Bagh Steinigidh – Hebrides day 1

Lewis and Harris, indeed all of islands of the Outer Hebrides, have scores of fantastic beaches, with white sand, views of mountains, and usually almost deserted. Some of the beaches are very long and wide – Luskentyre and Uig fall into this category. The long and wide beaches pose their own issues for photography; it may be difficult to achieve a composition which isn’t completely composed of sand.

Bagh Steinigidh (don’t ask me to pronounce the name) is completely different. It has rocks at one end, a beach in the middle, and rocks at the other end, all in the space of about 60 metres. Oh, there’s some rocks in the middle too. It has great views of the North Harris hills and the “castaway” island of Taransay, so it’s rather like “Harris in minature”.

What’s more, there’s a small hard-standing car parking area with a few picnic tables just about 20 metres from the beach, which helps you to locate the area and you can leave some of your photo kit in the car and come back later if need be – no 2-mile trudge-in through dunes with tripod and backpack required here.

Here is the location on Google Maps

In fact Google can even show you a view of the car park – use the mouse key to scroll around:

Here’s a few snaps taken with my Leica Digilux 2.

The image above was one of my favourites from the Hebrides – but attracted no comments on flickr. Obviously not everyone shares my liking for dried kelp !