Reserved for subscribers
Each month, the great travel writer opens his horizons and his notebooks, reflections of his expeditions and other literary walks.
Through Sylvain Tesson
Published on
A place
In the summer of 2022, Daniel du Lac, winner of the Climbing World Cup, joined me in the north of Scotland, in the Orkney Islands, at the foot of a 160 meter high sandstone pilaster named Old Man of Hoy. It is a fine point planted in a basalt reef, a few hundred meters from the coastal cliff. The English call these geological formations “stacks”. The stacks stand for the Column of Stylites and the Tower of Pisa. They are on borrowed time. One day they will crumble. There will be a bubbling of foam. Seagulls will howl. Then the sea will cover everything.
Where do the stacks ? The cliff, receding under the blows of erosion, leaves a tapered spur. The swell gnaws at the rock, and separates a pillar from the coast. The wind picks it up. A tower was born. France…
FRANCOIS BOUCHON/FIGAROPHOTO – Thomas Goisque – Pierre Kitmacher/THEATER DEMODOCOS/SP