“A natural rock arch so obscure it doesn't appear on any Ordnance Survey map — walk up the coast from Bunnahabhain and the noise just falls away, leaving that arch, a raised beach scattered with old sea stacks turned to stone pinnacles, and nothing else but the water moving through them.”
About a mile up the coast from Bunnahabhain, the path gives out to bare rock and a headland few visitors ever reach. A natural arch stands over the shore here, and just along from it a raised beach holds a scatter of quartzite pinnacles — old sea stacks, stranded above the tideline as the land slowly rose after the last ice age. There's no path marker, no sign, nothing to tell you where to look or what to do when you get there — just the sound of water moving through stone, and however long you want to stay and listen to it.
- A natural rock arch missed by every Ordnance Survey map
- A raised beach of quartzite pinnacles — the eroded remains of old sea stacks
- About an hour there and back on foot from Bunnahabhain
- No path marker or signage — a quiet, self-guided find
Rubha Bhachlaig takes its name from the Allt Bhachlaig, a small burn that meets the Sound of Islay here — recorded in the Ordnance Survey's own name books for this parish in the 1860s and 70s, when the surrounding land belonged to the Islay House estate. The natural arch a short walk along the shore has had a stranger history: unlike the headland itself, it never made it onto any map that followed — overlooked by generations of surveyors, despite standing in full view of the water the whole time.
A swan was recorded nesting among the raised-beach rocks here in 2008 - not a guaranteed sighting, but this stretch of shore is quiet enough that wildlife often goes undisturbed.
Uneven, unmarked coastal terrain with sections close to the water's edge near the arch itself — take extra care in wet or windy conditions, and view the arch and stacks from a safe distance rather than climbing on them.