St Ninian's Isle – Over the Sand and a Warm Lunch
A few hours.
The route
St Ninian's Isle is joined to Shetland by a curving bar of pale sand with the sea on both sides, and it's probably the best-known beach in the islands.
Walk across to the green isle, find the chapel site where a hoard of Pictish silver was dug up in 1958, and stop for lunch at Da Moors Café near Cunningsburgh.
The day
Bigton
A walk over the sand to an island and back, then a warm lunch on the road north.
About two and a half hours
St Ninian’s Isle
An attraction
Park in the small car park at the end of the road beyond Bigton, at the top of the beach, where the walk begins. Below it, the tombolo, a bar of white sand about 500 metres long, runs out to St Ninian's Isle with a beach on each side. On the far side a sandy track climbs to the old chapel site, where a schoolboy helping on a dig in 1958 found a hoard of Pictish silver, now in Edinburgh. Allow an hour or so there and back. The full circuit of the isle is 6 km and takes about three hours, along high cliffs, so keep well back from the edge. In a winter storm the sea can wash over the sand, so save it for a calmer day. The toilets at Bigton open only from April to September.
18 min by car
Da Moors Café
Lunch
Lunch is 18 minutes' drive north at Da Moors Café beside the A970 at Cunningsburgh, in the old Mackenzie's farm shop. It serves cooked breakfasts and filled rolls, then soup, toasties, paninis, baked tatties and quiche until 2.30pm, with a children's menu and home bakes. It's open Monday to Saturday and shut on Sundays. On a Sunday, Sandwick Baking Co, a detour south to Sandwick that adds about 12 km, sells its own pies and bakes in the afternoon: ring first.
If it rains
In rain the sand crossing is still a fine short walk, but leave the circuit of the isle and its cliffs for a dry day; in a winter gale, when the sea can break over the tombolo, look from the top of the beach and go on to an early lunch.
Photograph by Bob & Liz Fiorini via Google