Secret Beaches

This is one of our secret beaches on the north coast of Ardnamurchan facing across the Minches to Rhum, Eigg and Muck, seen in its summer tranquility. Over the ages, its rocky bays have been cut into the hard gabbroic rocks of the ring dykes, so getting down to them can be a scramble.

The beaches are only fully exposed at low tide. At spring tides, when the sea draws far back, most of them are briefly joined into a long stretch of sand ideal for beach cricket. That sand runs far out under the sea so, as the tide slips in again, the water turns wonderfully blue in the sunshine.

The beaches are formed of a slightly grey sand though, if you look closely, like all Ardnamurchan beaches, they're formed of the smashed remains of millions upon millions of sea creatures. The beach in the distance is much whiter, and is formed of coarser shell material; it's an ideal place to find tiny, delicate cowrie shells.

The beaches all seem timeless, caught only in the changes of tide and weather....

....but, step above them and look carefully at the land that fringes them, and a different picture emerges.

The crescent-shaped mound at bottom left of this picture, covered in pale, coarse grass, is a fossil beach, called a 'raised beach' by geographers. It's formed of cobbles thrown up as a storm-beach thousands of years ago, when sea levels were higher - or, as might be a better way of looking at it, land levels were lower. The flat, darker green land to the right would have been a the floor of a shallow bay. It's the view our Mesolithic ancestors would have had when they first arrived along the western Scottish coast.