Sandwood Bay

OVERVIEW

A bay on the far north-west coast of Sutherland, five miles south of Cape Wrath and reached only on foot from Blairmore, with the sea stack Am Buachaille at its southern end and Sandwood Loch behind the dunes. The John Muir Trust owns it. Before the Cape Wrath light was built in 1828 the bay took many wrecks, and the naturalist Seton Gordon in the 1920s counted their timbers in the sand.

HISTORY

On 5 January 1900 Alexander Gunn, a crofter looking for a sheep, was led by his dog to a ledge above the tide where a figure lay — reddish hair, greenish-blue eyes, a body some seven feet long — and he maintained until his death in 1944 that it was a mermaid; he told the story to R. Macdonald Robertson in 1939, who printed it. The ruined cottage above the bay was a shepherd's house and is now a bothy.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

The tradition of a bearded sailor in sea boots and a brass-buttoned coat, seen on the beach and knocking at the cottage windows on stormy nights, is told by walkers and was recorded in Robertson's Selected Highland Folktales; the Cape Wrath tradition of ghost crews goes with the wrecks. STV's Beyond Explanation covered it in 2017. It is remote enough that the record is thin and the tellers few.

VISITING

Eight miles there and back on a rough track from Blairmore car park; no facilities. The bothy is open to walkers under the Mountain Bothies Association's code. Weather and tides are serious here.