in my tuna mayonnaise last time I had a baked potato though and haven't eaten there since! The back part of the community centre is used as the Cavern Youth Club and would be a suitable venue for a teenage disco. There's also facilties like a pool table. The centre has clean toilets - and a disabled toilet. With having so many different rooms, there's lots of events on there such as the annual Charities Bazaar in November.

BBC Radio Orkney is a local radio station which broadcasts on the main Radio Scotland channel at…read morecertain times of the day. Every weekday morning throughout the year (except Christmas and New Year holidays) 'Around Orkney' is broadcast between 7.30 and 8am. This is a news programme with a lot else - there's news, weather, travel information, school closures (if the weather is bad this is where you find out which schools are open), a what's on diary and interviews. The presenters tend to use a lot of local dialect words and many of them are Orcadian with strong local accents, so this is a great way to find out the correct pronounciation of many local placenames. There is a short lunchtime bulletin at 6 minutes to 1, which gives the news headlines and weather. If the weather is bad, this is a great one for finding out whether the ferries are cancelled. In the winter, there's a selection of evening programmes. These range from a request programme, to Bruck (where people give away/swap unwanted items and make requests for items they want), to folk music, rock music, interviews with local characters, quizzes and Orkyology (the Orkney archaeology programme). Oh, and I mustn't forget the Dashing White Farmer. Radio Orkney are a real community radio station - adding a lot of value to the local community and participating in local fundraising, primarily through their annual 5 hour live extravaganza for Children in Need, where around £20,000 is raised annually from the people of Orkney.