Playing with Sand

The sand on Golspie's main beach has been almost completely removed by the sea leaving only a short stretch by the pier. If this were a tourist town the sudden removal of tonnes of beach sand would be a bit of a disaster but the village doesn't make much attempt to lure tourists so the beaches along this stretch of coast are little used except by local dog walkers.... and us.

The shallow waters immediately off the now-pebble beach are, however, popular with shore birds, with a flock of around twenty-five redshanks feeding this morning. The redshanks have been conspicuously absent through the summer so it's good to see them back.

The sand is also awol from the south end of the town's 'promenade' so the concrete ramp down to the beach ends in seaweed-slippery boulders which have to be crossed before one can reach the sand. However, the vagaries of the sea mean that, once down on the firm sand exposed at low tide, one can stretch one's legs properly.

A couple of hundred metres on the sand is back, kindly returned by the sea, but deserted of wildlife except the occasional gull and oystercatcher. The beach's inaccessibility has a bonus - we walked for a couple of hours along it and met three other people, all with dogs.

The highlight of our walk, if that's what it might be called, was finding something washed up on the beach, in the form of a rather chewed-up moon jellyfish. A year ago we were referring to this as 'Jellyfish Beach' - see post here.

The sea really does seem to be playing with the sand for, a couple of kilometres further along the beach, past the kart track, the sea defences end and the sea has, in its infinite wisdom, once again decided to remove the sand. We know from yesterday's walk that huge amounts of sand are also missing at the southern end of the Littleferry beach. We assume that the sea squirrels all this sand just offshore. We do hope so, and that it returns it by winter's arrival so we can once again have long, brisk walks in the driving wind and rain.