Sandwood Bay
Coordinates: 58 ° 32 '36 " N , 5 ° 4' 11" W.
The Sandwood Bay is a bay at the extreme north-west coast of Scotland . It is known for its kilometer-long beach and Am Buachaille , a rock needle in the sea. It is located about seven kilometers south of Cape Wrath . Behind the large dunes of the bay, Sandwood Loch stretches - a freshwater lake full of trout . Sandwood Bay is part of the Sandwood Estate, which is owned by the John Muir Trust.
Although remote and without road access, the bay is easily accessible via a six-kilometer, but well-trodden and fairly flat path from a parking lot in the hamlet of Blairmore. Swimming is not recommended because of the current.
Because of its isolation, some legends have formed around the bay . A legend tells of a mermaid who was discovered a hundred years ago on one of the two protruding rocks. Farmer Alexander Gunn was on the beach looking for one of his sheep when his dog made a surprising discovery. One man, MacDonald Robertson, spoke often of the time he met A. Gunn in 1939. This is what he reports: “On January 5th, 1900 […] Gunn's Collie suddenly let out a howl and doubled over in fear at his feet. On a ledge, a figure lay on the cliff above the tide. At first he thought it was a seal, then he saw the reddish-yellow hair, the green-blue eyes and the more than two meters long, green-yellowish body. Until his death in 1944, Alexander Gunn never changed his story and he claimed that he had seen a mermaid of gorgeous beauty. "
Another legend tells of the ghost of a sailor who often knocks on the windows in the old hut (now a disused shelter) on stormy nights - apparently the victim of an accident . Before the Cape Wrath Lighthouse was built in 1829, many shipwrecks are said to have washed up in the bay that are still lying in the sand.
In the 1920s, author Seton Gordon witnessed many of the sunken wrecks lying in the sand while walking. In the book Highways & Byways In The West Highlands, which he wrote in 1935, he says: “I was amazed at the number of wrecks that lay on the sandy beach of the bay. All of them are old tragedies. Not a ship has been lost here since the lighthouse at Cape Wrath was commissioned a little more than a hundred years ago. Some of the ships are almost buried in the sand, well beyond the reach of the highest tide ”. He also discussed the possibility that Viking longboats might be hidden there, since Sandwood Bay was used as a stopover by the Vikings a thousand years ago. In fact, the name Sandwood Bay is derived from the Viking name Sandvatn ("sand water").
In June 2009, an microlight crashed on the beach. The pilot Keith Brown was injured in the accident. The plane had to be dismantled and 14 men walked 6 kilometers to the nearest street.
Footnotes
- ^ Sandwood Estate: culture . John Muir Trust . Archived from the original on October 14, 2004. Retrieved November 5, 2006.
- ^ Donald Carmichael: The Log of the Miranda . Highland Archives. Retrieved September 29, 2008.
- ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/8117635.stm
Web links
- Sandwood Estate . John Muir Trust . Retrieved September 29, 2008.
- The walk to Sandwood Bay