Beach

We are located in the middle of 11 miles of glorious sandy beach and giant dunes over 30m (100ft) high. The beach is a well-kept secret having only a handful of access points along the entire length. It is therefore very secluded, and when we walk the dogs we almost always have the beach to ourselves. It's marvellous!

We have been amazed at just how much the beach can change overnight with wind or tidal action. Rattray Head has several areas of low lying rocks which are normally covered with sand. But one day there may be a sandy beach, and the next perhaps three feet of sand has shifted to reveal the rocks. The following day the rocks may well be covered again - that's an awful lot of sand to have moved in just a few hours!

Sometimes the beach is clean and flat with a gentle slope down to the low tide mark, and other times it is a jumble of seaweed and kelp with great gullies carved out with streams of water running back from trapped pools.

There are also stunning wind carvings throughout the dune system where the loose sand is blown away revealing very ornate shapes in the underlying damp sand. With the many different coloured layers having been laid down over the previous weeks, the wind erosion shows all these contour lines as beautiful works of art. It really is something to be seen.