I visited all four components of this WHS in March 2023. With an asterisk, more on which later.

The two freely-accessible parts, the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness both sit fairly close to each other on the major road that runs towards the western coastline of the Mainland Orkney and are impossible to miss. Each of them can be explored relatively quickly (although the parking lot for the Ring is a few hundred yards down the road from it). For my money, the Stones are more picturesque, while the Ring feels more spiritually charged. If you have extra time, walking around the Stones towards the shore will bring you after a couple of hundred yards to a relatively recently (1980s) discovered Barnhouse Settlement - not part of the WHS as it is, but worth a look for some.

The Maeshowe chambered cairn is also close by, but this is the one component that requires advanced reservations and a bit of additional time investment: you need to show up at the visitor center - which is not by the cairn - a few minutes before the start of the tour, and board a shuttle to go there and back for the guided portion of the tour that will last an hour or so. The mound is picturesque enough when seen from the outside and impressively built, if somewhat barren, on the inside. And then the guide will highlight runes and writings on the walls – admittedly dating from more recent times of the Vikings era – that make the place utterly fascinating. The guide did a fantastic job with all sorts of context and insights. I highly recommend making sure to see Maeshowe.

It should be noted that there are over a dozen other chambered cairns all over Orkney, not included in the WHS, but many are free to enter. For example, the Unston Cairn is less than a mile down the road from the Maeshowe visitor center.

The other component of the serial site is the village of Skara Brae, which sits somewhat away from the other three on the western coast of the island. Unfortunately, it can be closed on a given day due to “bad weather” with minimal notice. And so it was when we arrived. I am somewhat skeptical of the notion that a layer of snow on the ground and a wind chill of -3°C on a moderately cloudy day can truly constitute an instance of bad weather for people who make Orkney their chosen place of residence. On the other hand, the actual remains of the village are a quarter of a mile down the coast from the visitor center; you can walk around the perimeter of the site and towards the settlement even during the closure, but I judged it not worth the effort in the cold and wind – so maybe the bad-weather bit was not completely invalid. So, we limited ourselves to walking around the visitor center area for a few minutes and looking at exposed structures there. Hence, the aforementioned asterisk. Coming back another day was unfortunately not an option. I suspect Skara Brae would require at least an hour to explore in full. Furthermore, my rating may have been higher if not for the Skara Brae closure.