I visited Scotland's most beautiful (and remote) beach

Telegraph

31-05-2025

Nobody ends up at Sandwood Bay by accident.
At most of Britain's 1,500-or-so beaches, you park up and within a few minutes your toes are in the water. Today, after arriving at Sandwood Bay's nearest car park, I had been walking for an hour and still hadn't seen the sea.
If it wasn't for my guide Alastair's expertise, and the fact that there is only one path to the sea, I would have been tempted to sneak a look at Google Maps to check we were on the right course. But that would have been futile, too. There wasn't so much as a whiff of phone signal in the air – only skylarks and the breeze.
So we crunched forth. But with drizzle clouds threatening to unload and Sandwood Bay so stubbornly out of sight, I allowed a whisper of doubt to enter my thoughts. Will this beach really be worth the effort?
A walk across Martian bog
Our adventure began at the small gravel car park in Blairmore, off a single-track road dotted with occasional crofting houses. It's big enough to fit roughly 20 cars, but on our Saturday morning visit there were only three.
'You've got proper boots, that's good,' said Alastair Kennedy, an ex-Army man who now leads private tours of Scotland's most rugged corners. 'Would you like walking poles?'
I said I should be OK, but it gave me an idea that we weren't in for a brief stroll. A sign pointing down a stony track told us it would be a 6.5km (four-mile) walk.
We walked past a series of little lochans, each one bordered by a miniature golden-sand beach. Little trailers of the main attraction to come. If it wasn't for these traces of water, you could fool yourself into believing you were traversing the surface of Mars. Or perhaps the Patagonian tundra. No trees, no signs of human life – just the boggy steppe and a long path, seemingly to nowhere.
After almost an hour we reached a crest and began to descend. I caught my first glimpse of the North Atlantic and the dune system behind the bay.
'Not far now,' grinned Alastair. Instinctively, we picked up the pace.
Mermaids, ghosts and fallen pilots
When I said nobody discovers Sandwood Bay by accidentm that wasn't entirely true. Over the years, quite a few souls have ended up on these golden sands by mistake.
In 1941, one Sgt Michael Kilburn was flying a Spitfire out of Cape Wrath when the engine failed. He crash landed on Sandwood Bay and escaped uninjured. While much of the wreckage has since eroded away, the engine still sometimes emerges after a storm. In 2009, a microlight pilot named Keith Brown crashed on the beach after a failed manoeuvre and also lived to tell the tale.
The accidents at Sandwood Bay haven't always had happy endings. Before the lighthouse at Cape Wrath was built in 1828, the choppy waters claimed many shipwrecks. It is believed that vessels from the Spanish Armada, merchant ships and even Viking longboats are hidden beneath the sands here.
Unsurprising, then, that there have been reports of hauntings in the bay, a prominent one being sightings of a mysterious bearded sailor, supposedly from a Spanish galleon (although some suggest this was, in fact, the local – bearded – hermit James MacRory-Smith, who lived in a stone cottage near the beach for more than 30 years).
Mermaid sightings are also commonplace in this part of the world. Again, a more prosaic answer is that these were seals viewed from a distance, bathing on the rocks. Otters, dolphins and basking sharks can also be seen in the waters here, while sea eagles and buzzards patrol from above.
With the sun breaking through the clouds, we descended the stony track, which was now flanked with gorse showcasing the Platonic form of yellow. We passed through the links land with its mohican marram grass and skidded down a final dune. We had arrived.
A beach to rival the Caribbean
The first thing that strikes you about Sandwood Bay is its scale. Satellite maps calculate it as 1.23 miles in length, but the real-world impression is triple that.
To the south is the sea stack of Am Buachaille (Gaelic for 'the shepherd'), a lonely 150ft monolith of Torridonian sandstone. To the north the bay curves away towards the hostile edgelands of Cape Wrath. In between there is a vast blanket of pink-white sands, so pure that you feel guilty polluting it with your footsteps.
We walked down towards some boulders on the beach, painted in that distinctive sandstone hue developed over hundreds of millions of years and interspersed with little turquoise pools. Alastair poured out a consommé soup that he had prepared and added a wee dram of whisky, a nice touch, and regaled us with his theories on the myths and legends of Sandwood Bay.
After, I scrambled up to the top of the boulders and, scanning the full length of the beach, realised we were completely and utterly alone. At, what, 11am? What a paradox, what a great relief, that Britain's most beautiful beach happens to be set at the end of a four-mile track, in the deep end of Scotland's wildest corner.
I realised that I had been framing the schlep to this beach all wrong. Sandwood Bay isn't just worth the effort – the requirement of effort is what makes it so special. I can see why the ghosts never left.
How to do it
Alastair Kennedy of Go Highlands Tours is a font of information and a highly skilled tour guide, offering private itineraries ranging from Outlander tours to excursions around castles and battlegrounds For bespoke tours such as a walk to Sandwood Bay, enquire direct (07500 519140; [e-mail]).
If you are tackling Sandwood Bay solo, enter Blairmore Car Park into your navigation system. There are clean public toilets available at the car park. Be sure to bring wet-weather gear, plenty of supplies and proper walking boots. The walk is around four miles each way and requires a fair level of fitness. There are no facilities en route. It is advised that dogs are kept on a short lead.
Where to stay
Greg stayed as a guest of Newton Lodge, a comfortable and recently refurbished hotel, restaurant and bar right on the North Coast 500, around a 45-minute drive south of the Applecross Pass car park. The hotel has superb views across Loch Glencoul and an honesty bar stocked with local whiskies and gins (doubles from £129 per night). The sister hotel, the Kylesku Hotel, just a few minutes away, has a high-quality restaurant selling local catches – request a seat by the windows and look out for seals and otters.