Although a visit to Scotland in the autumn of 2024 was primarily to visit family, we would’ve been somewhat remiss if we didn’t take advantage of the beautiful weather and the incredibly dramatic landscapes to enjoy the areas we visited. Although the weather on our fourth day on the Isle of Skye wasn’t perfect, we decided to jump in the car and head across to the west coast of the island.
After an online search for somewhere new, and preferably away from the tourist traps, Talisker Bay seemed to be a place worth visiting: primarily because of the sea stack there and for the potential of some nice light coming in off the Atlantic.
We drove past one of the more popular destinations on the island, which we’ve heard is a nightmare to visit because of the amount of cars parked on the side of the road, and ended up finding our way to one of the few remaining parking spaces at the end of a narrow and very badly potholed road. We weren’t quite sure where everybody was, as there was no sign of any other visitors, but we paid no real heed and began the 20 minute walk out to the coastline. Passing a number of signs insisting strongly that there is no vehicular access to the beach, we passed a very nice house at Sleadale Burn, then headed along a well-made track to the edge of the wild meadow, dotted with soft rush grasses, which abuts a rocky foreshore and the dark, sandy expanse of the beach. The dark granite boulders were somewhat slippery, but incredibly and dramatically photogenic.
As we were arriving, the clouds and haar rolled in, which made our visit very moody indeed. Both Jo and I entertained ourselves by photographing the patterns in the dark sand and after a while, a small group of young friends arrived to splash around in the somewhat intemperate water as a vaguely pink glow came through the fog.
The low cloud wasn’t thick enough to completely obscure the view of the beach from the air, so I sent up my drone and took a few short video clips and panoramic photographs before we stumbled our way back across the rocks and began making our way to the car. By then, the weather had closed in and there was a definite chill in the air. It was totally unexpected that such a lovely beach would be so sparsely visited, as we’d always heard how busy the Isle of Skye can be for much of the year. The dark green soft rush grasses among the little hillocks in the damp fields, populated by sheep and surrounded by old stone walls, hark strongly of the Lake District and North Wales, although the breeze that picked up as we headed back to the car reminded us sharply that we were by the coast.
