Dunnet: between the dunes and the sea

Coming out of the trees beyond Castletown, heading east, you’re suddenly presented with two and a half miles of golden sand sweeping round Dunnet Bay. Waves roll towards the shore, there’s usually hardly anybody on the beach, and behind it rise magnificent dunes, with sharp ridges and steep faces that look almost architectural. The road brings you close beside them before slipping round the back, where the sea disappears as though somebody has drawn a curtain across the beach. For a while, you’re travelling beside this enormous bay without being able to see it.

As you approach Dunnet, the view opens again and Dunnet Head stretches out into the sea. There’s a little roadside stopping place here where you can get out and look back along the curve of the shore. I think it’s particularly beautiful towards sunset, when the sky can become quite dramatic and the water takes on its colours. A clear evening is lovely, but clouds give the light something to work with, and there can be as much to watch on the surface of the bay as there is overhead.

The village itself is modest beside these surroundings, although its old parish church has connections that reach far beyond Caithness. Scotland’s pioneering mapmaker Timothy Pont was minister here, while Richard Oswald, who helped negotiate American independence, was the son of a later minister. Their stories deserve time of their own, but you can visit the church by walking through the pub garden, which makes refreshment afterwards a convenient possibility. Carry on through the village towards Dwarwick Pier, though, and you’ll find somewhere I think makes a particularly good place to linger.

For an evening stop, bring fish and chips from Castletown and enjoy your supper at the picnic area beside the water. Waves roll past on their way to breaking along the shore farther in, and you can follow their progress while feeling wonderfully far out among the water yourself. Passengers from the Royal Yacht Britannia once landed here to visit the Queen Mother at the Castle of Mey. For me, the pleasure is having time to sit and watch the sea, with that great sweep of sand beyond it. Those dunes have more to tell us, too. In the blogcast, we’ll discover how the wind reshapes them and how grazing sheep helped expose traces of people who lived beside this bay centuries ago.

To learn more, listen to the blogcast or book one of our North Coast Explorer private tours.