Portuairk to Bay MacNeil

On Sunday, with an hour or so to spare on a beautiful winter's day, we drove to Portuairk to walk over the hill to Bay MacNeil. Portuairk faces northeast across the bay to Sanna, and has a spur of Beinn Bhuidhe immediately behind it, so much of this lovely crofting village sees little winter sunlight, even at midday in mid-November. It's the village's one disadvantage. In summer, with its safe, sandy beaches and spectacular views, this place is little short of paradise.

Bay MacNeil lies immediately to the west of Portuairk, an easy half-hour's walk away, albeit over soft and boggy ground. Technically - the Diary was once a Geography teacher - the bay offers an excellent example of a 'tombolo', where an island has been joined to the mainland by a sand or shingle deposit. Other than at high tide, when the sea covers the beach, the bay itself is, strictly, a 'cove', since it has a narrow entrance. Coves offer excellent anchorages - this one must once have been used by the residents of the ruined croft house that stands a hundred metres behind the bay.

This photograph, taken from the island looking east, shows the other side of the tombolo, with the bay hidden to the left. The bare, rocky hill is called Sgurr nam Meann (sgurr, appropriately for this hill, means 'rocky peak', meann a 'young deer'). The hard rock which forms this uncompromising peak is the variety of gabbro called eucrite, gabbro being the coarse-grained version of the better-known lava, basalt.

Returning to Portuairk we looked northeast across Sanna Bay to the scattered houses of Sanna village and beyond, to the gaunt cliff commonly called The Cat's Face, whose Gaelic name is Carraig, which means 'promontory'. In the distance stand the snow-covered mountains beyond Knoydart.

We were out for longer than we had planned - it was so beautiful scrambling across the rocks around the bay that we had to drag ourselves away - and in that time saw not a soul outside the village. And the sands of Bay MacNeil were pristine, so no-one had ventured there that day.