Hamish's Mountain Walk E-Book

Hamish Brown

• Herausgeber: Sandstone Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Hamish Brown's account of his epic walk has been the inspiration for generations of hillwalkers. Sandstone Press is proud to present, not a mere reprint, but a complete reimagining of the book in a modern font, with a new introduction and appendix, and a new, extended colour plate section all provided by Hamish Brown. This will be a book that every lover of the Scottish hills, and everyone who has been touched by the spirit of the outdoors will want to read and reread

Leseprobe

Hamish Brown is a mountaineer, lecturer, photographer and poet who has written or edited a score of books. Born in Colombo, early travels took him to Ireland, Japan and Malaya – from which the family escaped to South Africa in 1941. Two years later the family returned to Scotland. After National Service in the RAF, mostly in the Canal Zone and Kenya, he pioneered outdoor education at Braehead School in Fife, later becoming the County Advisor in Outdoor Education.

Breaking bounds he set off in 1974 on the challenge of climbing the Munros in a single effort which led to the classic Hamish’s Mountain Walk, which covers not only a remarkable feat but delves deeply into every aspect of the country he loves.

Hamish has visited the Atlas Mountains of Morocco for several months annually for over 40 years, his unique knowledge of the land and its people leading to a 96 day, thousand mile end to end trek, a story told in another classic The Mountains Look on Marrakesh. He has roamed from Alps to Andes and Arctic to Himalayas. In recognition of his literary contribution he received an honorary D. Litt from St. Andrews University in 1997 and a D. Uni from the Open University in 2007. He was made an MBT in 2001.

Hamish’s Mountain Walk has inspired generations of hillwalkers and climbers.

HAMISH’S MOUNTAIN WALK

The First Traverse of all the Scottish Munros in One Journey

HAMISH M. BROWN

Reprinted 2010.

Hamish’s Mountain Walk was first published by Victor Gollancz, London, 1978.

This edition published in Great Britain in 2010 by

Sandstone Press Ltd,

PO Box 5725,

One High Street,

Dingwall,

Ross-shire,

IV15 9WJ,

Scotland.

www.sandstonepress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

© Copyright 1978 Hamish M. Brown

© Copyright 2010 all images Hamish M. Brown

The moral right of Hamish M. Brown to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

The publisher acknowledges subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council towards publication of this volume.

ISBNe: 978-1-908737-62-5

Cover design and photographic layout by Gravemaker + Scott, Edinburgh.

Ebook by Iolaire Typesetting, Newtonmore.

For family and friends who made the trip possible

CONTENTS

List of illustrations

List of map

Acknowledgements

Preface

By way of introduction

The historical setting

Genesis

1. Mull, Etive and Glencoe

2. Lyon and Lochay

3. Furthest south

4. Trans Tay and Tummel

5. The Southern Cairngorms

6. The Monadh Ruadh

7. Lochaber and back

8. Laggan

9. West to Knoydart

10. Quoich – Glenelg

11. Skye

12. The Big Glens: Shiel, Affric, Farrar

13. Torridons

14. Fada – Fannich

15. The Deargs and the North

Appendix – Corbetts adjacent to Munros

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Beinn Luibhean and Ben Ime

2. Beinn a’ Chochuill from Beinn Eunaich

3. Schiehallion

4. Beinn Dorain above Tyndrum Pass

5. Beinn Achalladair and Beinn an Dothaidh over Loch Tulla

6. Creag Pitridh over Loch Laggan

7. Buachaille Etive Mor

8. Ben Nevis from Sgurr a’ Mhaim

9. A’ Mharconaich from the Sow of Atholl

10. The Devil’s Point

11. The summit of Ben Avon

12. Mamores in winter

13. Stob Ban from the ridge to Sgurr a’ Mhaim

14. Ben Alder from Culra

15. Ladhar Bheinn from Barrisdale Bay

16. Sgurr Mor and Sgurr Beag from Sgurr nan Coireachan

17. Spidean Mialach and Gleouraich from Craig a’ Mhaim

18. A’ Chralaig above the pass to Affric

19. Lurg Mhor

20. An Teallach

21. Summit crags of Liathach

22. Scrambling up Ruadh Stac Mor

23. The classic view of Liathach

24. Ben Wyvis from Garbat

25. On top of Seana Bhraigh

26. Ben Hope from the Moine road

The Valhalla of Munros

27. The Basteir Tooth

28. Pinnacle Ridge of Sgurr nan Gillean

29. Am Basteir

30. Blaven

LIST OF MAPS

Etive – Glencoe

Lyon – Lochay

Trans Tay – Tummel and Loch Fyne – Loch Tay

Southern Cairngorms

Cairngorms

Monadh Liaths and The A9 Munros

Loch Laggan – Mamores

Loch Lochy – Loch Hourn

Cuillin of Skye

Shiel – Affric

Strathfarrar – Strathcarron

Strathcarron to Torridon

Loch Maree, Loch Fannich and the Deargs

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to Jim Renny who drew the maps and to the Scottish Mountaineering Club for quotations from its Journal and also to Lovat Dickson for permission to quote Richard Hillary’s The Last Enemy. Help was also gratefully received from Robin Campbell, Sandy Cousins, Jim Donaldson, John Hinde, Tom Weir and Tom Waghorn, many sadly no longer with us. Thanks too to family and friends who supported the venture and to Sheila Gallimore for her typing aid.

