The Old Man of Storr — The Petrified Giant

The Storr, Trotternish, Isle of Skye, Scotland

A 50-metre pinnacle of basalt above the Trotternish ridge — said to be the thumb of a giant buried where he fell. Locals say the rock leans toward you the longer you watch it.

The Storr is a basalt escarpment rising 719 metres above the Sound of Raasay, formed by an ancient landslip that left a chaos of pinnacles standing in fields of fallen scree. The largest of these — a 50-metre obelisk visible from across the sound — is called the Old Man. The Gaelic story is older than the geology. The Old Man and his wife were giants who lived on the ridge and were caught walking the hills after sunset by some greater power — the Cailleach in some tellings, the Christian God in others. They were turned to stone where they stood. The Old Man is the husband's upraised thumb; the wife's pinnacle was lost to a rockfall in the 18th century. Climbers who camp at the base report low groaning from the pinnacle itself when the wind drops below a certain pitch. Sheep avoid the scree slope directly beneath it in calm weather, then graze there freely when the wind picks up. A 1962 BBC sound recording made during the filming of a documentary about the Cuillin captured an unexplained low-frequency tone from the direction of the Old Man on a still evening; the recording was used in the soundtrack and the source was never identified. The folklore-walker's caution is to never count the surrounding pinnacles aloud. Those who do are said to find the count differs each time, and that the smallest pinnacles — the children — sometimes follow.