Sango Bay – An Afternoon on the Sands Below Durness
A few hours.
The route
Sango Bay is the beach Durness is built above, a run of pale sand and dark sea stacks right below the village.
This easy afternoon goes down onto the sand from the clifftop and ends with an early supper at the Smoo Cave Hotel, a small family-run hotel on the east side of Durness.
Before you go
Book accommodation nearby
If you are staying over: here are ours nearest where the day starts and ends.
The day
Durness
A short, easy afternoon in and around Durness, with the sea in front of you for most of it and a warm room at the end.
About three hoursAbout 1 mile on foot
Sango Bay
Park in the car park beside the public toilets on the main road through Durness, and check the signs there for any charge. From there it's a walk of a few minutes across the clifftop to the bay, with a path out to a viewpoint on the headland above it. The way down to the sand is a worn path through the dunes: keep to it, as the dunes scar easily. Sango is three small coves of pale sand, over half a mile long, divided by rocky points and scattered with dark stacks, one of them a jagged spire standing on its own at the water's edge. At high tide only a little of the sand stays dry, so it's at its best with the tide out: check the tide times before you go. Give it an hour, then walk back up to the car. Keep children back from the edges along the clifftop, and a dog on a short lead or close at heel wherever there are sheep.
5 min by car
Smoo Cave Hotel
Supper
Supper is 5 minutes' drive east at the Smoo Cave Hotel, open all year, just off the A838 at Lerin with its own car park. The menu runs from hot and cold snacks to full meals, with local seafood through the summer. It's walk-in only, with no tables to book, and dogs on leads are welcome in the bar.
If it rains
Only supper is under a roof. On a wild, wet afternoon, look down on the bay from the viewpoint path and keep the sand for a drier day. The walkway into Smoo Cave, close to the hotel, is free and sheltered under the rock, down a flight of steps.
On the way
- The John Lennon Memorial Garden
John Lennon spent his boyhood summer holidays in Durness with his cousins, and in 2002 the village's gardeners laid out a garden beside the village hall in his memory. Three standing stones made by a local craftsman carry lines from In My Life, a song the village is said to have helped inspire. It's beside the road on the way to supper, so it costs only the time you stop.
Cocoa Mountain Balnakeil, a café in Durness.
Photograph by Alex Morgan via Google
Maps from OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles, data © OpenStreetMap contributors; heights from Mapzen's terrain tiles.