PREFACE

When I completed the Munros for the first time in 1965 I became number 62 on the list. I’m sure nobody then could have envisaged the growth in this so British game since, numbers now running into the thousands. I had managed three rounds by the time of the 1974 continuous round and several thereafter – a solitary Multi-Munro status long since overtaken, as has doing Munros in a single walk. I actually had an amusing encounter with the next person to do so, the first woman to do so, Kathy Murgatroyd. We met in Crianlarich youth hostel.

I walked into the Common Room to prepare supper. One table had a bonny lass sitting alone at it so I joined her. We naturally got talking. ‘‘Walking?’’ I queried. ‘‘Yes’’, but when I asked, ‘‘Bagging Munros?’’ the answer was slow in coming, as were subsequent replies to queries. Rather odd I thought. Then months later the scene repeated itself at Glenbrittle youth hostel but Kathy was all smiles when I walked in this time. Let the cat out of the bag: she was a few Cuillin off completing her continuous round. At Crianlarich she had only just started and as she said, ‘‘The last person in the world I’d wanted to walk in and ask questions had to be you!’’

Later there was Martin Moran’s round in the winter season, when, on one occasion, his wife Joy, Chris Bonington, the Cranes and myself went with him up Stob Poite Coire Arder in deep snow, skis on at the roadside, a memorable day of glory given in a somewhat unfriendly season. One thing would later rather annoy us as our rounds were called ‘records’ in the press. Winning through unscathed was all that mattered. As Kathy pointed out at Glenbrittle she couldn’t have admitted what she was about at our earlier meeting. What if she broke a leg on the second week of the attempt? But records have an irresistible lure for some. The Munros have been done in 48½ days – by Charlie Campbell in 2000 and my seven rounds was long ago passed by Stewart Logan, who hit ten on the last day of the last millennium, and Steven Fallon who trots round them nearly every year (number 13 and 14 looming). Charlie Campbell also took the self-propelled element to its logical finality: swimming between Mull and the mainland, out to Skye and over the loch to bag Ben Lomond. ‘Fun’ enjoys a variety of definitions obviously.

And fun is the heart of the matter, even for the obsessive. I was only marginally obsessive. In 1965 I made a rather desperate January raid in to Sgurr na Coireachan and Sgurr na Ciche to complete my first round because I was going off for three winter months climbing in the Atlas Mountains and considered it would be rather sad to break a neck out there with just two to go. Little did I know how Munros would dominate my life right through the 1960s – and after. In some ways this was the best period of all, the Swinging Sixties when I was taking Braehead School pupils into the wilds and, quite blatantly, using Munros as one spur to kick in their enthusiasm, as it certainly did. It also meant that I was eventually able to have done every Munro in both summer and winter conditions and, hardest it proved, solo; hardest, because every time Skye was mentioned, somebody would want to come along to be taken up the In Pin. Not that I minded that for climbing the In Pin is an experience guaranteed to give fun.

When any of our school kids reached 50-up they received their own copy of the Tables, along with a book written by Tom Weir with a foreword by John Hunt (autographed by both) and would be taken for a slap-up meal somewhere. Latterly some of these binges were saved for the Alps – where they wouldn’t climb any ‘hill’ under 3000 metres. ‘‘Nae a Munro’’!

One wee shrimp almost reached the fifty but then the family was emigrating to Australia so on his last day at school we presented him with the Weir/Hunt book anyway and had ‘aunty Ingrid’, the Glencoe youth hostel warden, make the presentation. David went up on stage and was enveloped in a great hug. He returned to his seat, tears running, and the hall echoing to the cheers. Munros are good for you.

Many years later I answered my door bell at home. On the step was a huge young man, with shoulder length hair and strong Aussie accent. I didn’t recognize David but the dog did, shooting past my legs to give him a great welcome. He was one of many for whom the dog was much more than just a mascot. The dog had been my father’s, very attentive and guarding the old man with his sticks. When father died the dog had to go with me and had a very traumatic year adjusting to the change of companions but when he did, he lived for being away in the hills with the kids, his kids. When the school closed I went off on a sabbatical, climbing all round the world, and on one February day went up Helvellyn on ski. As ridges converged near the summit Kitchy, the dog, saw a school party on the next ridge and shot off to greet them. As he neared they started calling ‘‘Oh, nice doggie’’ and so on. The dog stopped in his tracks. Wrong accents. They were not his. He simply drooped and came back to me looking utterly despondent. I nearly cried.

His story of doing the Inaccessible Pinnacle is told in this book. He completed the Munros in 1971 on the school’s very last expedition (Sgurr Alasdair). On Lurg Mor Braehead School had completed its round in 1969.

A second Shetland collie, Storm, was to do the Munros as well, completing in 1984. Both also did the English, Welsh and Irish three thousanders. The dogs, like their master, loved the rough grip of gabbro under paws. But, after a week, Storm had to have plasters on his feet and wait for a retread. Storm’s ascent of the In Pin came unexpectedly.

