The Ardnamurchan Coast

These pictures were taken during the long sunny spell that made this spring so exceptional.  The sea was still, the air crystal clear, the light wonderful.  This was Ardnamurchan at its most calm and beautiful.

The first was taken at Sanna while scrambling across the barnacle-covered rocks near Sanna Point.

This picture of a pool of water left behind by the falling tide, also taken at Sanna, gives some idea of the care with which the sea sculpts the sand as it retreats after high tide.  Disturbing these pristine shapes seems almost blasphemous.

Beaches are tucked into strange places.  The beach at Bay McNeil is caught between Eileann Carrach and the mainland.  It's a beach which constantly changes its profile: this year, it seems flattened.

The beach at Bay McNeil would make a perfect pitch for beach cricket, a game best played on a rapidly rising tide, when the fielders in the outfield end up swimming.

The beach at Rubha an Duin Bhain is cut off from the wide bay that separates it from Carraig by a mass of boulders.  It woudl have been an ideal beach for the Vikings to have dragged their longboats up onto, but they'd have wrecked them on the rocks.

This is the westernmost of the bays that run along the shoreline of Portuairk.  Unlike the others, it has no sand to make it fun for children.  It is, somehow, a dark bay, a place of seaweed and the slow swirl of the waves.  The cumulus clouds stand over Rum, with the little island of Muck in front of it.