Dancing, swimming and working in your 70s – the UK islands full of superagers

It’s mid-morning on Monday, and Wendy Flett has already been to Aquafit and swum a few lengths of the pool. After our meeting, she’ll go to yoga. Her weekly routine includes pilates, aerobics and wild swimming with the Stromness Singing Selkies (they sing so they don’t feel the icy Orcadian water). She teaches children to swim, does bingo calling and volunteers for charities and lifeboats. This packed schedule would be impressive enough for someone in mid-life, but Wendy is 74. “I’m not the exception [on Orkney],” she offers. “And I don’t do anything on a Friday…”. The former elderly care nurse from Stromness (who got her first tattoo, a puffin, to mark her 70th birthday) is part of a generation of Orkney natives – born and bred on the archipelago of islands off the north coast of Scotland – and still living there many decades later. Earlier this year, her homeland took on the enviable title of the healthiest place in Britain to grow old, with the highest average healthspan – the age to which you can expect to live in good health. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), this age on Orkney was 72.9. Other areas across the UK barely scraped 60. In Blackpool, residents can only expect to get to 50 before their health declines. There is 500 miles between the two locations but what else is contributing to this loss of 20 years of good health? And could Orkney’s success be replicated? Wendy Flett got a tattoo of a puffin to mark her 70th birthday (Photo: Ken Amer/Orkney Photographic) Experts suggest there are likely to be several factors. Dawn Skelton, Professor in Ageing and Health at Glasgow Caledonian University, tells me before my visit that one of the keys to longevity is integrating physical activity into daily life (“nobody wants to hear that, but it’s true,” she says). Skelton suspects that pastimes such as crofting [working small plots of land practised in the Scottish Highlands and Islands] might help locals build strength and maintain balance. Skelton also predicts I’ll find people eating a fairly balanced diet on Orkney. On Stornoway, she noticed a narrower choice of food in the supermarkets than on the mainland: meaning fewer ready meals, more home cooking, more inherited recipes. Another important pillar of longevity? Strong social networks. “I guarantee you’ll find a strong community on Orkney,” she says. In Oxford, Professor Sarah Harper, who established the Institute of Population Ageing, says “there is no magic bullet [to good ageing]” but “diet and exercise are essential, avoiding loneliness, a clean environment [in terms of air quality] and good healthcare. One would assume on Orkney they’re active, with family nearby, and probably a good diet. Tick, tick, tick”. ** Shorts When I arrive at 70-year-old Moira Kelday’s bungalow at dinner time, she’s just come in the door. She spent the day deep-cleaning a charity shop where she works. In her spare time, she is a wedding planner for couples who get married on Orkney (as a lifelong Orcadian – she literally grew up in the house next door – so she is well placed to advise on beauty spots). Moira isn’t the only one keeping busy: her husband retired and then went back to drive buses for cruiseliners. Moira used to run the Stenness Diamond Club, a social group for the over 60s, but visiting numbers had dwindled from 40 to six. Not because there were fewer pensioners, but because they had no time. “Many were in employment or volunteering, a lot were farmers,” she says. People aren’t working because they need the money but because they want purpose, she adds. “We had residents in their 70s, 80s and 90s who didn’t attend because they said the Diamond Club was only for ‘old people’!” Why does she think people are living so long in good health? “Community keeps us young,” she says. “I don’t know anybody who just retires; people do volunteering and hobbies”. Moira does wonder if the same is true for those who move onto Orkney (locals call them ferry-loupers). “A lot are English. What makes them come? I can’t imagine packing up and going to Cornwall”. The i Paper’s Sophie Gallagher at the St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall (Photo: Ken Amer/Orkney Photographic) Marion Sutherland, 70, is a ferry-louper but has been on the island since she was 30, and married an Orcadian, so is well integrated into the community. Part of a walking group (the group chair just retired at 80; other walkers go dancing five times a week); she helps with a community garden, exam invigilation, a talking newspaper, dog-sitting, and a Ukrainian language group, and goes running most mornings. “That is a normal level of activity [here],” she says. What is helping people live such active lives? Radio Orkney has a daily “what’s on” slot that people can advertise for free. There are community spaces; in Stromness, a tea room has been left to the older residents; over-60s can go in and make a drink for free. Age UK runs a social group in Kirkwall with biscuits, tea, a quiz and a therapy dog. Skelton says a lot of it comes down to “what your family and friends do – you do too”. If everyone around you is active and out, you do the same. In a small community, that is amplified. She gives an example of close-knit ethnic minority communities with strong faith at their core – they also have better health outcomes than more dispersed groups. Additionally, she says that the coastal, remote isolation may be playing a part. Is Orkney the closest that Britain has to a Blue Zone? These are areas of the world where more people live to over 100. They currently are Okinawa in Japan (known