Song Of The Sands, Singing Sands Ardnamurchan

The western fringes of Scotland weave water, rock and wood as mountains drop away to a system of peninsula that look out across the sea to the ‘small isles’. Here, with a little exploration adventurers are transported back in time to discover unpopulated shores, a moment to claim their own private beach.

We made our way to the Singing Sands, a journey requiring an hour’s walk. Back in the summer we chose this location for the prospect of clear winter skies and a glimpse of the Northern Lights. I imagined the singing sands to be cristalline, bright as stars, emitting a high-pitched celestial sound almost beyond human hearing. In fact, ever-lowering cloud and persistent heavy rain meant that anything further away than 100 meters was obscured, and the landscape, our clothing and our dog quickly became utterly saturated.

The walk-in followed a gravel track through a forgotten-feeling plantation where overcrowded lines of trees collapsed onto each other, slowly melting back into the vivid green moss coating the forest floor. Aside from rampant sphagnum, fern and fungus, we were the only signs of life as we went with the flow of a stream downhill, to emerge at the beach.

A long strip of shell-pale sand marked the meeting of the muted turquoise sea and autumn-faded bracken bordering the woods. At last we heard the song of the sands - deep and bassy, insistent with the energy of ever moving water, the boom of breaking waves, the vital pop of a bubble bursting in the primordial soup.