№ 20Beach · Shetland, Scotland

St Ninian's Isle

Britain's largest sand causeway leads to an island where a schoolboy dug up a hoard of Pictish silver.

Looking back from St Ninian's Isle across the white sand causeway to Shetland's Mainland, a drystone ruin on the green slope below. — Pl. IILooking home across the sand

Green clifftops fall away to stacks and headlands of dark rock in a deep blue sea on the seaward side of St Ninian's Isle. — Pl. IIIThe isle's wilder far side

Photographs AdamKR (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Ruth Sharville (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons

St Ninian's Isle is tied to the Shetland Mainland by a tombolo — a double-curved bar of white shell sand with the sea breaking on both sides of your feet. It is the largest active tombolo in Britain, and walking it feels like a magic trick that somehow keeps working.

In 1958 a Lerwick schoolboy helping excavate the island's ruined chapel lifted a slab and found a larchwood box of Pictish silver — bowls, brooches and sword fittings, hidden from Viking raiders and never collected. The treasure is in Edinburgh; the beach, most days, is yours.

Field notes

The knowledge

Getting there: Bigton, on the south Mainland of Shetland, about half an hour from Lerwick; park by the beach. The tombolo is walkable except in the biggest winter seas.
Best time: May to September for the light and the terns; the sand is at its widest after a calm spell.
Local tip: Replicas of the hoard are in the Shetland Museum in Lerwick — see them the same day and the empty chapel makes sense.

Field position59.9700° N · 1.3420° W

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