Our first trips of 2015 were to two quite different areas, namely south Ayrshire in February and the Tanat valley in Wales. We had reasonable weather and managed a good number of Humps and Simms. For the next few months, things got very much quieter on the ticking front as Adrienne had a total knee replacement in May. It was in July that we did our first post-op tick on Ashley Heath. Thereafter we kept our ticks going for the rest of the year, albeit mostly in lower height categories of Humps, Tumps and county/UA tops. This took us to some of the heartlands of England including Shropshire, the Chilterns and London. In October we started going higher, including catching up on some Simms around the south of the Snowdonia National Park, whilst a visit to Arran in November saw us finally up a Marilyn amongst other tops. We rounded off the year with trip to Glen Carron that saw us on four Marilyns that included one Simm.
In the bagging game 18 years ago, we were ticking Corbetts and Nuttalls, having never heard of Marilyns. Once we did discover them, it meant bagging hills whilst visiting parts of Britain we had not previously explored, with the challenges of reaching the various recognised targets, and catching or trying to keep up with other, usually unknown, participants in the various tables. The high points would have to be reaching any completion and recognised target and finding a tick we obviously had not logged on some long-past ascent. The low points are finding ticks we could easily have done on these long-past ascents.
We have kept the back-copies of Marhofn for referencing and nostalgia. We think it has been great to have a paper summary of the years in terms of the stories of people's activity and numbers. We appreciate the effort that went in by a conscientious few. Now that the pinnacle of Marilyn heights has been scaled, it is a reasonable time to conclude this enterprise.
