Kilnaughton Bay, Islay

31 Jul Kilnaughton Bay, Islay

A golden beach. Unpretentious, unspoiled, just there at the end of a bumpy track, dotted not with sun-loungers and umbrellas but with clumps of coarse grass on a raised bank where the tide must come to rest for a moment before turning back on itself. At the far western end of the beach is a lighthouse of some repute for its unusual style and shape. It’s square rather than round like all the lovely Stevenson lighthouses that grace the Scottish coastline. This one may be notable but it’s not at all pleasing to the eye – echoes of a watchtower on the edge of a prison camp gather in my mind.

It’s sunny, windy and hot! The exclamation mark hints at the sound of amazement the voice in my head makes. Scotland? The west coast? Late July? Such heat was not forecast but it can happen here. ‘Thrawn’ also popped into my head. A robust Scots word around which the mouth has to pucker and push at almost the same time as rolling the tongue on the ‘r’. A satisfying word that really does sound what it means. Basically, it translates as ‘stubborn’ – so the weather is stubbornly refusing to conform to the forecast. Very Scottish, I think to myself and chuckle. The scattering of people on the beach downwind from me may have caught the sound of my chuckle and thought: ‘There’s a madwoman on the beach’ especially since my hair was loosely pinned up, dishevelled and, well, windswept. Did I mention it was windy?

There are heavy clouds around making glorious shadows but the sun cuts through here and does its stuff. It makes the sand more golden and the sea more sparkly blue, the shoreline grasses wave about in thick tussocks of honey and green, drawing attention to themselves. Nobody brings a seat here. They just sit on their bottoms on the firm sand, perhaps a towel beneath them. Apart, that is, from the two horsewomen astride their saddles who plod their stout, tail-swishing ponies along the sand in a little parade. Many beach dwellers may, I fear, turn painfully pink very quickly, especially if they are of Scottish descent and bear our pale-skinned, freckly, easily-burned heritage. I hear one woman say to her friend ‘You’re covered in sand’ – perhaps the wind-borne sandblast will coat their skins and protect them a little.

At the eastern end of the beach is the ruin of a little church. Not surprising when I think about it. It’s all in the name – Kilnaughton, the Kil is from the Gaelic Cill, meaning church. There are lots of Scottish place names beginning with Kil, in the same way as the ones in England begin with ‘Kirk’ – though that sounds Scottish to me. Did the English pinch our word because it sounded better than their own? Obviously! This one was always a tiny edifice squashed between a high grassy bank and the beach. Now all that survives is the south-facing wall, surprisingly intact given it’s the side that faces the sea and is battered by salt and sand, wind and weather. What’s the story, I wonder. Abandoned? Swept away by some storm or landslip? Or simply fallen out of use and left uncared for to waste away? 

The church is likely connected to the cemetery up above on the hill, perhaps the place where the coffin was carried for a last visit to the sea before being buried. In fact, I counted three cemeteries scattered across the hillside as I walked down to the beach, each quite separate from the others, the older, more worn gravestones on the lower two giving the sense of different generations of the dead. All the Hebridean cemeteries I’ve seen (and there have been quite a few) are up on a hill. The Gaels like to make sure their dead have a good view as they set out on their journey to eternity. The pharaohs can keep their treasure banked alongside them in their pyramid graves. The Gaels? The view of the landscape and the sea, the smell of seaweed and salt, the ocean spray, the sound of waves lapping on the shore or beating against the rocks, the vast horizon, those are their treasures. I love that thought.