The Old Man of Hoy, a 137-metre sea stack, stands in which Scottish island group?
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Orkney
The Old Man of Hoy stands on Hoy, in the Orkney archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. It rises 137 metres from the sea.
For all its name, it is probably less than 250 years old: earlier maps show a headland where the stack now stands.
The stack is near Rackwick Bay on the west coast of Hoy, and it can be seen from the ferry that runs between Scrabster and Stromness. It is built of Old Red Sandstone, in layers of softer sandstone and harder flagstone, resting on a plinth of basalt. Hydraulic action, the sea working away at the rock, cut it from the cliff some time after 1750, and by 1819 it had become separated from the mainland. In the early 19th century a storm washed away one of its legs. The first ascent came in 1966, when Chris Bonington, Rusty Baillie and Tom Patey reached the top. A year later, in July 1967, the BBC broadcast a climb live over three nights in The Great Climb, which drew around 15 million viewers. Its future is far from settled. By 1992 a 40-metre crack had opened in the south face, leaving an overhanging section that is expected to fall eventually, and the stack itself may one day collapse.
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