The Quiraing was formed by huge quantities of rock which fell into the North Atlantic beyond. The Quiraing is the result of millions of years of tumultuous activity which created this immense mass of slowly moving stone.
Around 175 million years ago, the Isle of Skye was largely submerged beneath shallow warm seas teeming with prehistoric wildlife. A little further inland, estuary systems created huge areas of swampland where dinosaurs roamed.
This was the Jurassic Period. The sedimentary rock of sandstone, shale and limestone was slowly compacted by its own collective weight and that of the water under which it sat.
This creeping compression went on for millions of years until the ancient landmass began to rip apart to form what would become the Atlantic Ocean as North America and Greenland separated from Europe.
As the continents shifted, huge fissures opened up from which poured molten lava which covered the ancient Jurassic rock of the area.
As yet more eons passed, the weight of the lava flows fractured what was beneath and the whole of Skye tipped eastwards.
The rest is down to gravity. And so the land literally began to slip into the sea creating spiralling pillars, columns of enormous cliffs and massive slabs of rock interspersed with elevated plateaus and green patches where the earth had torn apart.