[Aunty Betty]

Thank you both so much for your response. Your mutual recommendations of displacements has been extremely helpful.

Brian - the second one is very close to what I'm looking for. I'd found myself trying to use mixer blends of 2 gradients each controlled by noise shaders to give the effect of the grains. I haven't yet thought of a way of getting that random discoloration found in sand where certain areas are wetter than others.

The quick way I suppose would be to uv map a ground mesh and use a greyscale to control colour blending or perhaps a painted greyscale using planar projection for the blending.

Rickei - these are great, many thanks indeed for your time.

I'll post up the finished results when it's all come together.

Thanks guys.