RUBHA NAN SASAN - COVE

HORIZONS OF WAR AND PEACE

As the mist rolls back the horizon resolves into a fine dark line between muted grey and milky green. There is a sense of peace here; yet this place knows the twin traumas of weather and war.

Gazing out past the headland I fancy I see human faces, at least three, forehead to chin profiled against sea and sky. Their brows are heavy and their features grim, unsurprising since they stare west along the coast to where, on a winter’s night during WW2, the SS William Welch was wrecked in a ferocious storm. A bitter irony, for just around this headland, whose name Rubha nan Sasan translates as “Wild Promontory” lay the safe anchorage of Loch Ewe.

On the rocky shore beneath the set stone faces a glimmer of sun highlights wartime remains - footings of a brick-built structure that once blocked the view, and everywhere shattered concrete slabs with ceramic shards of pipes, once draining out to sea. It will be many more years yet before the lichens that adorn the natural rounded rocks with colour soften the rough edges of these broken, bleached conglomerates.

Rubha nan Sasan is now home only to the sheep grazing among the derelict wartime installations, where once men of the Cove Battery were stationed to keep watch and defend the entrance to Loch Ewe. From here the Arctic Convoys gathered before setting out to supply war-torn Russia. 

I take shelter from a shower of hail among crumbling concrete structures weeping in the wet. Steps climb through overgrowing grass into buildings with no doors or walls and up to the waterlogged foundations of abandoned observation posts.

Beside the highest lookout, with views to the north, west and east, a memorial stands with its back to the weather and the history of war. It’s there to honour all those who lost their lives serving in the Arctic Convoys. 

 Turning my back also I follow their gaze to the south, towards clearing skies and the hope of safe horizons.  

CAMUS A' CARRAIG - MELLON UDRIGLE

SANDCASTLES IN MIND

I’ve arrived just in time at a favourite spot to watch the evening light, as the tide races in at Mellon Udrigle. The previous high tide tossed tangles of kelp far up the beach, stranding them beside the burn, and carried sand upstream to smother the rocks and choke the downward flow. Then, the ebbing tide sculptured natural sandcastles and left them perched on foundation stones just large enough to divert the retreating sea around them.

I see him coming and I guess what’s on his mind. Raising my camera quickly to my eye, I make the photograph before the wee boy in his red welly boots hurtles into the frame. Screaming with excitement, he splashes into the burn and sets about the sandcastles, kicking them into formless piles of sand. Dismayed, I can’t bring myself to take an “after” picture to match the one “before”. I feel sad and angry at the wanton destruction; but then, I find myself smiling. The child is having such fun and I remember, the joy of making, and breaking down sandcastles or watching the sea reclaim them.

I wander down beside the burn and watch a group of Ringed plovers feeding on the incoming tide further along the bay. At my feet the waves rush past a shelf of sand, crumbling it away as the surge sweeps by. Currents collide at seemingly impossible angles, forcing the sea up the burn where it deposits its load of freshly churned up sand.

In the fading light, the waves loom dark, almost menacing as they advance across the now near charcoal sands and drown the last of the reflected sunset.

Next day, I’m back at my favourite spot, watching the morning light and a scene transformed by the ebbing tide as it rolls back out to sea. The ruined sandcastles remain, unreached by the previous tide, and the stranded kelp is still high and dry beside the burn, but the fresh water flows free again, carving its way through the sand and spreading its fingers to touch the sea.

Further along the bay, there are people sauntering along the water’s edge while their dogs dash in and out of the gentle waves or chase balls thrown up the beach. In their exuberance, they scatter the delicate coloured patterns made on the surface of the sand. It seems a shame and yet, who among us has not enjoyed planting our footprints in freshly fallen snow or, running across a beach made smooth by wind and wave.

I wander down, beside the burn, watching how the sun and fast moving currents interplay. Deep eddies form around the rocks, creating pools where colour patterns the surface like snakeskin. Where the rocks run out and the currents run slow and shallow over the drying sand, the light is gathered into strands; the pattern still resembles snakeskin but one cast off, as the serpent returns to the sea.

In the midday sun, the white waves tumble benignly ashore and reflect, as if painted, on a canvas of wet sand. Soon the tide will turn again and the waves will break with increasing power to strip the canvas, wash away the footprints made in fun and recreate a pristine strand … ready for the making of new sandcastles.

Camus nan Gobhar - Mellon Charles

Between A Rock and a Hard Place

Paradoxically, it is the shadow of the rock that reveals what lies beneath the surface of the pool, while the reflected light draws a veil across, its frayed edge billowing in the breeze. What lies beneath is living colour and rounded pebbles resting between the hard rock and the torn light…

And life hangs on to the exposed rock, as it emerges through the protecting veil of watery light…

And finally, the light slides away over the slippery rocks and comes to rest, a sliver of reflection left in the tiny pool below.

Rounded pebbles and dying colour are left high and drying by the receding tide…

And life and colour drain away with the last moisture from the salty sea…

And finally the weed is left to die, spreadeagled on the rock now moistened only by the falling rain.

Along with kelp ripped from the seabed, high seas throw up our detritus, lost or dumped, returning it to sender…

And slinging rope and netting ashore, the sea abandons it, noosed and caught carelessly over rocks and pools…

And finally, all this abandonment and loss, of nature or of our own making, is left to erode and rot, while life around it, still goes on.