Sandwood Bay

Sandwood Bay is in Sutherland, in the far north-west of Scotland, and is reached by a walk of about six and a half kilometres each way from the end of the road at Blairmore. It is the last substantial beach before Cape Wrath, the north-western corner of the British mainland.

The walk is the reason it is empty. There is no road within six kilometres and none at all along the coast north of it; the track crosses peat moor and small lochs and takes around ninety minutes each way. The bay at the end is two kilometres of pink-tinged sand with a freshwater loch behind, marram dunes, and Am Buachaille — a sixty-five-metre sea stack — standing off the southern headland.

The land belongs to the John Muir Trust, a conservation charity that bought the Sandwood estate in 1993 and manages it for access and for its machair, dune and peatland habitats rather than for sport. There are no facilities, no signage beyond the trailhead and no shelter. The loch behind the dunes is freshwater and holds trout, and the machair around it flowers in early summer.

The Atlantic here is cold, around twelve degrees at best, with real swell and no supervision of any kind. The nearest settlement of any size is Kinlochbervie, and the nearest thing to a town is an hour further. Oldshoremore and Polin, reachable by road near Blairmore, are the beaches for anyone not walking, and Cape Wrath beyond Sandwood is reached only by ferry and minibus through a live firing range.

Six and a half kilometres of peat moor each way, and then two kilometres of pink sand with a sea stack at the end of it and nobody on it. The walk is the whole reason it stays that way. Bring boots, bring water, and start early enough that the return is not in the dark.