Vatersay Beaches
The white beaches of Vatersay, the southernmost inhabited island of the Outer Hebrides, joined to Barra by a causeway, with machair, dunes and the Annie Jane memorial.
Vatersay is the southernmost inhabited island of the Outer Hebrides, joined to Barra since 1991 by a causeway a few minutes' drive from Castlebay.
The island is almost cut in two by a narrow neck of dunes, and on either side of it lies a beach of white sand and clear, turquoise water.
Behind the beaches the machair, the flowering grassland of the Hebridean coast, is bright with wild flowers in early summer. Look out too for the memorial to the Annie Jane, an emigrant ship wrecked here in a storm in 1853 with great loss of life, and the remains of an RAF Catalina flying boat that crashed on the island in 1944. Vatersay is also the starting point of the Hebridean Way, the long-distance walking and cycling route that runs north across ten islands to Lewis.
The beaches are open at any time.
Open at all times.
Cross the causeway from Barra.
- Where
- South of Barra, by causeway.
- Beaches
- Two, either side of the dunes.
- Memorial
- The Annie Jane, 1853.
Across the causeway south of Castlebay; the beaches lie either side of the narrow neck of the island, HS9 5YW.
Scotland, in print.
Every photograph commissioned, every word written by somebody who went. Printed twice a year, made in Scotland.
For further reading, before you go.