I’d been wardening the Memorial Hut for an April month which began with perfect winter conditions, degenerated into an utterly vile spell and finished with a heatwave that saw us bivouacking on the Ridge and other good spots. In frustration, after days hut-bound, we had wandered off up, towards Sgurr Dearg where, on top, in the midst of rain and clag we found a group of young soldiers being put through their paces, not enjoying their ascents on the slobbery wet, partly iced rock. Having let on about my impatience to help the dog up the In Pin the sergeant i/c offered me a top rope there and then. Thank goodness Storm wasn’t a St Bernard. At the out-of-balance move half way up I was teetering on the verge of adhesion when the dog, whose weight was pulling me off-balance, leant forward and gave my ear an encouraging lick.

One other school – dog tale. With two keen youngsters, Kitchy and I were sitting on top of Liathach when an odd figure arrived, in nailed boots and prewar Bergen rucksack. And loquacious. Rather condescending. But pleased to be there for Liathach was his 50-up. ‘‘You boys know about Munros?’’ ‘‘Aye.’’ I could see what was coming and sure enough, ‘‘So how many have you got, sonny?’’, to Derry, who mumbled, ‘‘A hunner an wan’’. There was silence a moment then ‘‘What about you?’’, to Ali who mumbled in turn, ‘‘A hunner an twa’’. In something of a panic the man blurted out, ‘‘So what about the dog?’’. The boys grinned, ‘‘Aw, the dug, he’s done them aw’’! The man fled. Such liars on Liathach! One of the boys grinned at me. ‘‘As weel he didna ask you, Hamish.’’

Storm became well known as he appeared in so many magazine tales and illustrations. On about three occasions, over the years I met someone who greeted me with, ‘‘Are you Hamish Brown?’’. Acknowledging this there came the lovely put-down. ‘‘Thought so. Recognised the dog.’’ The ultimate was on the crest of Am Basteir where an encountered fan of Storm’s asked to take his photo and, after I posed the dog impressively on that knife edge, the man looked at me and asked ‘‘Do you mind moving out the way please?’’.

That this book has seldom been out of print since it appeared in 1978 (the Walk was done in 1974) is testimony to the continuing fascination of climbing the Munros. It was in the Seventies that the big social changes in Britain occurred that meant more people had more time and were able to afford cars; so for those heading to the glad freedom of the hills the book’s timing was perfect. It still is, after all, the richness of our hill heritage needs something to order our minds, put bounds on the bounty, and a tiger in our tanks. The continuing fascination has seen the recent publication of Craig Weldon’s The Weekend Fix, an exuberant modern tale of Munro-bagging to complement, and compliment, this tale of long ago. That it is now long ago adds to its historical interest I’m told, something of a two-edged comment. I don’t feel an historic monument. Munroists don’t just fade away, they add the Corbetts, and Grahams and end facing the Stacks of St Kilda with Alan Dawson’s most daunting list of all.

I’ve resisted the temptation to tinker with the text of this book. It is left as a fly-in-amber record of how it was at the time for one gangrel on his mountain walk. The illustrations of the original however are no longer available and were hardly up to today’s standard so I’ve included a small, colourful selection instead. (The text will give the lie to their suggestion that it never rains in Scotland which is perhaps the impression given by the pictures.) Appendices have been omitted but I have added a brief version of an Appendix from Climbing the Corbetts, also to be reissued by Sandstone Press, which points out situations where Corbetts can be a wise, practical addition to climbing certain Munros. Do them over the same visit and save time, effort, money, petrol and the universe.

Some people are great for facts and figures; they just baffle me though one, years on, I did pursue when challenged – had I been on a Munro on every day of the year? I possessed the records to make a check and found I was about fifteen short of the Calendar Round. As they were completely random days throughout the year it took a few years to fit them in and I’ve never had to go out on so many foul weather days. Incidentally, I had two ascents on the February 29 slot. That challenge was fun. But they were all fun.

People making big celebrations of their last Munro also run into this gamble with the weather. I’ve been on many celebratory Last Munro excursions and, apart from one, the weather has ranged from the miserable to the malignant. Never mind, champagne should be served chilled, even in plastic beakers. The great thing is working towards that celebration and I am just humbly grateful that this story has encouraged and pleased so many. We need this wild blessing of our hearts. We need the defenders. We need the song praisers.

Hamish M. Brown

Burntisland 2010

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

It was a hot, stuffy day in the office: no ventilation, no windows, and monotonous work. After having spent twelve happy years in the field, pioneering outdoor education at Braehead School in Fife (only leaving when the school itself closed), I was now County Adviser on Outdoor Activities. Every fibre rebelled at the incarceration. For the first time in my varied life I felt as caged as a poor lion in a den of Daniels. What was I doing tied to a desk with no view of sky and hill, no sound of bird or sea?

My eye fell on a map of Scotland. I spread it out on the floor and knelt over it. Immediately I received a wallop on the backside as a colleague banged through the door bearing one vital aspect of bureaucracy – the tea.

I sat sipping the tea (they never can drum-up properly) and gazed at the map on the floor. ‘‘God, how I love this land,’’ I thought. With three rounds of the Munros done, and some of the summits ascended scores of times over decades of wandering in the Highlands and Islands, it needed little to set the memories dancing like heat-shimmers on the hill. Oh, to be tramping a far hill right then!

