Vatersay Bay

Vatersay is the southernmost inhabited island of the Outer Hebrides, joined to Barra by a short causeway, and its twin back-to-back beaches form one of the most beautiful sand tombolos in Scotland. Vatersay Bay, on the east side, is a wide sweep of white shell sand and impossibly clear turquoise water backed by flower-rich machair. Launch from the machair grass or the sand by the community hall car park and the shots almost make themselves: a top-down of the sand bar with the two bays curving away on either side, the graduated blues of the shallows, and higher up the whole isthmus with the Atlantic on one flank and the sheltered bay on the other. It is blissfully quiet - you may have the beach to yourself - and being off the main tourist drag it stays uncrowded even in summer. Wind is the ever-present Hebridean factor: the machair is exposed and gusts hard, so fly the calmer part of the day and keep upwind. The big legal-and-wildlife note is the machair itself: the Uists and Barra machair holds breeding corncrakes and ground-nesting waders in spring and early summer, so keep flights over the sand and sea and avoid low passes over the grass and iris beds May-July.