An ayre is the name used for shingle beaches found in

Orkney Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north ...

Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the n ...

, the

Isle of Man ) , anthem = " O Land of Our Birth" , image = Isle of Man by Sentinel-2.jpg , image_map = Europe-Isle_of_Man.svg , mapsize = , map_alt = Location of the Isle of Man in Europe , map_caption = Location of the Isle of Man (green) in Europ ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancas ...

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. ...

and

Northumbria la, Regnum Northanhymbrorum , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of Northumbria , common_name = Northumbria , status = State , status_text = Unified Anglian kingdom (before 876)North: Anglian kingdom (af ...

. The word is derived from the

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

''eyrr'', meaning a

shingle beach A shingle beach (also referred to as rocky beach or pebble beach) is a beach which is armoured with pebbles or small- to medium-sized cobbles (as opposed to fine sand). Typically, the stone composition may grade from characteristic sizes rangi ...

or gravelly place, and may be applied to ordinary beaches, cliff-foot beaches such as the

Lang Ayre The Lang Ayre is a beach on the west side of Ronas Hill, Northmavine, Shetland. At in length it is the archipelago's longest. It is accessed either by a long walk from the top of Collafirth Hill down the Burn of Monius, or by sea. The beach's ...

Northmavine Northmavine or Northmaven ( non, Norðan Mæfeið, meaning ‘the land north of the Mavis Grind’) is a peninsula in northwest Mainland Shetland in Scotland. The peninsula has historically formed the civil parish Northmavine. The modern North ...

, Shetland, spits, bars or

tombolos A tombolo is a sandy or shingle isthmus. A tombolo, from the Italian ', meaning 'pillow' or 'cushion', and sometimes translated incorrectly as '' ayre'' (an ayre is a shingle beach of any kind), is a deposition landform by which an island beco ...

, but only if formed of shingle. More than 130 such shingle beaches are named on

Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...

maps of Shetland, but far fewer in Orkney, where most beaches are formed of sand. The word in its Old Norse form is common in

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its ...

, and it also occurs in a few place names in the north and west of the Scottish mainland which had a strong Norse influence, such as Eriboll ("a homestead on a shingle beach") and in the names of several shingle banks—Salt Ayre, Green Ayre, Stake Ayre, Rabbit Ayre and Whinny Ayre—in the tidal reach of the

River Lune The River Lune (archaically sometimes Loyne) is a river in length in Cumbria and Lancashire, England. Etymology Several elucidations for the origin of the name ''Lune'' exist. Firstly, it may be that the name is Brittonic in genesis and der ...

at Lancaster.

Churchill Barrier The Churchill Barriers are four causeways in the Orkney islands with a total length of . They link the Orkney Mainland in the north to the island of South Ronaldsay via Burray and the two smaller islands of Lamb Holm and Glimps Holm. The barr ...

number 4 in Orkney used a shingle spit, the Ayre of Cara on

South Ronaldsay South Ronaldsay (, also , sco, Sooth Ronalshee) is one of the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. It is linked to the Orkney Mainland by the Churchill Barriers, running via Burray, Glimps Holm and Lamb Holm. Name Along with No ...

, as its southern landfall. This ayre is still named on maps, despite having all but vanished under the causeway and the sand dunes that have accumulated on its eastern side. The term "ayre" is sometimes wrongly applied to sand tombolos (e.g. St. Ninian's tombolo in Shetland) and to the lakes and lagoons impounded by bay-head bars, which are more properly called British Regional Geology: Orkney and Shetland - Institute of Geological Sciences, 1976 in Orkney and in Shetland.

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{{coastal geography Beaches