Atlantic coast, west Harris

The beaches of west Harris bewilder the senses, they offer no scale, they seem close, yet can be miles distant. Even more puzzlingly the glow they produce, a soft luminous halo, seems to offer the prospect of sunlight on a drab or rain-wearied day.

They are shape shifters, huge expanses of pristine sand which can disappear into low cloud and rain or smear in an abrasive blur of driving wind. Then simply vanish beneath the waves.

They conjure colours from nowhere, on a dull day they are stirred into emerald greens beneath the incoming breakers, on sunny days they transport one to Caribbean latitudes with their display of colour. Only when one glances inland and notices the dark glacier scratched rocks and feels the incongruous bite in the wind is the illusion broken