Friday, September 14, 2007

David Balfour's Bay Erraid


We set off from Fidden on the Ross of Mull to circumnavigate the island of Erraid. It was late evening in July and the thunder clouds of earlier in the day had moved SW over the distant Scottish mainland. After the rain, the sky was clear and bright as we wended our way through the skerries.


We stopped at Traigh Gheal on the island's SW coast. The white shell sand and red granite contrasted with the turquoise of the shallow waters. Robert Louis Stevenson, the author, spent time here while his father was constructing the remote lighthouses at Skerryvore and Dubh Artach (which lie far to the west and south west). In his novel "Kidnapped" the hero, David Balfour, was shipwrecked on this beach.