Lying on the route of the West Island Way, the beach at Stravanan is among the most highly regarded on the island.  For this walk, I suggest you leave the car at the Standing Stones car park on the Plan Road and pick up the WIW a few hundred yards to the south.  Then follow its route to the coast, across the golf course, along the sand dunes and return via the track up to Langalbuinoch Farm and the road.  If you travel by bus, you can start this round at the Kingarth Hotel.

Botanically, the coastal strip (from NS081557 to NS078563) is by far the most interesting;  it includes grassland, marshy ground, rocky shore, shingle, sandy beach and dunes.  The species listed at the foot of this page can all be found on this stretch.

The golf fairway at this time of year is host to, among other flowers, the blue Devil’s-bit Scabious and the purple Heather (Ling), while off the course and nearer the sea you will find the white petals of Sea Mayweed and the yellow of Perennial Sow-thistle in profusion.  On one of the sandstone rocks here I found this particularly striking example of Buck’s-horn Plantain.

The rather drab-looking grey-green plants with spikes of inconspicuous flowers are Atriplex species, the most common ones being Babington’s Orache and Spear-leaved Orache.   Found along much of the shoreline, they are difficult to differentiate and I am happy to leave that to the experts!

On reaching the sandy beach and dunes, the vegetation changes quite dramatically, becoming dominated by Marram-grass and Lyme Grass.  But this stretch also contains two of the island’s less common species:  Sea-holly, found only here, and Common Stork’s-bill, a low-growing plant on the grazed area behind the dunes.

  Species include: