The Old Man of Storr is a 50-metre basalt pinnacle on the Trotternish Ridge, Isle of Skye — the most photographed rock formation in Scotland, and by local tradition the buried thumb of a giant. It stands roughly a mile’s walk uphill from a dedicated car park just off the A855, seven miles north of Portree, and most visitors allow around two hours for the round trip on a clearly waymarked but genuinely steep path.

History of the Old Man of Storr

A Landslip Millions of Years in the Making

The Old Man stands at the foot of the Storr, the highest point of the Trotternish Ridge at 719 metres, and the whole ridge is the result of the largest landslide in Britain. Around 55 to 60 million years ago, as the North Atlantic Ocean began tearing itself open between Europe and Greenland, huge volumes of basalt lava erupted across this part of Scotland — part of the same vast episode of volcanic activity, geologists now call the North Atlantic Igneous Province, that produced the hexagonal basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland and Fingal’s Cave on the Scottish island of Staffa, roughly 80 miles to the south. On Skye, that lava built up in flow after flow, some individual layers reaching well over 100 metres thick, until the accumulated basalt sat as a dense, heavy cap on top of much older, far weaker Jurassic sedimentary rock — layers of sandstone, siltstone and mudstone laid down 190 to 150 million years earlier, when Skye lay beneath a shallow, warm sea far to the south of where the island sits today. Over time that softer rock gave way under the sheer weight of the basalt above it, and the ground slumped and collapsed in enormous slices, leaving behind the tilted cliffs, stepped terraces and isolated towers that make up the Trotternish landslip today. The natural amphitheatre directly below the cliffs is known as the Sanctuary, and the Old Man is its largest surviving pinnacle — one remnant of resistant basalt left standing proud as the softer ground around it wore away beneath it, grain by grain, over millions of years.

It’s also not a landscape that finished moving once the ice ages ended. A few miles north at the Quiraing — part of the same collapsing system — the ground is still measurably shifting today, slowly enough that it poses no danger to a passing walker but consistently enough that the single road running beneath it needs repair work most years, a rare case in Britain of a landslide that’s still, quite literally, a live process rather than a finished one. And the same exposed Jurassic rock that gave way to produce the landslip has yielded something else entirely near Staffin, a little further along the coast: genuine dinosaur footprints, preserved in ancient shoreline mudstone and dated to around 170 million years ago — a reminder that long before there was a giant’s thumb, a basalt cap, or even the ocean that split the layers apart, this same ground was open coastline, walked by animals utterly unlike anything alive on Skye today.The Old Man stands at the foot of the Storr, the highest point of the Trotternish Ridge at 719 metres, and the whole ridge is the result of the largest landslide in Britain. Around 60 million years ago, thick basalt lava flows spread across the area and cooled, sitting on top of much older, weaker Jurassic sedimentary rock. Over time that softer rock gave way under the weight of the basalt above it, and the ground slumped and collapsed, leaving behind the tilted cliffs, terraces and isolated towers that make up the Trotternish landslip today. The natural amphitheatre directly below the cliffs is known as the Sanctuary, and the Old Man is its largest surviving pinnacle — one remnant of rock left standing as the softer ground around it eroded away over millions of years.

The pinnacle itself is composed of basalt, the same volcanic rock that caps the ridge above it, and it’s this dense, resistant cap that has allowed it to survive as a freestanding tower long after the softer ground beneath and around it wore away. Geologists sometimes describe it as a volcanic plug, though its precise origin — whether an eroded remnant of the collapsing cliff or a separate volcanic feature — is still debated. What’s not in dispute is its instability: climbers who’ve attempted it describe the rock as notoriously loose, and it remains, in a very literal sense, still in the process of falling down.

