Buckie Loch isn’t a true loch, or even a sea-loch any longer.
Visitors who walk this far (about 3½ miles from Wellhill) will find an open, low-lying area of coarse heathland plants growing over the dunes, backed by some much steeper dunes: the north-eastern flanks of the Lady Culbin sand dune system.
Rapid erosion
A low line of dunes protects Buckie Loch from the open sea but these are rapidly eroding away. Every year, high tides driven by strong winds reclaim a little more of the sand in this natural cycle of erosion, sending salt waves crashing into Buckie Loch.
The brown, salt-burned foliage of the vegetation provides evidence of this, as do the dead or dying trees on the dune edge beyond Buckie Loch. Once the trees are undermined by erosion they fall on to the shore and can be carried out to sea. Forestry Commission Scotland has to fell the edge trees every so often to minimise the hazard to shipping.
Only the toughest of plants and animals can survive this treatment for long. Black ants, shiny metallic millipedes and strong marram grass and heather adapt to the conditions and survive.
Sand and shingle
The shoreline here is composed of sand and smooth, rounded shingle. It’s less usual to see shore birds here as the coastline is more exposed than the Gut further west, and the tides rise too high to allow birds to nest among the shingle, but the ubiquitous oystercatchers and redshank can still often be spotted. Some traces of the local shore-net salmon fishing industry remain dotted about the beach, but otherwise this is a peaceful and very natural spot.
From sea loch to grassland
This area was open to the sea in the 1870s, became a winter loch at the turn of the century, a freshwater marsh in the 1920s and is now a grassland. The sea will now likely breach the dune system more frequently through storm events and as the dunes erode.
Nature will likely come full circle here in time, making Buckie Loch a small bay of the Moray Firth once more.
Read more about the coastal landscape at Culbin.
See the Culbin map (PDF 3.5Mb).
Back to 12 places to see at Culbin.
