Beachcombing

We walked along the shore below Ormsaigbeg this morning, keeping along the high-tide mark to see what had been washed up from the Sound in the last couple of days. Most of the flotsam, as always, was plastic - milk cartons, soft-drink bottles and lengths of unusable rope thrown overboard from fishing boats. There's much less of this since the UK government passed laws banning the tipping of rubbish from ships, but there's still too much. Every now and again the village carries out a cleanup of the foreshore, but the trash is back in no time.

We had the beach to ourselves until we noticed a blue figure bent double near the waterline. It was May Angus, one of the crofters, exercising her right to pick whelks on the beach below her croft. Whelks - winkles to the English - are a useful source of income, being over £100 a bag in the run-up to Christmas, but the work is back-breaking, damp and cold, and, with the rocks so slippery, dangerous. Most of the whelks go away in large lorries to the continent, particularly Spain.

The beach below each croft was very important in the old days. As well as shellfish, it provided seaweed to fertilise the fields, and each croft kept a boat at the top of the shingle, which gave them fish from the rich grounds in the Sound throughout the year.

As we walked up from the beach, carrying our finds - a bright yellow plastic box and some firewood - an eagle hovered over Sron Bheag. That's the third we've seen this week. They choose to appear as soon as most of our visitors have gone home.