27th April

Starting todays' post with a short poem and image from the road up to Sandwood Bay.

The Bay

This edentate bay appears to me

Like an open, gaping toothless mouth

In the pockmarked face

Of the rugged Hebridean coastline

Loch Inchard from Inshegra

The walk to Sandwood Bay crosses land owned and maintained by the John Muir Trust. The trust (of which I am a member so remember that I'm biased!) aims to purchase worthy land in Scotland and manage that land with the aim of restoring it to its original state. This may well mean that the land is reforested with native trees to return the land to its re-clearance state. In the case of Sandwood, the only access to the bay is on foot (hooray!). It's 4.5 miles in, 4.5 miles out and I would guess that I trudged around the bay and added 1-2 miles to that total over sand. Boy, was I knacked at the end of that day (and the next day too). The JMT has greatly improved this access path over the last few years and I am grateful to them for that. The first photograph shows a nicer part of the path - the stony part. 

The track to Sandwood Bay

At times, the path crosses some muddy and awkward bits where one has to skip across and around puddles, streams and bogs of various sizes. It makes the walking less straightforward than one may have planned for. The open moorland scenery may seem quite boring to some people but there are distant views of Arkle and Foinaven as well as several lochans, each with its own sandy mini-beach. These act as appetizers for the main course. Using my Black Diamond elliptical walking poles (ooh, is that another bit of marketing), I fairly skipped along this path in a way that belied my age and physical infirmities. It took me 1.5 hours to reach the turning point in the path where one can see, off to the right, the ruins of an old croft and its walled animal enclosures, and off to the left the first sight of Sandwood Bay.

Ruins, Sandwood Bay

Sandwood Bay, first look.

At this turning point in the path and for 20 minutes thereafter the bay seems to be like one of those mirages that never seem to arrive. Of course, it does arrive and one is left standing on a beach with (if you are lucky) no people or maybe one or two distant ones. in my case, there were two others I could see and they were so far away that I could barely make them out. Perhaps a new set of glasses is in order. I started at the south end of the bay and immediately started taking photos of the waves. After half an hour of shooting I setup my black and white film camera in the seemingly safe surf and proceeded to knock out some shots of the advancing waves using long shutter speeds and a ND filter that gave me 5 extra stops. I saw a particularly impressive example advancing upon me and got kinda excited about getting the shot. Alas, this quickly turned into the tsunami experience. I turned tail like the abject coward that I am and made for drier ground, thinking only of keeping my feet dry. After about 5 steps my brain apparently clicked into operating mode and I realized that my camera was still propped on its tripod in the surf. Turning and hoping, a silent prayer to Poseidon on my quivering lips, I saw that my camera was, as we say here in the USA, 'ass over tea kettle' in the now retreating surf. The damage was truly done as was my lovely camera. That was, despite my futile efforts, the end of my film photography for this trip. From now on it would be all digital baby!