Taexalia

wild.life

Sandwood Bay

Am Buachaille Sandwood Bay

I have wanted to visit Sandwood Bay for quite a while. In March 2008 we found ourselves at the top of the track in an unexpected and un-planned stop but the lateness of the hour meant we could not undertake the four and a half mile walk to the beach (and the four and a half mile walk back).When I created my Day Zero Project, it was an easy and obvious goal to add to the list - and a quite stunning goal to mark "complete". That said, I want to make the trip again and camp for a night or two and have longer to explore the dunes and walk the length of the beach. Maybe I'll combine that idea with my wild camping alone goal, we'll see.

As someone who lived in Edinburgh for seven years, it is quite special to travel to one of the most stunning places in the country and to feel solitary and isolated. Of course I wasn't actually solitary since my companions were Mither and Gemmadog, but we barely saw another soul. The vastness of the beach itself plasy a part in this, but also the nine mile round trip means that less people drop by for a wee wander.

The walk itself isn't exceptional, just necessary - although if you are lucky you may catch sight of some wildlife.... frogspawn, butterflies, moths, dunlins, and ubiquitous sheep are things I have seen, there is probably more to spot. You can enjoy the weather and movement of light across the mountains to the north and the lochs and lochans scattered around. When you come to a pair of big old weathered sleepers marking a long gone gate you can relax to the idea that you have arrived.

Don't relax for too long though - if you want to get to the sea you need to walk through the dunes and that's a workout in itself.

There's some interesting lore about Sandwood Bay too - a now roofless cottage was said to be haunted by a mariner who knocked on the windows, shipwrecks and buried treasure are said to lie amongst the dunes and one person I spoke to the following day had heard "the whole place has a haunted atmosphere".

To me, Sandwood Bay feels immense as I'm standing on the sand looking out at the Atlantic Ocean. To the south there is the impressive sea stack, Am Buachaille, and to the north a series of cliffs step out into the sea. To my mind they appeared as dragons holding the boundary between land and water and I could almost imagine them sliding in and out, back and forth as their fancy took them. There is an elemental otherworldly feel to this place, a vastness.

Sand and water and a million years gone by, to quote Beth Nielsen Chapman, and I sang it too since there was so little by way of an audience