Loch Fleet National Nature Reserve
A tidal basin, dunes and pinewoods between Dornoch and Golspie, where common seals haul out on the sandbanks and waders crowd the shore.
Between Dornoch and Golspie, the sea slips in through a narrow mouth into a wide, shallow basin: Loch Fleet.
At high tide it is a sheet of water fringed with pines; as the tide falls, sandbanks and mudflats appear, and with them the birds and the seals.
The reserve covers more than a thousand hectares of tidal basin, dunes, shingle ridges and old pinewoods, and has been protected since 1998. Flocks of ducks and waders feed on the flats and lift off in clouds, and at low tide common seals haul out on the sandbanks on the south side. Stop at the lay-by on the Skelbo road to watch them; in summer the pups are with them.
At the north-west end, the road crosses on the Mound, a causeway Thomas Telford built in 1816. Before it, travellers had crossed by boat at Littleferry, as they had since the Vikings.
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The reserve is open at all times and free.
For the seals, stop at the lay-by on the Skelbo road at low tide.
- Where
- Between Dornoch and Golspie, off the A9.
- Seals
- From the Skelbo road lay-by at low tide.
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Add your reviewBetween Dornoch and Golspie, off the A9 and the minor road to Skelbo.
Loch FleetPinewoods and sand dunes surround this large tidal basin between Dornoch and Golspie.Under a mile 1 min by road
Golspie Golf Club3 miles as the crow flies
Embo BeachGolden sands up to the mouth of the loch.3 miles 5 min by road
Dornoch Cathedral5 miles 7 min by road
Golspie Burn Waterfall & GorgeA wooded gorge and waterfall at Golspie.8 miles 13 min by road
Dunrobin CastleThe great house above the sea at Golspie.8 miles 15 min by road
Places to stay near the reserve, and when each is next free.
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