The Giant’s Thumb: Local Legend

The Old Man stands at the foot of the Storr, the highest point of the Trotternish Ridge at 719 metres, and the whole ridge is the result of the largest landslide in Britain. Around 55 to 60 million years ago, as the North Atlantic Ocean began tearing itself open between Europe and Greenland, huge volumes of basalt lava erupted across this part of Scotland — part of the same vast episode of volcanic activity, geologists now call the North Atlantic Igneous Province, that produced the hexagonal basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland and Fingal’s Cave on the Scottish island of Staffa, roughly 80 miles to the south. On Skye, that lava built up in flow after flow, some individual layers reaching well over 100 metres thick, until the accumulated basalt formed a cliff-forming cap up to 200 metres high in places, sitting on top of much older, far weaker Jurassic sedimentary rock — layers of sandstone, siltstone and mudstone (including the notably soft Staffin Shales, over 117 metres thick in places) laid down 190 to 150 million years earlier, when Skye lay beneath a shallow, warm sea far to the south of where the island sits today.

The collapse itself, though, is far younger than the rock involved in it. The basalt cap sat largely intact for tens of millions of years before the weight above it and the weakness below it finally gave way — and what tipped the balance wasn’t the volcanic activity itself but the last Ice Age. As glaciers steepened the cliff face and then retreated roughly 17,000 years ago, removing the physical support the ice had been providing, stress within the rock was released and the softer Jurassic layers beneath the basalt began to fail. The ground slumped and collapsed in enormous slices, a process that continued through the Late Glacial period and into the few thousand years after deglaciation, leaving behind the tilted cliffs, stepped terraces and isolated towers that make up the Trotternish landslip today — a genuinely post-glacial landscape built from tens-of-millions-of-years-old rock. The escarpment runs almost the full 20-mile (30km) length of the Trotternish peninsula, making it the longest landslip in Britain, while the Quiraing, further north along the same system, is separately recognised as the single widest landslide in the country, spreading over 2km across. The whole escarpment is now protected as a Special Area of Conservation, with its northern stretch around the Quiraing also designated a National Scenic Area.

The natural amphitheatre directly below the Storr’s cliffs is known as the Sanctuary, and the Old Man is its largest surviving pinnacle — one remnant of resistant basalt left standing proud as the softer ground around it wore away beneath it, grain by grain, over the millennia since the ice retreated. It’s also not a landscape that finished moving once the glaciers left. A few miles north at the Quiraing — part of the same collapsing system — the ground is still measurably shifting today, slowly enough that it poses no danger to a passing walker but consistently enough that the single road running beneath it needs repair work most years, a rare case in Britain of a landslide that’s still, quite literally, a live process rather than a finished one. And the same exposed Jurassic rock that gave way to produce the landslip has yielded something else entirely near Staffin, a little further along the coast: genuine dinosaur footprints, preserved in ancient shoreline mudstone and dated to around 170 million years ago — a reminder that long before there was a giant’s thumb, a basalt cap, or even the ice that finally brought the cliffs down, this same ground was open coastline, walked by animals utterly unlike anything alive on Skye today.In Gaelic, the Old Man of Storr is known as Bodach an Stòir, and it carries more than one story depending on who’s telling it. According to The Storr’s own visitor site, some islanders hold that the pinnacle is the thumb of a giant, buried standing up with just his thumb left protruding from the ground; others say the rock face itself resolves into the profile of an old man’s head when viewed from the right angle, brow, nose and jaw picked out by the weathered basalt. A further local version holds that the Old Man was once a giant who turned to stone after a fight with a rival giant on the ridge above — a variation on the same theme of a once-living figure fixed permanently into the landscape.

The name “Storr” itself is older than any of these tales and isn’t Gaelic at all — it comes from Old Norse, a legacy of the centuries when Skye sat within a Norse-ruled sphere stretching across the Hebrides, and is generally understood to mean something like “great” or “large.” That layering of Norse place-name and Gaelic legend, sitting on top of a geological story tens of millions of years older still, is fairly typical of the Trotternish coastline, where a strikingly modern-looking landscape often turns out to have one of the oldest stories on the island underneath it.

