“Gruinard Beach” — Surf rolls in at Gruinard Beach, Scotland.
We passed this large beach on our way from Ullapool to Applecross, Scotland this past May. We were on a long day trip loop drive out there. I don’t think I really had a good idea of what we’d see or what kinds of country we would pass through, and I was surprised by the many places where our route took us along the ocean coast. This beautiful beach seems to be shallow, with the tides uncovering a wide swath of sand. And, as is so common in this part of Scotland, we could see both the ocean waters and distant high peaks.
“Duncansby Stacks” — Sea Stacks at John O’Groats on Scotland’s North Sea Coast.
Our big loop through northwest Scotland began at Inverness, went to Skye, then headed north with stops at Ullapool and Altnaharra. From there we crossed the northern coast to John O’Groats. Why John O’Groats? it feels like one of the more remote places in Scotland – it is on the North Sea and beyond there are only the Orkney Islands. I also recall running into a cyclist on our previous visit to Scotland who was riding from the furthest south point in England to John O’Groats, and that piqued my interest.
“Big Sur Coast Near Hurricane Point” — Late spring morning on the Big Sur Coast.
This is a bit of an odd post for this site. While updating older photographs and posts I was unable to locate this one. So I’m sort of semi/maybe/kind of reposting it. The photograph comes from almost two decades ago on one of my many visits to the Big Sur Coastline of California. This visit was on a late-spring day when fog was clearing from coastal bluffs and the surf was active.
“Rugged Big Sur Coast”” — Big Sur Coast’Sea stacks and surf along the rugged Big Sur coastline.
I intentionally framed this view to exclude everything except the rocky coastline and the wild Pacific Ocean surf. The Pacific Coast Highway (US1) runs along the coastal bluffs just above those far formations, but below these bluffs the ocean and the land do constant battle, with the ocean inevitably winning as it erodes and washes away the land.
When I look at sea stacks like these I am reminded that the water’s edge was once further west, and what are now off-shore outcroppings were once part of the mainland. These peninsulas and sea stacks were left standing far out in the water as the land around them disappeared.
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