Balchladich northwards in April
Early April 2025 provided one of the longest spells of dry, sunny spring weather in many years (2nd-10th), albeit with clear cold nights. On the morning of Thursday 3rd we thought that we might repeat a favourite walk, north along the cliffs from Balchladich Bay (map, photo 1). This account complements two that have previously appeared on the web-site: North from Balchladich on Boxing Day and Rhu Stoer: two beaches in February .
Beach-combing
We parked on the roadside just above the beach (NC0230), where we encountered a variety of birds. There were recently-arrived wheatears on the roadside walls, a skylark singing overhead, curlews probing the grassland of a field towards Loch na Claise in the company of greylag geese, and rock pipits and oystercatchers on the tideline rocks as we walked down to the shore.
We then spent an hour beach-combing. The beach was covered, as often, with banks of storm-detached kelp (photo 2), mainly cuvie Laminaria hyperborea, with its thick rough stipes. The hand-like fronds were covered in places with lacy patches of the common bryozoan sea mat Membranipora membranacea (photo 3). The zooids of this colonial organism inhabit narrow rectangular cells with short pegs in four corners, but in this case all the cells had lost their living contents.
We wondered what effect sea mat colonies might have on the ability of the underlying kelp frond to photosynthesize. In this case any problems were about to get worse, since many of the cells housed the early stages of a red seaweed (photo 4), giving the frond a very odd hairy appearance. The dead sea mat seemed to be providing a ‘nursery bed’ for them.
A further curiosity was a recently detached common limpet Patella vulgaris, with an unusual range of algae anchored to its shell (photo 5), pink coral weed Corallina officinalis, a button-like base of thongweed Himanthalia elongata and a young specimen of one of the kelps Laminaria sp. The resistance to wave action offered by these plants must have dragged the limpet off its seating, a case of the ‘vegetable world’ striking back, since limpets live by grazing colonising algae.
A final item of interest on the beach, at its northern end, was the rather grisly corpse of a cetacean, less than 2m long, whose jaws contained a fine array of conical teeth (photo 6). Its overall size and the shape of the teeth suggested that it was a common dolphin Delphinus delphis.
Along the cliffs
Since the tide was well in, we left the beach and made our way along the low cliffs to its north, before sitting down for a while to look out over the sea towards the Outer Hebrides (photo 7). We were intrigued by the changing pattern of stripes of darker and lighter blue on the surface of the water.
Googling sea colour offers a variety of explanations, including shadows (but there was not a cloud in the sky), relative depth (unlikely given the way the stripes moved around), light reflected from sediments (either on the bottom or churned up) and phytoplankton blooms, none of which seemed to fit. It is perhaps more likely that tidal currents and/or gentle winds were ruffling the surface, causing silver reflections in some areas. We should ask a marine artist. Closer to hand was a redshank dozing on a sea-girt rock (photo 8).
Just beyond the end of a fence on the edge of the cliff there are a series of water-filled ditches running at right angles to the cliff-top, which may be the remains of former cultivation areas. One housed a deep pool, next to a very obvious otter sprainting spot (photos 9-10); the resultant hummocks of bright-green grass are numerous along this coast. Such pools are used by otters to wash salt out of their coats, preventing the impairment of their insulating properties.
Another pool had several clumps of frog spawn, in a close-grazed sward that didn’t look ideal for frogs.
Down to the shore
There is easy access to the shore hereabouts, so we dropped down and picked our way carefully along the base of the cliffs. They are generally quite close-grazed by sheep, but in places a combination of steepness, southerly aspect and slightly richer soils provides niches for large numbers of primroses, which were in full flower (photos 11-12).
Shortly afterwards, we found a warm spot at the base of the cliffs for lunch, just before the shingle runs out into rocks. In front of us were a couple of washed-up softwood tree-trunks pitted with the burrows of the aberrant bivalve molluscs known as shipworms Teredo navalis (photo 13). The tree-trunks must have been drifting in the sea for a long time to have been so thoroughly holed. This creature was once the scourge of wooden ships, until the U.S. Navy came up with the idea, in 1794, of covering of the hulls of six new frigates with copper plates (hence the expression copper-bottomed).
Up onto Meall Dubh
After lunch we climbed a shallow gulley onto the top of Meall Dubh, where we had good views of the shoreline to the south (photo 14). There were red grouse calling nearby, unexpected in an area where the maritime heath is so short. We then followed a mysterious line of canes strung together with fine cord to an excellent viewpoint (NC019314).
To the north-west (photo 15) is the shoreline below Raffin, with the two bothies originally built, with a pier, to unload worked stones for the construction of the Stoer Head Lighthouse in 1870 (see Return to Raffin).
On the sea we spotted two divers, both in winter plumage, probably great northern and red-throated (which was calling), a ‘bottling’ common seal and, further out, diving gannets. We then retraced our steps to the lunch spot, Gwen by a narrow sheep track along the cliffs (photo 16), Ian by a less exposed route, and made our way back to the Bay.
It had been a lovely sunny day for early April, rounded off by a welcome cup of tea with friends Ian and Morag Mackenzie in their family home, Bordans, which has excellent views over the beach, but catches every wind that blows.