What could be new? different? demanding?

What about all the Munros? Those 279 summits over 3,000 feet?

But!

But I did no more work that afternoon. The seed was sown and no farmer eyed his unbroken ground more keenly than I the map at my feet. When I eventually folded it up I really folded up my job as well – burning my boots so to speak. I could hear the objections. Why risk security? You are forty now. What will you do afterwards? How can you afford it? It would be far too difficult to organise. Someone else might do it meantime.

So I said nothing – and worked the happier knowing the day appointed. The French have a saying: ‘‘The young aren’t on to it, and the old aren’t up to it.’’ As far as I was concerned it was just the right time. The silence was also a necessity; it is a competitive world, and being second is not as good as being first. There are few enough things where I, Mr Average, might find the priority.

Of course there would be sacrifices: comfort and companionship, the ease of ‘‘normal’’ work and the indulgence of normal enjoyments. Unlike a condemned man, my privations were self-inflicted, so there could really be no complaint and no self pity. You need to be a bit older to realise the implications, old enough to know better in fact – and then to ignore them all and go for the joy of it. We are given only one life. Surely its days are to be spent rather than hoarded, and given rather than spent? Everything should go to grasp what is best while it can be meaningful. What use is ‘‘security’’ twenty years hence if that is all those years give? Life should be lived greatly from day to day.

At this period I had been doing a great deal of reading about sea voyages. I had had voyages as an instructor on the schooner, Captain Scott. The lure of sea is very similar to that of hills. Strange, though, that solitary sailors are hailed as heroes whereas the safer solo landlubber is condemned.

One of the reasons we climb is the challenge – which can be as varied as the sizes and shapes and psyches of homo sapiens. My own interests are many: I am happy bird-watching, or merely Munro-bagging, canoeing, ski-ing, or on the sea, climbing, taking pictures; too many interests to excel at any. On rock the spirit is not what it used to be, but any walking challenge had to be as great. Rob Collister, in telling of a ski traverse from Zermatt to Verbier (in one day), puts it clearly: ‘‘If mountain travel is to be as enjoyable as mountain climbing, it must, in its own way, be equally demanding.’’ So you make it so.

The idea had long been there but the shock was suddenly seeing oneself stepping forward to try it. Thus must a four-year-old feel when thrust out in public to compete in his first egg-and-spoon race.

This book has been written twice. Following all the interests my logs swelled into a mighty tome which would be beyond reason these days of economy. So it had to be hacked down like an unruly garden. It is still a patchwork; but that is what the Walk was – a thing of shreds and patches. It is not a guide book, yet you will really need the maps to follow it and it gives away quite a bit to the discerning reader. It is given largely from a walker’s point of view. Some favoured spots are passed over quickly for elitist reasoning and the best and rarest of the wildlife is not described: osprey eyrie or snow bunting nest are more precious to me with the eggs left untouched!

Equipment and food needs were carefully considered, for a trip like this is a logistical exercise – a part of the game which can keep participants talking till all hours. Planning is crucial: a message perhaps most needed to be learnt by the young, though the whole reason of the game must never be lost: we go because it is fun – and not just in retrospect!

Recently a group of teenage girls came to me asking if I would take them hill-walking and what did they need to begin? Resisting an easy, ‘‘Yes, I’ll take you’’ (they were not unattractive), I said, ‘‘You can take yourselves, and all you need is a bus ticket to the Lomonds.’’ I still believe that is how we should start – wanting enough to go, regardless. The beginner needs little else. That this trip took as much planning as any to the Andes or Himalayas was for the reason it was not a beginner’s one.

Sandy Cousins, who did a Munro trip from Cape Wrath to Glasgow, was telling me how he had had requests from walkers from England who wanted all the details so they could do the same, often on their first trip north. Sandy’s answers were not encouraging! You cannot become an instant mountaineer, no matter how firm a belief in a platter-existence you have. It does not come on a plate. Long Walks like this, or Sandy’s, or John Hinde’s, were the outcome of decades of knocking about in the highlands. We sinned with our eyes open!

Certainly dream dreams, that is the birthright of youth, but you cannot grow vegetables without digging the soil. My preparation was almost two thousand Munros long.

Do not funk the Gaelic names; they can become quite a fascination in time, giving all sorts of information – or puzzles – which enrich experience. Peter Drummond: Scottish Hill Names [2007] is the holy scripture on the subject.

I have a great many people to thank, obviously: all the family and members of my club, the Braes o’ Fife, who assisted in so many ways – it is their story as much as mine. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, ‘‘Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it.’’ This is particularly so with this tale.

It is, of necessity, much in the first person singular. It is a very personal narrative, yet I hope shows something of this great land of ours. The trip gave a marvellous intimacy with that land, such as cannot be found just on weekends and holidays. I feel somewhere along the line, man has gone astray. Perhaps the break came when we stopped leading sheep and began to drive them, when we turned from the hand loom to the machine, from foot and field and home to vehicles and railways and factory. We have rushed off after the good life – and have overshot the mark. This was a return to rock-reality, the womb-comfort, the joy of untrammelled simplicity. It is really the walking of years with the kernel of the three months of the Long Walk.

