It was never likely to match the glamour of Sir Elton John and David Furnish, but the gay wedding of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen’s Music, and his long-term partner was expected to be every bit as sensational.

In probably the most bizarre event planned for the remote Orkney island of Sanday, Sir Peter, 72, and Colin Parkinson, 52, a builder, were to arrive before guests on a miniature railway overlooked by a herd of cattle, before being “married” in a tearoom by a member of the Hell’s Angels.

To the accompaniment of music composed by Sir Peter called The Sanday Light Railway, they were to exchange vows in front of leading musicians, including the clarinetist Dimitri Ashkenazy, the Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell, and a smattering of friends from the pop world.

But yesterday Sir Peter said that he was taking legal advice after Orkney Islands Council refused to allow Sanday’s registrar to carry out the ceremony.

Accusing the council of “downright discrimination”, he said: “Everybody can get married where they live except me, it seems. Ever since the law on civil partnerships was brought in, we thought that finally there was an opportunity to get married and to have a little celebration. There are all sorts of people we were wanting to invite from the music world and it would have needed a lot of telephone calls. Well, if we can’t have it here in the place we live then we don’t want to do it at all in Orkney; we’ll probably go to London.”

Sir Peter, who was born in Salford but moved to Orkney 37 years ago, asked Sanday’s resident registrar, Charlie Ridley, last year if he would be prepared to officiate at a ceremony this spring.

Mr Ridley, a member of the Aire Valley chapter of the Hell’s Angels, based in Leeds, was told by the council that it had no objection to him conducting the ceremony, only to be informed before Christmas that it had suddenly changed its mind.

Instead, it said that the couple would have to travel to Kirkwall on the Orkney mainland because registrars on outlying islands did not have the power to carry out same-sex partnership ceremonies.

Mr Ridley, 48, who is the owner of the Sanday Light Railway, which bills itself as Britain’s most northerly passenger-carrying railway, said: “It is the law that everybody should be allowed to have a ceremony whether it is a same-sex partnership or one between a man and a woman.”

He said that he was leaving the island in protest. “We are leaving in disgust. It’s such a great shame because Sanday is such a beautiful place,” he said.

However, the council raised the prospect last night that a compromise solution may yet be reached. A spokesman said: “In common with all the other home-based registrars in the Orkney Island Council registration district, the Sanday registrar is not authorised to carry out civil partnership ceremonies. The council will be discussing this situation with all those concerned to find an acceptable solution within council procedure.”

Sir Peter, who refused to divulge details of figures from the pop world he would invite to the ceremony, had hoped to invite about 50 guests to attend inside the Brief Encounter tearoom. Along with the Sanday’s 521 inhabitants, they were then planning to continue their celebrations in the island’s two pubs.

He and Mr Parkinson, who is also from Lancashire, have lived openly together on Sanday for years. They had hoped to turn up at the ceremony pulled by a burgundy-coloured miniature steam train called Molly, one of four locomtives on the seven-and-a-quarter-inch light railway that circles Mr Ridley’s two-acre croft.

Sir Peter said: “We wanted to arrive by train at the tea room, it would be a lovely theatrical gesture.”

However, even if the council relents and allows the ceremony to go ahead in Sanday, he may not get his wish of arriving by train. Mr Ridley has begun to dismantle the railway, which took him seven years to build, after the council told him that he did not have the necessary licence.

He remained defiant last night. “After spending over £50,000 setting this up I have closed the railway and I’m leaving,” he said. “But not before I marry Peter and Colin here.”

Civil partners

16,000 gay weddings since Civil Partnership Act came into force in December 2005

4,000 ceremonies in the first six weeks of the new legislation

25% of all ceremonies have been in London.

75% have been between men

£1m celebrations for Sir Elton John and David Furnish, his Canadian boyfriend. Guests included Elizabeth Hurley and Rod Stewart

19 & 18 the ages of Sonya Gould and Vanessa Haydock, the first gay soldiers to marry

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