Summer on Skye: Coral Beach & Mushrooms

 

I'm back from Skye now but still have a few more things to post from the end of my summer on the misty isle. Coral Beach is a beach made not from sand or rocks but lots of tiny pieces of coral and shells. I've been quite a few times before but this year I happened to go when it was the equinox low tide and we had a great surprise. . .

 

Approaching the beach a causeway could be seen underneath the sea, but we didn't know wether the tide was going out or coming in...

     

 Seaweed creating pools and jellyfishies
...

  Coral Beach close-up...

 

Clear sea...

 

Massive splattered jellyfish... 

  

 Sea channels filled with shells and stones...

  

 

      

The lump hill and seaweed patterns... 

After walking along the beach, we walked up the lump hill and from the top we saw...

  ...the tide had gone out and the tidal causeway had opened up linking to the small island!

 

Due to the tides the causeway only appears a few times a year at the lowest equinox tides so we had to take the opportunity to walk out to the island...

 

Walking along the causeway was like being under the sea with all the different types of seaweed and shells we saw...

Coral Beach is just up the road from Dunvegan Castle, check it out if you're ever up on Skye!

Coming back from Coral Beach we stopped in Dunvegan to do the 2 churches walk, walking from an old ruined church to the present day church. I wasn't expecting anything much but it was one of the most amazing experiences of the summer! The woodland part of the walk was full of so many different types of mushrooms and funghi, it was so unbelievable, we must have seen about 30 different kinds including this amazing coral fungus {below right}, we even saw the most perfect fairy ring, a circle made out of mushrooms!  {I didn't have much memory left on my phone so didn't get many pics!:(}

  

 It felt like a fairytale and was so surreal, with a hint of scariness as many of them would have been deathly poisonous, autumn foraging always seems like such a good idea but can be so dangerous if you aren't 100% sure of what you have found! 

I'll definitely be back soon Dunvegan and Coral Beach!