Both the Walk and this book were done, using the One Inch map with its individuality, spellings and heights. We had all grown so accustomed to its face – yet by the time this book is published we will be accepting the metrication of our mountains (force-feeding for some!) and future books will be in the new idiom. Eventually at least we can have really definitive Tables – of heights over 914.4 metres. The Munro game goes merrily on, however. I have tried to note some of the changes sprung upon us. What would Munro think of it all?

THE HISTORICAL SETTING

We tend to regard hard walking as a modern phenomenon but the opposite is probably correct; we have largely forgotten how to walk.

The drovers who brought beasts from the Hebrides to the Falkirk Tryst, or those who took them on to Smithfield, knew what walking was; any Highlander did, and so did anyone not gentry enough to own a horse. We even read of the regular tramping done by academics between London and Oxford or Cambridge.

There were next to no Highland roads before Wade and Caulfeild built theirs during the eighteenth century. William Taylor’s book, The Military Roads in Scotland (David and Charles), tells their story. Next time you take a day off from climbing in Glencoe and go bombing off up to Fort William, remember that the road was built as recently as 1786.

The aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite rising brought great social changes; people were more tied down locally, urban life was spreading – and at once we have the ‘‘escapist’’ reaction, which continues to this day. The end of the eighteenth century began a great period of ‘‘Tours’’ in the Highlands. Several of these are described in Maurice Lindsay’s books, for which we should be grateful as the originals are often great tomes. Though most of these tourists made maximum use of ponies some great things were done on foot. The poet Keats for instance, hardly an athletic type, along with a friend, Brown, walked the 642 miles from Lancaster to Inverness in 42 days.

Some travellers seemed to revel in the roughness but it took a long time for mountains to be enjoyed simply for themselves. In 1767 an Edinburgh botanist, James Robertson, had quite happily wandered over Klibreck, Wyvis, and other hills in the north, taking river-crossings, snow storms and hill-cloud very much for granted. In 1771 he had a real Munro-bagging spree: Clova, Lochnagar, Ben Avon, Cairngorm, the Sgoran Dubhs, Nevis, the Killin hills, Rannoch ridges and the Monadh Liath. The acceptance was complete, even if under the banner of science.

Professor Forbes, ‘‘the discoverer of the Alps’’, was an important figure both in climbing and geographical terms yet, strangely, left little mark on Scotland. He covered vast distances on foot: in 1836 he included the first ascent of Sgurr nan Gillean, and in 1845 began six successive summers in the Highlands. A Michel de Bernhoff (who tramped from St Petersburg to Paris) considered thirty miles a day a fair average.

We should not overlook the early work of the surveyors: the Ordnance Survey did much on foot from necessity. Thomas Colby, the Director General from 1820 to 1846, cheerfully covered 513 miles in 22 days, had one day off, then did another 22 days over 586 miles. That was primarily exploratory rambling, the hard grind of carrying heavy camps and equipment was the main work, when several months might be spent on one mountain alone. The whole story would be quite a saga and one about which I wish the O.S. would give us a popular account.

In that pre-train, pre-car period the Highlands and Islands were incredibly remote of access and difficult to move about in, and they had seen a drastic fall in population. Today we are apt to question the deer forests as the sacred preserve of the rich, forgetting that these estates were carved out of a wilderness already created by the Clearances and the sheep. The Highland economy had collapsed. Deer for sport created jobs, as remote corners were opened up, roads constructed and houses built.

The general ignorance of the hills was remarkable. If we did not quite have the Alpine idea of dragons and demons (these we put in the lochs) the high summits were regarded as not worth visiting. We can hardly blame the O.S. for the cursory nature of some of its surveying of the more remote areas in this impossible terrain. Mountaineering had not been invented.

As a sport it was a nineteenth-century creation. The Highlanders, as ever, lived in and tramped over the hills, already perhaps as the servants of landed gentry up for the stalking. They had no real influence on mountaineering as we know it now, though for a while they did form a loose body of ‘‘guides’’ for tourists who desired Ben Lomond or Lochnagar or other ‘‘fabulous adventures’’. There were the odd scientists who were also outwith the main flow – men such as the hectic Dr John Macculloch, who, in his geological wanderings which began in 1811, covered vast distances on foot, on pony, and by boat and could justly, for his day, claim to have ascended ‘‘almost every principal summit’’.

It was really the professional, middle class – lawyers, clerics, professors (including scientists) – who, bursting out of their urban strait-jackets, created the sport of recreational mountaineering. The Alpine Club was founded during the winter of 1857–58. Its members often enjoyed activities in the hills of Wales and Lakeland, and, to a lesser extent, Scotland. When the Scottish Mountaineering Club was formed in 1889, its membership included, or contributed, many members of the Alpine Club.

Between the dates of formation of the two clubs quite a few other small clubs or bodies had come into being, often local, which included the hills in their activities. Some people today have expressed surprise that no lead came from north of the Highland boundary, but in those regions practical experience of the hills was just a fact of life – mountaineering is basically a flight from urban pressures, escapism again, which becomes the more frantic and global, as the burden of civilisation grows heavier year by year. You do not find many keepers or shepherds indulging in recreational hill days, though probably the earliest British rock-climbers were the wildfowlers of St Kilda and the Hebrides, who climbed not only to obtain food but for pleasure.

