Beach finds from Morar and Sanna Bay

As I mentioned in a previous post, I visited both Morar Beach and Sanna Bay on my holiday.  I had a lot of shells to sort through, giving them a little soapy bath and then dusting off any left over sand. 

The main collection I've photographed is just from Morar as I couldn't stop myself from picking up more and more. Once you start picking up shells, it's hard to stop.

Morar beach has so many pieces of broken shell that have been smoothed in the sea, creating lovely abstract twisted shapes. These were my favourite. There were also a lot of cowries that look like puppets mouths or so I thought. My granny loved finding cowries and was always the first one to find one on the beach.

Beach combing was definitely something that I've always been doing. Since I was very little I'd love to find pretty shells on the beach or stones that looked unusual. I'd pop them in my pockets and every now and then I'll find a collection of stones or the odd shell in a drawer or cupboard from a walk on the beach years ago.

I particularly love the shells that I found which have tiny holes in them. I've since found that these holes have been made by possibly any number of things in the sea from sponges to tiny worms. There's a lot of different creatures out there nibbling holes in shells in seems.

I also found a shell with a heart on it. I felt pretty lucky to have found this out of all the shells on the beach. 

Below are the shells I found on Sanna Bay.  The shells here were spread out so you had to hunt for them a bit more. I was also too busy taking lots of photos of Sanna since I hadn't been back there for a while. I thought these ones were particularly beautiful though.

As a little memento of my trip I took two of the smoothed shell pieces, one from Morar and one from Sanna and made a necklace with them.  The pieces hang together perfectly and I think it makes quite an unusual but special piece of jewellery. 

Just to finish, here is myself and my granny, back when beach combing was a new fun hobby I'd just started out on.

Camping holiday to the Highlands - Sanna Bay

Another day on our holiday took us to a very special place for me. The place where I was named after, Sanna, situated in Ardnamurchan on the West Coast. Both parents had visited Sanna as children and when meeting then visited together. Really loving Sanna Bay they had decided to name their first baby girl after it and that turned out to be me! 

After driving down a very twisty road for quite a bit we reached Sanna village where a few cottages are dotted about the hills. We then took a short walk along a path through the sand dunes and reached Sanna Bay.

The beach has beautiful golden sands and the blue skies reflect through the clear water.  I love going to beaches but there is something so peaceful and crisp about Sanna Bay, it feels like a something out of a dream and if you stand at the waters edge and look out you feel a great wave of calm.

We wandered around the rocks and had a look in some rock pools. When I was wee I used to clamber over these with a bamboo net searching about for whatever I could find.

I wanted to have a wee look at a limpet as when I was wee I used to love looking at their faces.  I'm not sure if it's even a face or a head at all but I used to think they looked a bit like E.T. This ones 'face' is tucked in the top.

Keira had a great time diving about and digging holes. She absolutely loves being on the beach.

It was certainly a pleasure to revisit Sanna Bay and I gathered a few shells from the beach to keep as a memento. I'm going to post up the shells and things I gathered soon along with some I found on Morar Beach which I'm also going to be doing a post on.

The path back was lined with black sheep that watched us as we headed to the car park. I hope to return again soon when I next visit up this way.