“Islay's wildest corner — big skies, rolling dunes and a coastline so quiet you'll likely have it to yourself, with a genuine chance of spotting one of Scotland's rarest birds.”
Rolling dunes and big Atlantic skies on the north coast, right beside RSPB Loch Gruinart — great for walkers and birdwatchers alike.
- Machair and dune coastline on Islay's remote north tip
- Right next to RSPB Loch Gruinart — combine both in one visit
- Wide open beach at the end, great for kids to run free
- Excellent birdwatching along the walk
Ardnave takes its name from the Gaelic Àird an Naoimh, 'point of the saint', though which saint, and why, isn't recorded in any source we could find. Behind the point, Ardnave Loch holds a crannog: an artificial island reached by a causeway, its summit once topped with small slab-built structures. Historic Environment Scotland's own record can't say when it was built or what those structures were for, only that centuries of weather have left them collapsed and overgrown.
The walk out to the point crosses working farmland: Ardnave Farm still runs cattle across the dunes, so keep dogs close and give any calves a wide berth. Local accounts also place a small herring-fishing settlement, Tayvullin, in the dunes near the southern beach, dating from the herring boom of the early 1900s, though this is harder to pin down than the crannog.
Choughs are a real possibility here: a rare, red-billed crow found nowhere else in Scotland outside Islay and Colonsay, with barely 50 breeding pairs left in the country. Seals haul out on the sandbanks and skerries offshore, and are sometimes heard 'singing', a haunting, carrying call that's given rise to old selkie folklore about seal-women luring sailors with song. Barnacle geese and whooper swans gather in winter, and otters are occasionally seen along the shore.
This walk crosses an active working farm. Cattle, including calves, graze the dunes and machair — keep dogs on a lead at all times and give any cattle a wide berth.