Sanna Gale

We've managed a bit of walking over the festive season.  Yesterday we took the track to Glendrian but were thwarted by the flooded burn just short of the township, so this morning we set off for Sanna on a  day of sunshine, hail showers and a very brisk westerly wind.

Crossing the machair to the beach into the teeth of what was, by that time, little short of a full gale gave us a taste of what was to come, for the wind....

....had whipped up a wicked sea, seen here rolling in to the most southerly of Sanna's beaches.  The spume was being blown in across the beach where....

....it was enjoyed by the youngest of our visitors, Darcy from Essex.

 The wind was also blowing sand in waves across the beach, stinging any exposed skin, bouncing high enough to get in our eyes, and piling it....

....against the rocks.  It's just as well that the sand was being blown inland because the beaches have changed their profiles considerably since we last saw them, with much of their sand eroded out to sea.

We crossed the Sanna burn and walked to the point on its north side.  This brought us into the full force of the gale, and it really was, at times, quite difficult to stand upright.  In very high winds, the sea is beaten flat and the tops whipped off the waves.  We've not seen a gale at Sanna blowing, as this did, straight in onto the beaches, so the little bay in this picture, one of our favourite spots in summer for a lazy day on the beach, had become a cauldron of waves and foam.