BAA Autumn Meeting 2025 – Orkney

The 2025 Autumn Meeting is being held on Orkney from the evening of September 5th to Sunday 7th, with the main day being Saturday 6th September.

The meeting is being held in association with the Orkney International Science Festival (OISF), which runs from Thursday 4th September through to Wednesday 10th September. BAA members will be able to access a 25% discount on ticket prices to OISF events.

The venue for the Autumn Meeting talks is the Orkney Theatre, Kirkwall. This is part of the Kirkwall Grammar School complex.

The outline programme for the weekend is

5th September  

Evening talk at the Orkney Theatre

6th September

Talks in the morning and afternoon. A buffet lunch will be provided

An evening members and guests dinner at a Kirkwall hotel

7th September

A tour of some of the sights of Orkney.

Tickets

There will be a nominal fee for the talks, lunch and refreshments on Friday evening, and Saturday.

The Saturday dinner and Sunday tour will be charged at cost.

In order to gauge the interest in the dinner and tour please can you email Local Organiser Callum Potter (callump@britastro.org)  if you are interested in attending either of these, so we can estimate numbers.

Accommodation

We are not organising accommodation for attendees.

There are many hotels, B&B’s, AirBnB’s, self-catering etc. As accommodation does get booked up quickly it is best not to wait to the last-minute.

Travelling to Orkney

There are ferries to Orkney from Scrabster (near Thurso), Gill’s Bay (half way between Thurso and John O’Groats) daily. There is a less frequent service from Aberdeen.

Kirkwall Airport is served by Loganair – and there are direct flights from Inverness, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow daily. There are also less frequent direct flights (with a stop) from London and Manchester.

Further details about the great line-up of speakers we have planned will be posted soon.

If you have any questions please reach out to the Local Organiser or Meetings Secretary.

Local Organiser : Callum Potter (callunp@britastro.org)
Meetings Secretary: Steve Floodgate (meetings@britastro.org)

Venue

Orkney Theatre, The Meadows, Kirkwall, KW15 1QN