Seven fewer Marilyns than last year. The overall trend is downwards since a high in 1997 when we were sailing in Scotland. Enthusiasm still there but new hills get further from home and we have been in foreign waters for the past two summers.
Did not make a start until March when I gathered in nine east of the Brecon Beacons. It seemed to be a lot of dashes from the car in very wet weather, but reading the diary reveals that strong winds were more of a feature than rain.
Week before Easter we were with relatives near Aberdeen. Last year Helen McLaren reported a noisy bull on Turin Hill. We had a bullock dragging a large metal calf-feeding unit round a field. It had succeeded in getting in and had to fight its way out. Tap o'Noth made for a good multi-generation outing, as did a repeat ascent of Lochnagar.
Camping trip to Scotland again in May, with closet bagger Jean (she doesn't record closets visited, but she doesn't record tickable hills either) turned into a bunkhouse bonanza. Nine Marilyns, most of them Munros, in five days using train, a couple of lifts and our own two feet. Tulloch bunkhouse / hostel highly recommended.
The next week on my own in very mixed weather yielded another eleven ranging from Meall a'Bhuiridh and Creise to lesser things towards Mallaig. Reached the halfway point on Carn a'Ghobhair (10D). Crawling under dense rhodos on a precipice below Sgurr na Dubh-chreige and above the small loch to the west, I wondered how a mountain rescue team might extract me if I broke a leg and the SARDA dog managed to find me. Shortcuts have their perils. Summer lay-off followed, sailing in Sweden and Finland.
The Duke of Westminster's access corridor led me to Ward's Stone in Bowland on my way to Scotland in September. Ten wet days in the Oban area with below-average energy levels brought another ten. Good day on Beinn a'Chochuill and Beinn Eunaich restored my belief that I might yet finish the Munros. Got mistaken for a down-and-out while drying my tent under the colonnade outside Tesco in Oban. Manageress bustled out to move me on.
Long weekend in November added Drygarn Fawr (31C). New Year saw us back in the Builth Wells area. The open artillery ranges enabled modest Mynydd Eppynt and lots of trigs to be visited in safety. It was damp and grey on Carneddau on the afternoon of new year's eve. Chap dashing up ahead had to be a Marilyn bagger. It was Chris Peart from Frome. A cheering end to the year even if I was three short of 800. That significant number had to wait until the next day.
Alan Dawson adds: I was on Carneddau on 1 January. Would have been a day earlier if I'd known. Pity about that.
Mullach Buidhe, Garbh Eilean, Shiants (photo: Peter Bibby)