Don Whillans and the First Ascent, 1955

For decades the Old Man was considered unclimbable, until English mountaineer Don Whillans, climbing with Geoff Sutton and Jim Barber, made the first recorded ascent in 1955. The route they established is still graded Very Severe, a serious climbing grade for the era, and Whillans — who would go on to become one of the most influential British climbers of the postwar period, known for hard first ascents across the Alps and Himalaya — reportedly found the rock as loose and unreliable as it looks from below. The ascent has been repeated only occasionally since, and it remains a serious, specialist climb rather than a scramble; the vast majority of visitors experience the Old Man from the base of the path, not from its summit.

On screen, the pinnacle has had a longer career than most Highland landmarks: it appears in the opening minutes of the 1973 cult film The Wicker Man, and more recently provided the backdrop for an early archaeological discovery scene in Ridley Scott’s 2012 science-fiction film Prometheus. It has not, despite a persistent search online, featured in Game of Thrones — the show’s Skye filming was concentrated around Rubha an Dùnain, well to the south, not at the Storr.

Unfolding Landscape: When the Storr Was Lit Up for 42 Nights

Between August and September 2005, the Storr was the setting for one of Britain’s largest environmental artworks, staged by the arts company NVA under director Angus Farquhar. Over 42 nights, roughly 6,500 visitors climbed the path after dark, equipped with headlamps and walking sticks, to watch light and sound installations illuminate the pinnacles and 800-foot cliffs above Coire Faoin — new music commissioned from Skye-based composer Paul Mounsey and Norwegian musician Geir Jenssen, alongside archive recordings of the Raasay poet Sorley MacLean. The entire production ran without oil-burning generators, something NVA described as a first for outdoor public art staged in a rural landscape at that scale.

It was also the final major work of lighting designer David Bryant, who died within a year of the project and had spent two years working to be well enough to see it through to completion; he won Lighting Designer of the Year for his work on the piece. There’s no permanent trace of Unfolding Landscape at the Storr today, but it’s a striking example of how the same qualities that draw hikers and geologists to the site — scale, drama, isolation — have also drawn artists.

Visiting the Old Man of Storr: Practical Information

Verified against the official Storr visitor website (thestorr.com), checked September 2026. Prices last checked: September 2026. Opening hours last checked: September 2026 — the site itself has no gate or closing time, but see below for car park and facility specifics.

Old Man of Storr Car Park

The main car park sits directly off the A855, with postcode IV51 9HX for satnav purposes, and holds 140 cars. It’s chargeable for all motor vehicles, with rates of £6 for up to 6 hours and £8 for up to 12 hours, payable by card, cash at the ticket machines, or via the Ringo app; income goes toward maintaining the car park, path network and toilet facilities. There’s a smaller layby before the main car park on the Portree approach, plus 55 further on-street spaces on the road in front of the toilets, reserved mainly for motorhomes and larger vehicles, which can’t use the main off-street car park due to a height restriction. It is not possible to reserve a space in advance, and the car park is genuinely prone to filling up at peak times in summer — if it’s full, the official guidance is to come back later rather than park on the grass verges, which are peat-based and easily damaged.

Getting There

By car, it’s the A855 north from Portree toward Staffin, around 15 minutes’ drive. By public transport, the 57A Stagecoach bus runs from Somerled Square in Portree and stops directly at the Old Man of Storr, taking about 15 minutes, though it doesn’t operate on Sundays; the 57C runs the return leg. Cyclists should allow up to 45 minutes from Portree, and there are free, uncovered bike shelters at the site (plus a covered option slightly further along toward Portree). Several tour operators also include the Old Man of Storr on day itineraries from Portree, Inverness, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The Hike

The official visitor site recommends allowing at least 2 hours for the round trip from the car park to the pinnacle and back, though it can be done in around 1.5 hours at a brisk pace; independent trail guides commonly put the round-trip distance at roughly 4.5km (2.8 miles) with around 250–300 metres of ascent, on a route that starts on a broad, well-constructed gravel path before narrowing and steepening noticeably in its final stretch. The path is waymarked throughout and doesn’t require any scrambling or climbing to reach the base of the Old Man, but it is genuinely uphill for most of its length, with loose scree and eroded, uneven ground higher up — supportive footwear is worth having rather than optional. The site is exposed to changeable Highland weather at any time of year, so waterproofs, layers and sun protection are all worth packing regardless of the forecast at the car park.

