Balnakeil and Faraid Head

The glory of Balnakeil is its long beach of silver shell sand, backed by marram-covered dunes and fringing a sea that is green or turquoise near the shore and darkens to navy blue towards the horizon. In spring and summer, the cliff tops of Faraid Head are a magical garden of wildflowers, and birdlife abounds year-round.

The solid form of Balnakeil House dominates the beach. Although the wall facing the sea is tall and broad, it has only a few small windows — testimony to the ferocity of winter sea gales. The house was once owned by the Lords Reay of Clan Mackay. Opposite stands the roofless church surrounded by its graveyard, with walls covered in tiny ferns, ivy, and red campion. The beach is excellent for seashells and safe for paddling and bathing due to its gently sloping sand.

Many clifftop plants prefer lime-rich soils derived from shell sand over Precambrian rocks formed over 800 million years ago. Mountain avens (an arctic-alpine plant normally found at high altitude) happily produce cream-colored daisy-like flowers at sea level here, alongside bright green cushions of moss campion, rare Scottish primrose, dune pansies, roseroot, Scots lovage, and sea spleenwort.

Offshoot stacks provide perfect nesting ledges for guillemots and razorbills, while sea rafts hold puffins, black guillemots, eiders, shags, and cormorants (with kittiwakes and fulmars nesting on cliffs). Winter brings great northern divers, long-tailed ducks, and migrating flocks of barnacle geese from Greenland.

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.