- Sandwood Bay
Location map
United Kingdom
lat=58.54946
long=-5.08472
width=180
float=right
caption="Sandwood Bay shown within theUnited Kingdom "
(gbmapping|NC206665)Sandwood Bay is a natural bay on the far north-west coast of
Scotland . It is best known for its mile-long beach andAm Buachaille , asea stack , and lies about 5 miles south ofCape Wrath . Behind the bay's largedunes , stretches Sandwood Loch - a freshwater loch full of brown andsea trout .Though remote, and with no road access, the bay is easily reached by a 4-mile long, yet well-trodden and fairly flat, path leading from the gravel car park at the
hamlet of Blairmore. Sandwood Bay is part of the Sandwood Estate which is run by theJohn Muir Trust .Because of its isolation, the bay has become distinctly romanticised with several legends accorded to it. One
legend tells of amermaid spotted on one of the two jutting rocks there a hundred years ago. Alexander Gunn, a local farmer, was on the beach, searching for one of his sheep, when his dog made a startling discovery. One man, MacDonald Robertson, often spoke of the time he met Mr Gunn in 1939. This is what he reported: "On 5th January 1900 ... Gunn'sCollie suddenly let out a howl and cringed in terror at his feet. On a ledge, above the tide, a figure was reclining on the rock face. At first he thought it was a seal, then he saw the hair was reddish-yellow, the eyes greenish-blue and the body yellowish and about 7ft long. To the day Alexander Gunn died in 1944, his story never changed and he maintained that he had seen a mermaid of ravishing beauty." [cite web| url=http://web.archive.org/web/20041014140837/http://jmt.org/cons/sand/cult.html| title=Sandwood Estate: culture| publisher=John Muir Trust | accessdate=2006-11-05 ]Another legend tells of the
ghost of asailor that would often knock on the windows of the old cottage (now a disusedbothy ) on stormy nights - apparently the victim of ashipwreck there. Indeed, before the Cape Wrathlighthouse was built in 1828, the bay is said to have played host to many a shipwreck - all of which still lie buried under the sand! In the 1920s, authorSeton Gordon witnessed many submerged wrecks in the sand while walking here. In a book he wrote in 1935, "Highways & Byways In The West Highlands", he says: "I was astonished at the number of wrecks which lie on the fine sand of this bay. All of them are old tragedies: since the placing of a lighthouse on Cape Wrath just over a hundred years ago, no vessel has been lost here. Some of the vessels lie almost buried in the sand far above the reach of the highest tide". He also commented on the possibility of there beingViking longboats hidden there, since Sandwood Bay had in fact been used by the Vikings as a stopover point a thousand years previous. In fact, the name Sandwood Bay derives from the Viking name 'Sandvatn' ("sandwater") given the bay all those centuries ago. [cite web| url=http://www.iprom.co.uk/archives/caithness/miranda.htm| title=The Log of the "Miranda"| author=Donald Carmichael| publisher=Highland Archives| accessdate=2008-09-29]Footnotes
External links
*cite web| url=http://www.jmt.org/sandwood-estate.asp| title=Sandwood Estate| publisher=
John Muir Trust | accessdate=2008-09-29
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.