It’s a curious sensation, cycling over the seabed, but it’s a neat way to reach the tidal island of Oronsay. I study the wet sand beneath my wheels. Human history is long in this remote corner of the Hebrides and has always turned on the tide. Sea blends into rocky shore in a convoluted landscape where every few metres perspectives change. It’s like inhabiting a child’s kaleidoscope, a shifting and wholly absorbing picture framed against today’s clear blue sky.
The focus on Oronsay is its long-defunct priory, emptied in the Reformation, and the grand farmhouse next door. Both are tucked against the island’s highest hill, mighty Beinn Orasaigh. There are a handful of permanent inhabitants and this is where they live, marooned twice a day. The walls of the priory remain, a chapel and barn, and an elegant colonnade. In front of the priory, pasture stretches evenly towards the coast. The shellfish that create the island’s stunning white beaches have also rewarded Oronsay with a calcareous substrate that grass relishes. The RSPB manages the land here in a canny balance of livestock farming and conservation; there’s a rare colony of choughs and corncrakes to protect.
