Red Point Beach Walk

Red Point offers two spectacular sandy beaches at the very end of a remote single-track road south-west of Gairloch, combined here into a short but genuinely rough circuit with sweeping views across the Minch to Skye and the Outer Hebrides on a clear day.

The route starts from the car park at the very end of the Red Point public road — it's worth stopping first at a viewpoint just before the car park, overlooking the western beach and giving a glorious panorama of Skye. From the car park, a farm gate leads onto a track towards Red Point farm; keeping left at a fork and passing through the farmyard, further gates lead onto open machair — shell-rich grassland studded with wildflowers where ungrazed.

The South Beach is reached by bearing right across the machair, a wide sandy expanse with fine views to Trotternish on Skye and the Applecross peninsula, passing the ruins of an old salmon fishing station along the shore. The walk between the two beaches has only a faint path and crosses several very boggy channels, so waterproof boots are essential. The North Beach, nearer the car park and correspondingly busier, is arguably even finer than its southern neighbour, with striking reddish-pink sand formed from iron-oxide-tinted Torridonian sandstone; a gap in the dunes here leads via a sandy path straight back to the car park.

For the more ambitious, Red Point also marks the start of a spectacular but committing seven-mile coastal route south-east to Lower Diabaig — a wonderful walk, but one requiring transport arrangements at the far end, since the shortest road distance back to Red Point via Kinlochewe and Loch Maree is around 45 miles.

This is a short, rewarding circuit, but the boggy crossing between beaches and the generally pathless nature of much of the walking demand sturdy, waterproof footwear and a realistic acceptance of wet feet — cattle and sheep graze the fields en route, so dogs need to be kept under control.

Parking at Red Point is free; there is no public transport to the start, though a school-hours-only local bus serves the area.