Sandwood Bay

Four miles of blanket bog separate Sandwood Bay from the nearest road — the walk in filters the world down to walkers. Pink-tinged sand meets turquoise water beneath a sea stack called Am Buachaille, standing like a stone guardian at the southern end, and there is no building, no road and no phone signal.

Sandwood Bay on Scotland's far north-west coast is widely considered the finest wild beach in Britain, its remoteness enforced by the four-mile path over peat, lochans and open moor from Blairmore. The mile of sand — warmed pink by crushed shell — runs between dune systems, with Am Buachaille's 65-metre stack as sentinel, and on the rare days when sun, tide and stillness coincide the water glows Caribbean blue against Sutherland moor. Local legend places a mermaid sighting here, and fishermen long avoided the bay after dark. The Cape Wrath Trail passes along the strand on its way north to the lighthouse, and through-hikers wild camp in the dunes under skies with no artificial light in any direction. The land is in a conservation trust's care; the emptiness is the exhibit.