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A little explanation may be necessary, should you have stumbled upon this page, and not be a rock climber or mountaineer.

The Old man of Hoy is a 425 foot high (at the last estimate) tower of crumbling sandstone. It was first climbed by Tom Patey, Rusty Baillie, Chris Bonnington in 1966, who soon brought it to the attention of the UK public, as the second, third and fourth ascents were televised by the BBC over a period of two days in the first outside broadcast made by the BBC.

It is still a mystery as to why people still feel the need to go and climb it. We went.


	The Orkney Islands lie off the north coast of Scotland. The main Island is Orkney itself, and Hoy is the next largest island lying slightly south and east of Orkney. Our trip started in Bangor, North Wales, and proceeded via St Asaph, the Tickled Trout and Harry Ramsden's in Edinburgh, collecting and meeting people, to Thurso.
The normal approach is to take a ferry from Scrabster, the port for Thurso, to Orkney, and then a second ferry from Orkney to Hoy. This is followed by a walk of taxi across the island.		This was far to protracted for Woody, and a phone call to the Seamen's mission in Scrabster resulted in Paul Gough being booked to take us directly from Scrabster to Rackwick Bay in his converted trawler.
There's nothing between America and Rackwick bay to stop the swell becoming surf, so landing the party looked like fun. Eventually, afer Steve (Paul's father) rowed ashore towing about 400m of rope, and John had waded ashore with the line, we started landing the nine people and all the kit. Local residents were quick to appear and assist, and the Coastguard asked if we were drug running.			Before we had the tents pitched, we had been invited up to Davey Hutchinson's croft for coffee. There he regaled us with tales of the first ascent, the televised ascent, Joe and Zoe Brown's more recent ascent, visits from the double glazing salesmen and Jehova's Witnesses and 'storms of biblical proportions' sweeping across the bay.
Before dusk we were able to walk across the headland to have a look at the Old Man.