The Ghosts of Sandwood Bay
For me, the Spirit lies in how the landscapes around us infuse and affect our mood and emotions, our sense of who we are as we go about our daily lives in this land of wild waves, soaring peaks, muddy moors, trickling burns and torrential waterfalls
Since moving to the Highlands five years ago I had heard several people talk in almost whispered tones of a haunted and remote beach in the far north-west of Scotland, a place so inaccessible no car could take you there and you had to hike over moors and waterlogged terrain to reach the pristine terracotta sands and emerald waves.
The photos I found just didn’t seem to do it justice. I wanted to capture the sense of adventure, legend, natural beauty and tranquillity in music and song that I could share with others. That’s how The Ghosts of Sandwood Bay project was born.
For me, the Spirit lies in how the landscapes around us infuse and affect our mood and emotions, our sense of who we are as we go about our daily lives in this land of wild waves, soaring peaks, muddy moors, trickling burns and torrential waterfalls.
When we go out and immerse ourselves in the wild, it becomes part of who we are – figuratively and literally as we breathe it in – and it becomes part of our story. It’s where we go to seek solace and disengagement, where some of us feel most at home and at the same time furthest from others.
The people I interviewed for the Ghosts of Sandwood Bay all possessed this Spirit, the sense that they had been somewhere special and it had left its indelible mark on their soul.
Sandwood Bay
Sandwood Bay is quite rightly a treasure – a last bastion of wilderness and relatively untouched beauty, but there is a question over how long it will stay so.
While I was walking the gravel path to the Bay, a motorbike zoomed past me at a dangerous speed and long before and after it was visible the noise of its engine cracked through the air and destroyed the ambience and tranquillity. Vehicles are prohibited there.
It is everyone’s duty to respect and protect places like Sandwood by keeping it wild, pristine and beautiful. It rare nowadays that we can find a place far from phone signals and cars, where we can hear our thoughts and experience nature in true peace. What surprises me most about Sandwood Bay is how much of an impact it has on people – how when we go to places that are devoid of human busyness, but filled with the spirit of nature, it can leave people changed in a way they haven’t felt before.