A Magical Bay
ASKED how I wanted to spend my recent birthday, I didn’t hesitate – Sandwood Bay. It was Cameron Mcneish who first told me of the magic of Sandwood and I’d wanted to visit ever since.
Just south of Cape Wrath, the hidden bay – a four-mile walk over moorland – has a beach described by many as the best in Britain; a mile and a half of fine, pinkish sand backed by marram grass-covered dunes as big as houses.
Cameron describes it as a “thin place”, in Celtic lore a location where the veil between this world and the next is at its most insubstantial. Prior to the construction of the nearby Cape Wrath lighthouse in 1828, the bay was notorious for shipwrecks and there are stories of ghostly sailors roaming the towering dunes.
Other tales are of mermaids and kelpies, and even lost gold from a wrecked Spanish galleon, part of the Armada forced to round the British Isles after being harried into the North Sea from the Channel by the English fleet and bad weather.
It’s a place where Vikings stopped off on voyages from the Northern Isles and Scandinavia to raid the west coast and Ireland, hauling their longships ashore for repair. There is evidence, too, of
Pictish settlements.
The bay is also home to a dramatic sea stack, Am Buachaille – The Herdsman – prized by climbers.
Our plan was to camp for the night and as we pitched our tents, a fine mist rolled in from the sea, lending the scene an ethereal quality.
Westward, next landfall is Greenland and we lay in our sleeping bags listening all night to the roar of waves crash onto the beach.
We saw no ghosts, but there’s no doubt the beach has an atmosphere like no other I’ve visited. A better birthday I can’t remember.