Old Man of Storr on Canvas

The Old Man of Storr stands alone on the Trotternish Ridge, a fifty-metre spire of black basalt torn free from the escarpment behind it by an ancient landslip, its jagged form so improbable that legend insists it's the petrified thumb of a buried giant; the climb up through dark pine and open, wind-scoured hillside reveals it properly, flanked by smaller pinnacles and framed by the grey sweep of the Sound of Raasay far below, the whole scene shifting constantly under Skye's restless weather. Today sunshine illuminated the breathless features below.