Sandwood Bay, Sutherland
Sandwood Bay is an old place. Quite literally. In Gaelic, it was known as Seannabhad – seann for ‘old’, abhad for ‘place’. This name, in turn, may be derived from the Old Norse sandvatn – ‘sand water’. It is an apt description of this landscape, with its oddly geometric rectangle of freshwater loch, enclosed at its northern end by a mile and a half of empty beach that faces on to the relentless waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
Given the dramatic nature of the location, it may seem self-evident that the seann in Seannabhad was intended to convey some sense of the ancient, or the timelessly elemental. But this would be to misconstrue the Gaelic meaning. In fact, rather than noting the absence of people, it was about
