High Pasture Cave

High Pasture Cave lies on the Isle of Skye in the Scottish Highlands, a kilometre south-east of Torrin village. The entrance opens in a narrow valley on the northern slopes of Beinn Dùbhaich, where Durness limestone has been carved by water into a shaft about six metres deep. From the shaft the main cave runs roughly eighty metres before splitting into passages, one of which remains dry and rocky. Excavations since 1972 have uncovered Mesolithic arrowheads and Iron Age hearths, showing the cave was used on and off for thousands of years. In 2003 a full year of digging by Historic Scotland and local explorers revealed bronze tools, bone beads and ivory ornaments scattered around a large fireplace. Steven Birch and Martin Wildgoose led the work, recognising that broken crockery and bones thrown aside by earlier visitors were in fact valuable deposits. Visitors today descend the shaft to the main chamber, where the fork in the passage can still be seen. On the cave floor lie remnants of the Iron Age fire site and the staircase built to keep the entrance clear. Among the finds is a carved wooden lyre bridge dated about 300 BC, the earliest stringed instrument known in western Europe. The cave walls and surrounding slopes offer quiet views of the Red Cuillin hills, marking a place where people once gathered for ceremony and music long ago.