Before Sir Hugh Munro brought out his Tables of Heights over 3000 feet (1891) ‘tourists’ only regularly ascended about thirty hills of that height. A few of these were popular expeditions even in the eighteenth century, but suddenly to be given a tenfold inheritance was almost overwhelming. The formation of the Scottish Mountaineering Club played an important role in consolidating and expanding the trend. It began a systematic covering of the Scottish hills, soon discovering in them a playground as satisfying as the Alps and not just a poor substitute. The first journal appeared in 1890. Its preface starts with the curious quote: ‘‘Let thy words be few’’. (That was thirty volumes ago.) It then gave away the riches in store: there were possibly three hundred mountains over 3,000 feet, ‘‘some perhaps never ascended’’. What more natural than to list these? What more natural than to try and climb them? The list duly appeared in the second volume of the Journal and in a few years the ‘‘Munros’’ were an established game.

Munro’s Tables are today a separate volume, periodically revised, published by the Scottish Mountaineering Trust and full of photographs, maps, references – and now, metric equivalents. Little did Sir Hugh know what he began. He was in the process of revising his list when he died, so we will never know if he intended a fuller definition of a ‘‘Munro’’. Of his list of tops some were elevated to the peerage of ‘‘separate mountains’’ and these took on the name of ‘‘Munros’’, the others remained ‘‘Tops’’, or ‘‘subsidiary summits’’; which is all we have to go on. His reason for this classification has always been a fruitful source of debate.

A stricter definition was given to another series of hills more recently listed by J. R. Corbett, and named after him, the ‘‘Corbetts’’: hills over 2,500 feet, with a re-ascent all round of 500 feet (which is often erroneously thought to apply to Munros).

A brief look at Munro, the man, shows a warm personality and an enthusiast with many interests. He was an original member of the Scottish Mountaineering Club and its third President (1894–1897).

Hugh Thomas Munro was born in London in 1856, eldest of nine children, and much of his life was spent there or in the family’s native Scotland, where he first managed and then inherited the estate of Lindertis near Kirriemuir. He was a great collector as a child: fossils, shells, eggs, butterflies; even as a young man, after a spell in South Africa, he returned with a collection of Basuto curios, antelope heads, a black boy, and a monkey.

He came to the mountains when a student in Stuttgart in his late teens. Travel could almost be regarded as a collecting activity with Munro, a game played all through his life, both professionally and for pleasure. He had a business training in London, but was also known as a good musician and dancer, and he had a flow of ‘‘capital talk’’. (When he and another great talker had a day on the hills together they both returned complaining they had been silent all day as each was unable to get a word in edgeways.)

Several years of this good life of business, travel and pleasure ended with pleurisy and in 1880 he went as Private Secretary to join Sir George Colley, Governor of Natal. During the Basuto War he served with an irregular cavalry corps and saw exciting times. Once back in Britain he spent more time at Lindertis, and the hills came to play an important part in his life. In 1885 he stood as parliamentary candidate for Kirkcaldy Burghs in Fife, as forlorn a Tory hope then as now, but nobody else would come forward to do battle. He never stood for his local Forfar seat, though active behind the scenes.

When his children were old enough they were dragged off to Germany, Greece, Morocco, the States, Japan, Ceylon and other lands near and far. Munro in Yosemite is a nice thought. He was a natural choice for a King’s Messenger – an official courier bearing documents about the world. It is a pity that photography was still in the frozen pose state in those days, for we have few pictures of the man as he must have been; he was certainly no bog-bound laird but a man of wide experience, talents and knowledge, and he enlivened any company. He would travel back from the ends of the earth for an S.M.C. Meet and the Journal published over eighty of his articles and notes.

In 1914 he was past military age but went out to Malta to work, and in 1918 he organised a canteen in the castle town of Tarascon. The following spring a chill developed into pneumonia and he died, at the age of sixty-three.

This is the man who gave us the Tables which we gave back as ‘‘Munros’’ (he disliked eponymous mountain names), to make surely one of the oddest of best-selling books.

Munro loved nothing better than to undertake long through-routes, often in winter, often alone, and clad in uniform of cape, knickerbockers (or kilt), and Balmoral bunnet, with a long ice axe. He was a skilled all-rounder but was less enthusiastic about rock-climbing. Aneroid and notebook ensured the Journal was peppered with observations and corrections to the map. He was a Survey in himself, and a deal more accurate, and this before railways or motor cars. When these new modes of travel appeared, he actually wrote articles to show how they could open up new approaches to the hills. Nobody used the new-fangled machinery to better advantage.

I mention one or two of his trips later, but just one example here. In 1891 he crossed from Blair Atholl to near Kirkmichael, ‘‘heavy walking all day in soft snow. … At Diranean they had to scrape me down with a knife to get the frozen snow off.’’ On Beinn a’ Ghlo the snow was blowing ‘‘in spiral columns several hundred feet high, penetrating everything, filling pockets and drifting between waistcoat and shirt, where it melted and then froze into a solid wedge of ice. … I never suffered so severely from the cold.’’

