13. Kiloran Bay

This is why I started my project. I’m a walker at heart and for me the thrill is to walk TO a beach and to build the walk into the experience, rather than just drive up to the edge of the beach and tick it off a list. Kiloran Bay was the beach I was most looking forward to visiting on this trip for this very reason. Twice a week, you can take a 6 hour day trip to this lovely little island from Port Askaig on Islay, so I built my whole itinerary around this Saturday day trip. For a brief moment the day before, whilst on Singing Sands, it all went horribly wrong, I received a text from CalMac to say the Islay/Colonsay ferry on Saturday was cancelled for technical reasons. I was gutted, but then five minutes later came another text to say it was reinstated with apologies for the previous text! What a huge relief that was. The crossing is just over an hour, coming in to the tiny port of Scalasaig. I had the car and could easily have driven the single track road to Kiloran Bay in the north west of the island, but I preferred to walk ‘the old road’, up over the highest peak (Beinn nan Gudairean) and down through the grounds of Colonsay House. On a beautiful warm day (and no midges!) this was a wonderful walk, but of course the real prize comes at the end. What a stunning beach Kiloran Bay is. The view from the high points all around the bay are breathtaking but walking on the golden sands and across the bay itself, by the waterline, was truly memorable. My phone photos below don’t really capture the splendour of this place, but that’s unimportant. It’s memories that matter, and I left this amazing beach with plenty of them, including the sound of the farmer gathering the hay in the field behind the beach with Frank Sinatra blasting from the tractor. I walked along the back of the bay, through Colonsay Gardens again and then via the quiet road to Scalasaig.