Qualla: Culbin Sands, Forest and Findhorn Bay

Culbin Sands, Forest and Findhorn Bay: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit W. L. Tarbert, CC BY-SA 3.0. Stand in the Culbin Forest today and you stand on what was, until the 1920s, the largest dune system in Britain. The forest is younger than the people who planted it: from 1922 onward the Forestry Commission set pine into shifting sand across more than 2,500 hectares, working for over four decades to anchor what had been one of the most restless landscapes in Scotland. Now Culbin runs in a long strip along the Moray Firth between Nairn and Findhorn Bay, designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest and managed by Forestry and Land Scotland. The forest meets a beach owned by the RSPB. The beach meets a tidal basin called Findhorn Bay that is not actually a bay. And somewhere underneath, the story goes, lies a buried village.

Image: W. L. Tarbert | CC BY-SA 3.0

Culbin Sands, Forest and Findhorn Bay: The Buried Village of Culbin

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lis Burke, CC BY-SA 2.0. A community once existed northeast of the present forest, though no-one is sure exactly where. Folklore says the village was buried in sandstorms in 1694, swallowed in a single catastrophic season. The contemporary news records do not actually mention any such event, and modern h...

Image: Lis Burke | CC BY-SA 2.0

Culbin Sands, Forest and Findhorn Bay: The Forest That Grew Over the Dunes

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. Culbin Forest is not a pristine wilderness. It is an engineering project that turned into an ecosystem. Tall pines dominate, but there are sandy openings where younger trees have been planted, grassland patches that suit butterflies, and ponds that function as oases for the local...

Image: Colin Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

Culbin Sands, Forest and Findhorn Bay: The Beach, the Bar, and the Geese

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mary and Angus Hogg, CC BY-SA 2.0. The RSPB owns the beach that fronts the forest. Eurasian oystercatchers, curlews, and redshanks work the wet sand. Driftwood collects in lines from winter storms. Three sand spits enclose a salt marsh called The Gut, and the largest spit - The Bar - is the longest of its kind in ...

Image: Mary and Angus Hogg | CC BY-SA 2.0

Culbin Sands, Forest and Findhorn Bay: Findhorn Bay's Tidal Theatre

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lis Burke, CC BY-SA 2.0. The bay is not really a bay. It is a large tidal basin enclosed by the villages of Kinloss and Findhorn to the east and Culbin Forest to the west, drained by the River Findhorn and the Muckle Burn. Most of the basin is shallow - two meters on average - with a deeper channel reach...

Image: Lis Burke | CC BY-SA 2.0