Old Man of Storr

The Old Man of Storr is a distinctive rock pinnacle standing beneath the Storr, a rocky hill on the Trotternish peninsula of the Isle of Skye, Scotland, formed from a mass of basalt that has slipped and rotated downhill over a weaker underlying layer of Jurassic-age sedimentary rock, a process called a rotational landslip. As sections of the basalt plateau above broke away and slumped down the escarpment over thousands of years, isolated blocks of the resistant volcanic rock were left standing apart from the main cliff face, and continued weathering has sculpted these blocks, the tallest of which is the pinnacle known as the Old Man, into their present jagged forms. The wider Trotternish escarpment, of which the Old Man of Storr forms a part, is considered one of the largest and most active landslip complexes in Britain.