Slate, Sea and Sky

Sea Kayaking off the Atlantic Isles


The desolation of Belnahua

Going in search of that magical blend of beauty, melancholy and wilder-than-fiction myth that jumps out at you on the Scottish Isles, we ended up on Seil and Luing recently.



Tip-toeing through first mist and then thunder and lightning, we made it to the deserted quarry township of Belnahua. A tiny dot of land, half corroded and eaten by years of slate quarrying, it is surrounded by a tidal mash of currents slewing through tight narrows of land and scattered islands.



It is a surprising place. This is all old slate quarry, but it is like walking on pillows. A deep machair has evolved over the 100 years of human absence, and as you walk over its unexpectedly uneven man-made surface, it is deeply plush as thick down. Things appear out of the grass. A winding mechanism. A mechanical pump. A series of channels for water to escape into the ocean.



Nature is slowly reclaiming the hard slate back into a soft island again.




Cormorants on misty skerries



Sometimes, it's easier to piece together the history of a place by visiting a graveyard than it is any museum. And Luing's ruined chapel at Kilchattan is no exception. There, in the stillness, we found the slate quarriers, founders of Presbyterian splinter groups and the Latvian sailors shipwrecked off Belnahua in 1936.





Only there for a day or two, we sank a little into this place. In the village shop, it took moments for us to find out that someone we knew lived in the village. Later, we asked for some water at a nearby house. 'Oh, you'll be the kayakers then. My husband's been watching you with the binoculars all day. He said you must know what you're doing because you hit the tide just right...'