Spar Cave: The cathedral-like hiding place on the Isle of Skye, accessed via a cliff face and a ravine

Spar Cave on the Strathaird peninsula was recommended my no less a figure than Walter Scott, yet remains quiet and unspoilt.

Spar Cave Gorge, Isle of Skye.
Spar Cave Gorge, Isle of Skye.
(Image credit: Alamy)

Often overshadowed by Bonnie Prince Charlie in drag, the little-known romance of Skye tells of a 9th-century princess who fell in love with a shipwrecked rival chief. Fearing retribution from her father, she concealed her baby in cathedral-like Spar Cave until the feud was over — hence its Gaelic name Slochd Altimen, which means ‘Nursing Cave’.

Dramatic eroded sedimentary rock strata and ravine in sea cliffs on approach to Spar Cave, Glasnakille, Elgol, Isle of Skye.

A good hiding place, it’s only accessible for an hour either side of low tide and, despite Sir Walter Scott calling it a ‘mermaid’s alabaster grot’ and ‘Strathaird’s enchanted cell’ in 1814, it is little visited.

Spar Cave's calcium deposits.

To get there, set off from the phone box in Glasnakille and before long — via a trail left by sheep, a few cliff faces, slippery rocks and a vast ravine — you’ll find your way to the extraordinary flowstone staircase, dark cavern and icy pool within.

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Annunciata Elwes

Annunciata grew up in the wilds of Lancashire and now lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and an awful pug called Parsley. She’s been floating round the Country Life office for more than a decade, her work winning the Property Magazine of the Year Award in 2022 (Property Press Awards). Before that, she had a two-year stint writing ‘all kinds of fiction’ for The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, worked in internal comms for Country Life’s publisher (which has had many names in recent years but was then called IPC Media), and spent another year researching for a historical biographer, whose then primary focus was Graham Greene and John Henry Newman and whose filing system was a collection of wardrobes and chests of drawers filled with torn scraps of paper. During this time, she regularly gave tours of 17th-century Milton Manor, Oxfordshire, which may or may not have been designed by Inigo Jones, and co-founded a literary, art and music festival, at which Johnny Flynn headlined. When not writing and editing for Country Life, Annunciata is also a director of TIN MAN ART, a contemporary art gallery founded in 2021 by her husband, James Elwes.