The purpose of this blog is to publish some of our pictures of the Isle of Skye, Scotland. We lay no claim to these being great photographs - they are just pictures of what we see, taken with ordinary compact cameras. We hope you enjoy browsing.

Richard and Sue


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Tuesday 8 November 2016

NW Skye's Beaches

Friends on holiday in Cornwall have recently sent me a couple of photos of their walks on beautiful sandy beaches. That set me thinking - about beaches on Skye...  Well, in spite of Skye having a very long coastline, we have very few sandy beaches here. In places, especially in the north of the island, the land ends abruptly at a sheer cliff (the highest clifftops on Skye tower some 1000 feet above the water below). In most other places, the shore is rocky and inhospitable - not an easy place for a leisurely stroll.

I have searched my photo collection and come up with pictures of some of the beaches in our local area...

Bharcasaig - a small beach of black basalt sand at low tide
Coral Beach at Claigan.
The beach is not sand or coral - it is actually a material called maerl -
dead fragments of a hard seaweed, crushed by the waves and bleached by the sun
Diubaig - a dramatic but difficult-to-get-to beach of black basalt pebbles
Galtrigill - a small, rocky and almost-never-visited beach on Loch Dunvegan
Flat bare rock at Greep
SAND! (but only at low tide) - shore of Loch Losait, near Gillen
Ramasaig Bay - another rocky shore
Un-named beach of rocks and pebbles near Trumpan