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With two hours until our ferry back to the mainland, there was plenty of time to head down to Eigg's two great caves: Massacre Cave and Cathedral Cave. The path to the caves handily branched off our descent route from
An Sgurr, saving us a bit of time. There's an easy walk through fields with good sea views before a short, steep descent to sea level in between the two caves. View west along the coast from here:
Fortunately low tide coincided with our trip to the caves, otherwise access to Cathedral Cave would be difficult. First though, we turned left to visit Massacre Cave, which is almost immediately east of where the path comes down the cliffs. The entrance doesn't look promising:
You need a torch to explore inside. The roof is low for the first section (not quite a crawl, but a low stoop needed - take your rucksack off first!) but the cave soon opens out and you can walk easily for the remainder - all 80 metres of it, which seems a long way in an enclosed, dark space. Especially when you remember the history: hundreds of people were trapped and suffocated to death in here during a clan feud.
Inside the cave:
Quite glad to emerge into daylight again, we then headed west for a few hundred metres to Cathedral Cave, where church services used to be held. Visually, this is a much more impressive cave - again it goes quite far back and a torch is useful, although not vital:
Caves explored, we had time spare to enjoy the coastline a bit more and explore the rock pools:
Eilean Chathastail just off the coast on the walk back to the ferry:
That concludes our Eigg-in-a-day whistlestop tour! Perhaps we'll have a chance to come back one day and do it proper justice...