for a diet rich in soy and sweet potatoes), Sardinia (a plant-heavy diet and tight-knit community), Nicoya in Costa Rica (a diet of beans and corn, daily physical labour and strong faith) Ikaria in Greece (Mediterranean diet) and Loma Linda in California (a community of Seventh-day Adventists with strong social support, rest days and vegetarian diets). Lesley Palmer, professor of Dementia and Ageing Design at the University of Stirling, says: “The links to the Blue Zones are tempting. “There are similarities around resilience [in the face of adverse weather/isolated lives], a lifestyle which encourages natural vigorous movement, purpose, and community. And blue zones are coastal, with high levels of daylight in the summer months.” Just like Orkney. Donna Cuthbertson moved to Orkney from Maidstone in Kent with her husband and their daughter (Photo: Ken Amer/Orkney Photographic) Fitness instructor Donna Cuthbertson, 41, runs Orkney Dance and Fitness, and specialises in teaching older people. Many students are well into their 80s. Donna is originally from Maidstone in Kent and moved to Orkney nine years ago with her husband, who is a police officer. This gives her the advantage of being able to see where Orkney excels in comparison to further south. “Orkney is good at social connection; everyone looks out for each other,” she says. “They’re also good at moving, going out, and even when they retire, they don’t. I teach a lot of farmers and their wives; they’re not just doing cardio, but that muscular, functional movement too”. Indeed, Thorfinn Johnston, 80, took me on a road trip around the island, driving for hours telling me about his twice-weekly 5k running habit and sailing traditional Orkney yole boats all summer. Even the photographer for this article, 70-year-old Ken Amer, still runs his studio and is a keen sportsman. He used to play rugby; now it’s pickleball and badminton. He hasn’t always been in good health; he had a heart attack, prostate cancer and a nasty fall off a pier a couple of years ago. But a physio told him that his exercise habit meant he got off lightly without major injury. Donna is keen to highlight the food component of Orkney’s success. “There is less fast food, we don’t have UberEats, Deliveroo, or McDonald’s,” she says – the island’s isolation makes the logistics of installing a fast-food model tricky. “Also [residents] are not sitting on the M25, getting home late and putting on an oven pizza. If stress levels are lower then you’re eating better”. Wendy agrees that people still eat more traditional food – like mince and tatties. As well as lifestyle choices, there are other systemic issues like healthcare to consider. One might assume that a more rural community might struggle on this front. Indeed, you still have to be flown to Aberdeen for bigger operations or intensive care. But primary care is strong. Delivered through 10 GPs, Kirkwall, the largest town, also has a recently renovated hospital: the Balfour. Many still have a personal relationship with their doctor that feels the stuff of yesteryear: Moira’s mother had cancer and the GP would pop in to see her every day on his way to work. Thorfinn Johnston at the Bishop’s Palace (Photo: Ken Amer/Orkney Photographic) As for getting a GP appointment, it’s not an issue. “There aren’t the delays you hear about elsewhere. I just phone up,” says Marion. Donna, who is a part-time link worker at the GP surgery, linking patients with services, says “the waiting lists are 100 per cent better here”. Of course, it would be remiss not to discuss deprivation as part of the healthy life puzzle. But unlike other places ranked highly in the ONS list, like Richmond-on-Thames, Orkney is not considered a very rich area, says Skelton. However, Orkney does boast one of the lowest unemployment rates in the UK, at 1.5 per cent of the working-age population. This is significantly lower than both Scotland and the UK as a whole. Palmer says it is also worth remembering that people moving to retire on Orkney are also likely to be more well off. “I’ve never known a job centre so quiet,” says Donna. A few of the locals stress how much work there is on Orkney, from farming to tourism, renewable energy and oil rigs. Orkney creates more clean electricity than its inhabitants need – even after exporting to the national grid, it has about 130 per cent of its needs. Thorfinn tells me: “We have relative prosperity, there are no mansions but people living in comfortable houses, and there is a relatively fuzzy distinction between classes”. A 2008 book by William Thompson also flagged this “classless society”. “When it comes to HLE I feel that deprivation cannot be underestimated,” says Skelton. Instead of a Blue Zone, she would describe Orkney as a ‘super aged’ population, a United Nations classification which depends on the share of over 65s. “I believe on Orkney [over 65s are] 26 per cent of its population”. ** As I fly back south – less than an hour to Aberdeen on a small twin-engine plane – the distance feels further. Orkney’s geographic position, a factor that might seem undesirable to many, may actually be what is allowing it to remain a positive outlier. Cut off from the ultra-processed diets and keeping ties to ancestral habits of community and movement is allowing it to buck a downward health trend not just seen in the UK but the western world. It is not without its problems – and for those who aren’t connected to the community, isolation can easily set in, says Donna – but for now it is promising a retirement of good health without the need for Hollywood biohacking and expensive treatments. And as we all live longer, who can say they wouldn’t want that?