Munro never completed the ascent of the Munros and Tops he had listed. He had kept for last the easy Carn Clioch Mhuillin above the Dee as it was near home and would make a good celebratory summit – ponies carrying up the champagne – and then there was the Inaccessible Pinnacle, the end to many Munroist hopes. He was driven out of Skye by atrocious weather in 1895; in 1897 a Yachting Meet could not even anchor safely; in 1905 arrangements with Harold Raeburn (the MacInnes of his day) fell through. He was there as late as 1915, but without success.

In 1901 the Rev. A. E. Robertson was the first man to complete the Munros, and it was twenty-two years before the second round was made – by another Reverend. ‘‘A. E. R.’’ was a colourful personality, too, and also President of the Scottish Mountaineering Club (1930–1932). He was more of a climber than Sir Hugh, a trait marked on his first, solo, ascent, Goatfell on Arran, when he chose to scramble the last thousand feet to the summit. He was then twelve or so. One of the surprises following my own trip was to be introduced to his spry widow, sadly now no longer with us. He married twice (Munro, on the other hand, was a widower most of his life) and died in 1958, aged 88.

Archibald Eneas Robertson’s parish was at Rannoch, an appropriate hill setting. In two successive years he thought nothing of knocking off 72 or 75 Munros in three-month holiday blitzes. What he called ‘‘a desultory campaign of about ten years’’ saw the task accomplished. Pony-trap and boat helped, and above all a push bike, for he was a great cyclist. For the rest he walked, and found accommodation in the wilds, usually with shepherds or keepers for, speaking their language as he did, and with so many common interests, he was always a welcome guest – even when he appeared with no warning. He stayed with the McCooks at Ben Alder on many occasions after dropping in there for the first time in 1893. The Aonach Eagach, with his wife and his oldest friend, Alexander (later Lord) Moncrieff, gave A. E. R. his final Munro. He kissed both the cairn and his wife – in that order.

Good gear and meticulous planning was part of his success. He often carried a whole-plate camera into the wilds and produced some superb pictures, and he was also a historian of note, an interest shown in an article on ‘‘coffin’’ roads and tracks in the North West, which appeared in the S.M.C. Journal in 1941. There are extracts from his diaries in the Journals of 1948 and 1949. In connection with this interest he rose to high position in both the Scottish Rights of Way Society and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. A bridge over the Elchaig below the Falls of Glomach was built as a memorial to Robertson. He was a skilled man with his hands, making a table for the C.I.C. Hut for instance.

The Rev. A. R. G. Burn not only repeated the Munros in 1923, but added the subsidiary Tops. J. A. Parker, Munroist number three in 1929, added the ‘‘Furth of Scotland’’ – the resonant term for the 3,000ers of England, Wales and Ireland. The first ‘‘grand slam’’ of Munros, Tops and Furth fell to W. Docherty in 1949, a surprisingly late date. Munroist number four was Corbett, of that ilk, in 1930. In 1947 Mrs John Hirst completed the first female round, and also a husband-wife combination. The Macdonalds in 1958 saw a father-and-son Munro effort, and in 1974 a father-and-son Munro and Tops success went to the Lawsons. The ‘‘grand slam’’ was made by Anne Littlejohn in 1960. There are fifteen females in a 1977 list of 143 Munroists which now grows at an annual average rate of five people.

In 1964 Philip Tranter did them all again and in 1966 Eric Maxwell repeated not just the Munros but Tops as well. George Smith and I repeated in 1969 and I did a third round while with Braehead School. The School was after a ‘‘school’s round’’ before it closed down and was demolished. The pupils succeeded – and so did Kitchy, my dog, in 1971. The trip recorded in this book gave a round in a single expedition, and not so long after it a fifth personal round slipped in. Basically I am not a Munro-bagger, at least no more than anyone else; as I ski, climb, canoe, go abroad a great deal, my proportion of Munro-days to others could well be less than that of most people. I just happen to have had a vast number of happy days in the hills.

Doing the Munros has become an immensely popular activity. And why not? Metrication will soon give the list a certain archaic charm, but a new substitute list of 1,000 metre summits is not likely to take over as there would be too few to make a worthwhile challenge. The Munros are a perfect target. Even allowing for the Great War it seems surprising that only eight people had done the Munros before the Second War. Our new ease of travel, and longer holidays and affluence, has changed things dramatically. The S.M.C. Journal keeps the list up to date and at present those within (or is it without?) the pale number 143. Only fifteen have done the ‘‘grand slam’’, perhaps showing a tendency to be content with minimal standards. A high proportion of English Munroists are in the list and though many are claimed by the S.M.C., they are basically Rucksackers or Fell and Rockers. The Grampian Club has provided a large number too. Perhaps a score of modest (?) walkers have kept their success private; a pity, as it leaves records incomplete. A name in a list means little enough and anyway the whole game is played by a small and suspect section of the population. The S.M.C. Journal briefly notes new additions to the list each year and welcomes information.

