Sand tombolo linking island to Shetland.
A tombolo joins St Ninian’s Isle to Bigton, on the Shetland Mainland — a bar of sand or shingle thrown up naturally between two pieces of land, in this case a curved, 500-metre sweep of shell sand said to be the largest of its kind in the UK. For most of the year it sits well above the sea and you can walk across at any state of the tide. In winter, storms and high spring tides can strip sand from the beach and leave the crossing under water for a time, so check conditions before you cross at that time of year. On the island, a ruined 12th-century chapel stands on the site of an even older one: in 1958 a local schoolboy digging there with archaeologists from Aberdeen University found a hoard of 28 pieces of Pictish silver, among them a dozen brooches and eight bowls, buried in the 8th century, probably to keep them from Viking raiders. The originals are in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, with replicas in Lerwick’s Shetland Museum. Below the chapel, the isle’s green hill runs down to sandy bays on both sides, on the edge of the wider Shetland coast.
