St Columba’s Cave can be found, by those with a love of the remote, on the Knapdale Peninsula. St Columba stopped off here to meditate and minister 1400 years ago, after leaving Ulster, while he awaited permission from King Conal to establish his monastery on Iona.

The cave has been used on and off since the middle of the Stone Age and St Columba’s font is believed to have been a Stone Age mortar. Some way in, on a rock shelf to your right, is a stone altar and carved on the wall behind is a rustic, but clearly identifiable, cross.

With Loch Caolisport sparkling to your left and the road ahead leaving the loch edge and deteriorating to a 4 wheel drive track, park and to your right just a little way from the road will be the ivy clad ruins of a 13th century chapel. If the bracken isn’t winning, a path will lead through these ruins and on to the base of the cliff and the cave.