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