Toilets, Food and Facilities

Free public toilets, including an accessible toilet requiring a RADAR key, sit near the car park, along with a free motorhome waste disposal point. A seasonal kiosk across the road from the car park sells drinks and snacks during the summer months; in winter, hot drinks are available inside the Storr visitor centre instead, and bottled water is sold on site year-round. Electric vehicle charging has recently been added on site, though this is a genuinely new addition — an official FAQ page dated slightly earlier in the year still states no charging is available, so it’s worth treating this as a recent upgrade rather than a long-established facility, and checking Charge Places Scotland if you’re relying on it. There’s no Wi-Fi on site and mobile signal is inconsistent, so it’s worth telling someone your plans and not relying solely on a phone for navigation.

Managing Body

The site is run by The Highland Council in partnership with the Skye Iconic Sites Project, which includes SkyeConnect, NatureScot, the Outdoor Access Trust for Scotland, Staffin Community Trust and other local and national bodies — a reflection of both the site’s popularity (it drew roughly 150,000 visitors in a recent year, up from around 63,000 in 2005) and the pressure that volume of foot traffic and parking puts on a rural site with no natural capacity to absorb it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does it cost to park at the Old Man of Storr?

Parking at the official Old Man of Storr car park costs £6 for up to 6 hours or £8 for up to 12 hours, payable by card, cash or the Ringo app. The walk itself is free — the charge covers parking only, and funds the upkeep of the car park, path and toilets.

How long does the Old Man of Storr walk take?

Allow at least 2 hours for the round trip from the car park, though a brisk pace can complete it in around 1.5 hours. The route covers roughly 4.5km (2.8 miles) with 250–300 metres of ascent, and many visitors take longer to stop for photographs and explore the wider Sanctuary area around the pinnacle.

How tall is the Old Man of Storr?

The pinnacle stands around 50 metres (165 feet) from base to summit, though published figures vary slightly between about 49 and 55 metres depending on the source. It sits at the foot of the Storr itself, the highest point of the Trotternish Ridge at 719 metres.

Why is it called the Old Man of Storr?

Local legend offers a few explanations: that the pinnacle is the thumb of a buried giant, that the rock face resembles an old man’s profile from certain angles, or that it’s the petrified body of a giant killed in a fight on the ridge above. “Storr” itself comes from Old Norse and is usually translated as “great” or “large,” describing the wider hill rather than the pinnacle specifically.

Was Game of Thrones filmed at the Old Man of Storr?

No — this is a common mix-up. The Old Man of Storr has appeared in Prometheus (2012) and The Wicker Man (1973), among others, but Game of Thrones’ Isle of Skye filming was concentrated around Rubha an Dùnain, further south on the island, not at the Storr.

Can you climb the Old Man of Storr itself?

Technically yes, but it’s a serious rock climb, not a walk — the first ascent, by Don Whillans in 1955, is still graded Very Severe, and the rock is notoriously loose and unstable. It’s attempted only occasionally by experienced climbers; almost everyone who visits experiences the Old Man from the base of the path rather than the summit.

Is the Old Man of Storr suitable for kids or beginners?

The path is well-constructed and waymarked throughout, which makes it manageable for reasonably fit families and beginners, but it is a genuine uphill walk with a steep, eroded final stretch — not a flat stroll. Supportive footwear, waterproofs and realistic time expectations (at least 2 hours round trip) make it considerably more enjoyable for less experienced walkers or children.

Back in the town where the Old Man’s basalt neighbours are made of granite rather than lava, our guide to where Scotland’s other famous trail, the West Highland Way, begins covers the mainland’s answer to a dramatic Highland walk. For more of the country, see the Scotland hub, or browse the full Landmarks & Monuments collection.