Old Man of Hoy
The Old Man of Hoy is one of the most dramatic and iconic natural rock formations in the British Isles, a towering sea stack rising approximately 137 metres (449 feet) from the Atlantic Ocean off the western coast of Hoy, the second largest of the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland. Standing sentinel in the North Atlantic, this isolated pillar of red Torridonian sandstone is often described as the tallest stack in the United Kingdom, and its sheer, vertiginous profile has made it a symbol not just of Orkney but of wild, elemental Britain itself. The stack sits just offshore from the dramatic cliffs of St John's Head, separated from the mainland of Hoy by a narrow channel, and its existence is a testament to the relentless erosive power of wind and wave working on ancient rock over thousands of years. For walkers, climbers, naturalists and those who simply love wild places, the Old Man of Hoy holds an almost magnetic appeal.
Geologically, the stack is composed of Torridonian sandstone layered atop a plinth of basalt, and it is estimated to be around a billion years old in terms of its constituent rock, though the stack itself in its current form is relatively young in geological terms, probably having been formed within the last few thousand years as the surrounding cliffs eroded and left this resistant column standing alone. The sandstone is richly coloured in shades of deep ochre, rust and amber, and the contrast between this warm stone and the cold grey-green sea below is striking in almost any light. The basalt plinth at the base, constantly battered by the Atlantic swell, is slick and dark, a dramatic contrast to the soaring sandstone column above. Geologists note that the stack is eroding continuously, and its long-term survival is far from guaranteed — at some point in the future, probably centuries hence, it will collapse into the sea as its predecessors did.
The Old Man of Hoy achieved genuine national fame on 8 July 1967, when the BBC broadcast a live outside television event covering the first successful ascent of the stack. A team including Chris Bonington, Tom Patey and Rusty Baillie made the first ascent in 1966, completing a route graded at Hard Very Severe (HVS) in the British system. The BBC live broadcast in 1967 involved six climbers taking different routes and attracted an audience of around fifteen million viewers, an extraordinary figure for what was pioneering outdoor television. That broadcast lodged the Old Man of Hoy firmly in the popular imagination of an entire generation of British viewers, many of whom had never visited Orkney or imagined such a place could exist in their own country. The stack continues to attract climbers from around the world, with various routes established on its faces, though all require serious technical skill and commitment given the remoteness, the often unpredictable weather, and the crumbling nature of the sandstone.
In person, the experience of seeing the Old Man of Hoy for the first time is genuinely overwhelming. The walk in across Hoy's moorland gives no hint of what is to come until the ground suddenly drops away at the cliff edge and the full spectacle reveals itself. The stack does not merely stand there; it seems to lean, to tilt, to defy expectation of scale and proportion. Seabirds — guillemots, razorbills, fulmars, and kittiwakes — wheel and cry around its base and along the adjacent cliffs, their calls mixing with the constant deep boom of Atlantic swells striking the rock far below. On calm days the sea glitters and the sandstone glows warm gold; in storm conditions the stack is wreathed in spray and mist, the sound of the ocean almost deafening, the whole scene acquiring an almost mythological character. The smell of salt and seaweed is ever-present, and the wind is almost never entirely absent.
The surrounding landscape of Hoy is itself exceptional and quite unlike the rest of Orkney. While most of the Orkney archipelago consists of fertile, relatively low-lying farmland, Hoy is mountainous and moorland-covered, with the Ward Hill reaching 479 metres and making it the highest point in Orkney. The walk to the Old Man from the village of Rackwick takes visitors through heathery moorland and past dramatic coastal scenery, and the Rackwick Valley itself is a hauntingly beautiful glaciated bowl with a small beach of enormous rounded boulders. The cliffs near the Old Man include St John's Head, which at around 335 metres is one of the highest vertical sea cliffs in Britain. The whole area is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and is managed partly as a nature reserve. The composer Peter Maxwell Davies lived for many years on Hoy and drew deep inspiration from this landscape; Rackwick in particular has associations with the poet George Mackay Brown, Orkney's greatest literary figure.
Visiting the Old Man of Hoy requires a degree of commitment and planning that only adds to the sense of achievement and reward. Hoy is reached by ferry from Stromness on Orkney Mainland — the Orkney Ferries service runs regular crossings — and from the ferry terminal at Moaness or Lyness, visitors can make their way to Rackwick by road, bicycle or on foot. From Rackwick, the walk to the viewpoint above the stack takes approximately one to one and a half hours each way across well-maintained but sometimes boggy moorland paths. The round trip from Rackwick is roughly 6 to 7 kilometres. There are no facilities at the stack itself, and the cliff edge has no fencing, so care is absolutely essential. The best time to visit is late spring through early autumn, when daylight hours are long (in midsummer the sky barely darkens at this latitude), the moorland flowers are at their best, and weather windows are more likely, though Orkney's weather is notoriously changeable at any time of year. Warm, waterproof layers are essential even in summer.
One of the more poignant and lesser-known aspects of the Old Man of Hoy is its role in the emotional geography of Orcadian identity and imagination. It appears on countless postcards, paintings and photographs, and Orcadians regard it with a mixture of pride and affection. There is also a quiet awareness that the stack is mortal — that the same forces which created it are steadily consuming it. Regular visitors over the decades report visible changes in its profile: rockfalls are not uncommon, and significant chunks of sandstone have broken away from the upper sections in recent years. This impermanence only deepens the sense of privilege one feels in standing at the cliff edge and seeing it whole and upright against the ocean sky. It is one of those rare places in the world that delivers precisely what it promises — and often more.