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My second son was born in the Town and County Hospital, Nairn, on what was a rare occasion for the hospital as it was mainly a geriatric unit with occasional maternity provision for 'straight forward cases'. They had very few births there but on the day my son was born at 11.50am another baby was born at 11.50pm and what was more remarkable was that the other mum and I had the same first name and the same birth date. The sister in charge was so excited she said it should be in the paper! It's just one of those quirky things, but that, and having lived in Nairn for two years, has left me with a soft spot for the place and especially the beaches and river where I walked so often with toddler, baby and dog.
So when the forecast was good for Nairn I suggested a walk along the East beach and into Culbin forest.
Parked in the Maggot car park, across the river from the harbour
Walked part way along the river wall
When we first moved here it was described to us as the 'Riviera of the North' and coming up from rainy Glasgow it did feel a bit like that. For two of my friends it was their first visit to Nairn and I was glad they were seeing it on such a beautiful day with a slight covering of snow on the beach and sand dunes.
Not the silver sands of Nairn - just a sprinkling of snow
Impressive piece of driftwood
Looking back to Nairn
This long strip of beach is owned by the RSPB, due to its excellent bird habitat, and is home to oystercatchers, curlews, redshanks and bar-tailed godwits, among others. The day we were there all I could see was what looked like thousands of white gulls, but I'm sure a pair of binoculars and a more discerning eye would have spotted something of more interest than that.
Sand dunes
Culbin was once known as the Granary of Moray for its production of grain crops sufficient to feed the local as well as a wider area, though some sources question whether it was as successful as that makes it sound. Then came the Great Sand Drift of 1694 when according to folklore 16 farms and the laird's big house were engulfed by wind-blown sand in a single night.
In reality the erosion of sand would have happened gradually, caused by a constant removal of marram grass. For years it had kept the wide stretch of sands from shifting, but it was taken for thatching roofs and as fuel for heating. By the late 1690s, there was little of the grass left to stabilise the dunes and when the storm came in 1694 the farmed, inhabited land of Culbin was covered in massive drifts of wind-blown sand.
Many writers, poets and dramatists have written of Culbin’s end. Andrew Young’s work entitled ‘The Culbin Sands’ includes the following lines, which nicely sum up the sense of Culbin’s constant capacity for natural change:
Here lay a fair fat land
But now its townships, kirks, graveyards
Beneath bald hills of sand
Lie buried deep as Babylonian shards
But gales may blow again
And, like a sand-glass turned about,
The hills in a dry rain
Will flow away, and the old land look out.
In an effort to stabilise the area of shifting sands the first trees, Scots pine, were planted in the 1850s. Then between 1922 and 1931, the Forestry Commission took over Culbin and increased the level of tree planting. Their early attempts at forestry at Culbin were not always successful and sand often buried the seedlings, or they were whisked out of the ground by the wind. So marram grass was replanted in advance of the trees to help stabilise the sand and by the 1950s there was a well-established forest at Culbin.
To reach it we had to get over an outflow of water that barred our way.
The stream we had to cross
There used to be a bridge over the stream to reach the forest but there is no longer.
The original bridge built by scouts had eventually collapsed and was replaced in 2010 by what was known as the 'rickety bridge', but that was lost in the storms of 2013 and rebuilt by three Kingsteps pensioners in March 2014. Here's a tongue in cheek quote from a local publication at the time, words and photo by Morton Gillespie, one of the pensioners who built it.
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"Disaster struck once again and the magnificent new bridge simply disappeared presumably swept away by Saturday nights high tide which swept in and flooded the area behind the ever diminishing protective sand dunes. Not a trace of the structure remains and it must be assumed that it is now floating around the Moray Firth and will eventually be washed ashore intact on some distant beach. Having survived only four days and all materials lost at sea this is a disaster second only to the Tay Railway Bridge disaster of 1879, fortunately however as far as we know no one was injured or lives lost by the Culbin Sands Bridge Disaster."
We ended up back-tracking over the sand dunes, through gorse bushes and across a flat grassy area to reach the bridge we could see in the distance.
Bridge
From the bridge we followed the path that led us into the forest. I'm not sure we ever found the path WH recommends but it was a fine path and we had a pleasant wander through the tall pines.
Culbin forest
Someone had made a den
View through the trees
Seeing the small sandy island bathed in sunshine with the Black Isle beyond was too much for me to resist and I pushed through the trees and gorse to see the view properly.
Zoomed to cliffs of Black Isle and Ben Wyvis beyond
We had already decided we didn't want to return by the minor road to Kingsteps so once we felt we'd walked far enough we came out of the trees and turned left along the path that ran along the edge of the forest.
After a while we rejoined the path in the forest and retraced our steps to where the path came in from the bridge, this time turning left along it. We had looked unsuccessfuly for red squirrels but were soon rewarded with the sight of a red Heilan coo instead.
So chilled she couldn't be bothered to turn her head
Kingsteps
From the parking area with the information board we followed a track that led to the edge of the golf course. There was nobody about so we crossed carefully and joined the path on the west side of the bridge we'd crossed earlier. Where we got across the stream on the way back I'm not sure.
Golf course
When the track reached the edge of the caravan park we turned right towards the beach and completed the walk back to the car along the sand dunes.
