Day 3: The Best Beach in the World?

Low tide

Wow - what a day (again)!  We woke up to deep blue skies with no clouds.  The sun was shining and it was hot, hot, hot.  Definitely a day for the beach.

Matt had done some investigation and decided that the best, most scenic beach to visit would be Luskentyre.  This is just south of Tarbert in Harris, a fair drive, but as the roads are empty and well maintained and take you through wonderful scenery, it really isn't a hardship.  We were quite late getting up, by the time we had had breakfast (outside) and made a picnic, put the washing out to dry etc, it was getting on for 11am.

Luskentyre Beach

First stop was Tarbert for a quick visit to the island's only distillery (they aren't making whisky yet, just gin) and a Harris Tweed shop (I bought a rather natty blue tartan flat cap type thing so I can join in with the flat cap brigade during winter).  We finally got to the beach around midday.  We drove up a pass and were treated to the most amazing view of a bay full of yellow sand, with turquoise blue sea lapping around its sides.  Wow!  This was a beach to rival some of the Australian beaches I visited.

We headed down and went to the official car park, but there was no room, so we headed back along the coast road and parked in a wide bit right next to a cemetery.  Next job was to find a way down to the beach - there was no obvious route, but there were plenty of cars there so others had done the same.  In the end we walked through the cemetery (felt very wrong) and legged over a fence onto the beach.  We did find a gate into the beach, but it was locked, so the only possible way in was via the cemetery.

Keeping an eye

We were greeted with dunes of fine, pale yellow sand which gave way to a vast expanse of flat beach.  Unfortunately it was windy, mega windy, which meant we had to find some shelter.  We got ourselves to some rocks, dumped our stuff and got straight to work making a sandcastle.  The sand was perfect building sand.  The architect was Master Tom Young and his workman was Nik Young.  He was very good at telling me what to do and somehow managed to do very little himself - hmmmmmmm!  We ate our picnic standing up with our backs to the wind to try to make sure we didn't eat too much sand.

Next on the agenda was velcro tennis.  Tom and Matt played whilst I went on a long walk down to the sea.  It was a good half mile or so to the sea, but it was worth the walk, it was so so so beautiful.  Mountains were all around, the sky deep blue it was paradise on earth, even the wind didn't detract from its beauty.  As I was walking back a small boy ran up to me, he wanted to see the sea too, so we walked back and he spent a happy time darting in and out of the water.

We walked back to see Matt and we decided to pack up and try to go to the other beach again as we were of the opinion the wind would be slightly better there.  We did so and managed to find a place in the car park - hurray!  We took the absolute minimum to the beach with us so we could all play in the water.  Wow, did we play in the water?  Tom got properly in, whilst Matt and I got up to our knees.

Splash!

Considering how far north we are, the water was quite warm.  We all had a lot of fun in the sea, Tom especially - he was dancing in and out of the waves for the best part of an hour.  Here there were proper waves to play in - a shame we didn't have a body board with us (there were no facilities, no shop, no ice-cream van, no nothing!) as I think he would have happily played on one for hours.  Anyway he was happy enough and made me and Matt go further and further in, so we got pretty wet too.  It was only when he was shivering uncontrollably that Tom finally came out.

Happy Nik

Tom then demanded that I go back to the car to get the velcro tennis set - so I did as I was bidden.  We then played velcro tennis and then beach tennis for another hour or so.  It was only when we realised it was past 5pm and our stomachs were rumbling that we called it a day.  Tom to his credit was very good at leaving as you could tell he didn't want to leave.

Loving the water

We headed to Tarbert and ended up going to the chippy for a fish supper which we ate on a bench looking out on the bay and mountains.  Then back to our home in the sunshine.

It was a perfect beach day.  Scotland really is a tropical paradise!