The Old Man of Hoy by the Original Route

A description of an ascent by Richard Apps & Roger Naylor 2^nd September 2005.

“Rog?...  You awake?... We’ve got to go” It was a simple question -  the reply was a complex guttural groan. My bright idea of spending all our loose change on beer and whiskey the night before sprang sharply to mind.  We got up and headed out of the hotel, pausing only for a glass of OJ on the way to the Hoy ferry.

It was the start of September and we’d spent the past few days touring along the north coast of Scotland bagging what we could in between the showers. The Old Man of Stoer had been the warm up and now we were in Stromness, ready for the main event –the Old man of Hoy. For those who aren’t familiar with the UK’s most famous sea stack the Old Man of Hoy is a 450 ft monolith of decaying orcadian sandstone – it is an impressive sight.. The star of countless postcards and an impressive BBC documentary of the first ascent in 1966.

Despite rain the previous morning we hoped that the subsequent bright sunshine and breezy afternoon would have dried the rock. In the crystal clear morning our hopes were high. We couldn’t have asked for a better start to the day.

Gearing up the day before

The ferry over was smooth and relaxing, just the antidote for the growing realisation that we were rapidly running out of excuses not to climb. A few weeks before emails had shuttled to and from offices in London suggesting routes and itineraries, by the time we met up in the lakes it was pretty clear that the Old Man of Hoy was the prize, but the warm up routes were still up for debate. A snap decision as a result of a navigational error had taken us to Ullapool and then on to our first sea stack.

The past few days had been entertaining, though since our last stack the rain had prevented us from venturing onto the crags. Instead we’d kept busy by running out of petrol, running from clouds of midges and running into soggy tourist hotspots. We’d discussed the possibility of returning to London, jumping on ferries to the Hebrides and even outlandish schemes of heading to Wales, but the conclusion had been the same – “I want to do the old man, it’s why we came”.  Our final excuse was quickly dismissed as the Taxi we’d been unable to get in touch with, picked us up as we trudged up the road from the ferry.