Camusdarach Beach

The crescent of white sand used as the location for the film Local Hero

Reached by a five-minute walk through a small caravan park and over the dunes from a layby on the A830, Camusdarach is the most photographed of the Silver Sands — a crescent of white sand between black rocks, with the Cuillin Hills of Skye and the islands of Eigg and Rum filling the horizon. On the right kind of summer afternoon it is genuinely transporting.

Bring water and a wind shell; the surf is small but the wind is rarely still. The campsite behind the dunes is one of the more atmospheric places to pitch a tent in this part of Scotland, though you will need to book in summer.

things to do sight beach
A story
Bill Forsyth's 1983 film Local Hero, in which an American oil company tries to buy a Scottish village, was shot up and down this coast. Camusdarach plays the beach where Burt Lancaster wanders barefoot in the closing scenes — although the village itself was filmed eighty miles east in Pennan, on the opposite coast. The phone box that features so prominently in the film never existed here at all.

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