There are three things I know about the Old Man of Stoer before I get there, and none of them has me hurrying to buy a climbing harness.

One, it was described in the 1953 North Highlands Guide as “unclimbable”. Two, the man who first made it to the top promptly abseiled to his death off a sea-stack in the Orkneys. Three, according to the grades climbers give to all their rock faces it’s judged as “very severe”.

Of course all this has to be put in perspective: hairy-chested climbing types snorting derisively at the lack of challenge. There are, after all, 12 grades beyond this one, culminating in “extremely severe E11”. But if you’ve never climbed on rock before it’s plenty scary enough, especially when it’s applied to a column of rock taller than Nelson’s column that rises straight from the sea. “Very severe”? How about “possibly suicidal”?

So what the hell am I doing here? The short answer is that I was asked to come. Over the years I’ve written about paragliding and potholing, cliff-jumping and ice-climbing, and in the process my editor must have decided I’m a latter-day John Noakes. More importantly, however, I must have decided subconsciously that I’m Blue-Peter-presenter material too. Because when he asks me, “Jez mate, can you give us 1,200 words on a really iconic British climb?” I say yes. And I’ve never been on a climbing wall let alone a rock face.

The truth of the matter, though — and despite the surface squalls of anxiety — is that I really do fancy having a go. I’m 38. I’ve got two children, doughballs where my six-pack should be, and the biggest adventures I have these days are on the playground helter-skelter. Me? The Old Man of Stoer? One of the most famous lumps of rock in the country? Climbers spend years working up to it. Bragging points whir in my head like cherries on a fruit machine. It’s not the noblest of thought processes, I grant you, but I don’t care. I’m about to become a rock god.

I meet my guide, Paul Tattersall, at the Somerfield car park in Ullapool, and if there’s nothing much to love about the setting, the man himself — massive hands, jockey’s body, a slow, beatific smile that looks like it’s come through slaughter and survived — melts my coward’s heart. What Paul makes of me — fat hands, golfer’s body, rictus grin that looks like it’s going through slaughter and barely hanging on — is harder to gauge. “Let’s just see how we go,” he says.

The drive from Ullapool is astonishing: a procession of monstrous peaks jutting from the plain, each one more brutal than the last. It’s beautiful but stark, and as the journey unfolds I can’t help wondering how long it will take them to scramble the rescue helicopter from Inverness.

The good news is that Paul brings a mate along, a Californian called DJ, who tells me on the long walk out from Stoer lighthouse that in his day Paul was one of the 10 best climbers in the world. “He’s soloed stuff in Yosemite that I wouldn’t even touch with a rope.” I have no idea if DJ is telling the truth or simply has a California-sized habit of exaggeration, but for now I’m prepared to believe him.

Page 2: continued
Page 3: where to start climbing in Britain

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Nearly an hour after the lighthouse, we catch our first glimpse of the Old Man. “Holy s***,” says DJ. As confidence boosters go, it’s not a keeper. But he has a point. The Old Man rises sheer for nearly 200ft straight from the surf, 50ft from the sea cliffs. It looks impossible. It looks ridiculous. While Paul rigs an abseil for our descent to the bottom of the cliff, DJ tells me that Paul’s last client didn’t even make it halfway. Later I learn he bet against me making it.

The bottom is a beautiful place, although it does accentuate the height, the angle, the ludicrousness of what is about to happen. A seal pokes its head out of the cobalt depths. Fulmars wheel, gannets plummet. Sweaty palmed, I barely notice them.

Paul swims across to the foot of the Old Man, ties a rope, then swims back and ties it off again, to create what’s known as a Tyrolean traverse. DJ tells me one of Paul’s clients took 45 minutes to get across. “Have a play on it while I sort myself out,” says Paul. Lovely. I clip in and edge gingerly backwards towards the drop-off. But Paul’s suggestion is a masterstroke. Turns out I’m quite the Tyrolean traverser, fearlessly hovering above the surf, competently hauling my weight back and forth, generally not thinking the rope is about to snap. Tension seeps from my arms, doubt from my brain. Sunlight sparkles off the surf. We cross.

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