Balnakeil Bay is a beautiful crescent of white sand less than two kilometres from the centre of Durness — easily walked. The bay is sheltered by the headland to the north and backed by dunes and machair grassland. The water runs remarkably clear for the far north of Scotland, with turquoise shallows in good light.
The ruins of the 17th-century Balnakeil Church stand at the end of the bay road. Inside the church wall is the grave of Domhnall Mòr MacAoidh, an infamous local murderer who paid for a burial plot inside the church wall — safe from church ground he couldn't be buried on consecrated ground, but the story goes that he negotiated a place in the wall itself. The nearby Balnakeil Craft Village, a collection of studios in old MOD buildings, is worth a look if it's open.