I was not really conscious of Munros until I went to Braehead School, but my post there, the first to organise outdoor pursuits in a state school in Scotland, soon led to the discovery. Kids are competitive and when we formed a club, an entry qualification of Munros was a safeguard: each member would have been away several times by then – and was usually hooked. I kept a careful log from that time onwards, a habit maintained on this Walk. From its notes has come this book.

Two developments made the Walk a goal to aim for after Braehead closed down. In the sixties the R.A.F. Rescue teams made several north-south and east-west expeditions over numerous Munros. I met John Hinde, who was involved and whose accounts had stirred up readers; he was not the first in either direction, but has done both and led the biggest expedition in 1968. He stresses it is not a competitive game, any cutting corners leads to lack of safety. These R.A.F. trips were very much team-work and part of training. Few civilians had the time or the organisational support to try it and the statistics were frightening. Pete McGowan (Valley Team leader) ran up 100,000 feet of ascent in 19 days, 350 miles for 58 Munros. Here is the development of the traverses in the sixties:

Nov. 1962

East-West

(K. Shaw, McKerron, Ballantyne)

11 Munros

Summer 1964

North-South

(Armstrong, Golton, Raven)

37 Munros

Summer 1966

North-South

(Ward, Morrison, Bradshaw)

32 Munros

Summer 1966

West-East

(Hinde, R. Shaw)

30 Munros

Summer 1967

South-North

(Gilligan, Ward, Wagg)

26 Munros

Nov. 1968

North-South

(McGowan, Tomlinson, Hinde, Blyth)

58, 49, 48, 45 Munros

John Hinde said he lost weight but gained fitness on this last trek. Ben Humble, a veteran S.M.C. member who met the party on Ben Lomond, thought John looked older with the strain, but then their last days had been continuously wild and wet. Another civilian who was in at the end was a younger Munro enthusiast Sandy Cousins who, three years later, in 1971, was to make a big trek, north-south, from Cape Wrath home to Glasgow, over 47 Munros, 370 miles and 90,000 feet of ascent. A full account of this journey can be found in the 1972 S.M.C. Journal.

I followed these trips with interest, and dreamed dreams, but the other development, even more daring, came in 1967 when Brian and Alan Ripley made an attempt on all the Munros in a single walk. They were Karabiner Mountaineering Club members with little Scottish tradition, so their effort of 230 Munros, 1,325 miles and 337,850 feet was phenomenal. I read Tom Waghorn’s article in The Climber and Rambler at the time and marvelled.

The Ripley brothers did not succeed on account of several factors, many of which stemmed from not really knowing beforehand just what they were in for: the midges in August and September, wet and wind and snow later, the persistent strain of clashing with stalking interests, worries about food (their base being in Manchester), packs weighing fifty pounds or more at times, difficult rivers, blisters and sores, ever-shortening hours of daylight. Brian’s log reads like a graph: ups and downs but each down just that bit lower than the last as the burden grew heavier. The environment was hostile yet often they were bored and had to bully themselves on. Few can appreciate what these young lads went through. Their youth was against them I suppose; powerful all-round hillmen as they were, Scotland was not known to them as it was to, say, John, Sandy or me – who were all a score of years older – on our trips. The August start alone was a vital mistake.

The starting date was dictated largely by other engagements, and Brian was off to the Himalayas the following summer. He was a strong mountaineer with such ascents as the Bonatti Pillar on the Dru, for instance, to his name. He was tragically killed by stonefall on Malubiting, 25,451 feet. This trip of mine could so easily have been his, or Philip Tranter’s, a powerful Scottish all-rounder, who died in a car crash on the way back from climbing in Turkey, much more worthy lads.

Sandy’s Walk was much more in mind when I was planning mine, but two things were remembered from the Ripleys’ attempt: first, they had had dietary troubles and secondly, they took lifts. The former gave me some concern but I could not make too many enquiries for fear of giving the game away; the latter I felt was unaesthetic, the only ‘‘rule’’ I made was that the journey should be all self-propelled. I loathe walking on tarred roads so decided I could, morally, use a push bike – especially for the long hauls to and from the island Munros on Skye and Mull and also round the A9. I toyed with the idea of canoeing to and from these islands but reluctantly decided it was too chancy and too much of an imposition on others. An island became the starting point to save one diversion. Off-duty travel would be legitimate, I thought, but in practice was a rare indulgence. And I knew I had to finish by the start of the stalking season.

Reading the Ripleys’ log I feel they first bent and then broke the idea of self-propulsion; the odd bus or car, the runs on Skye, and then to and from Mull from Glencoe – and another factor consciously or unconsciously was added to the mental burden. Time and finance were problems, perhaps undermining body as well as soul. You can only take so much. Brian’s log is brief and often cryptic; it reads like a thriller. They began on August 13th, and ended on November l0th on Beinn Dorain, when they were beaten off by the worst weather of all. Alan’s ankles were swelling badly at the end and Brian had slit the back of his boots to make them bearable. A doctor said Alan was suffering from iron deficiencies. David Summerfield, another Karabiner Mountaineering Club member, was with them for about half of the trip but had to drop out. The early days saw an agony of sore feet, sore shoulders and a communal collection of 25 blisters.

They had great days, of course, and even some of the poor weather days did not deter from fine things – such as a traverse of the Cuillin Ridge. Ironically they had a succession of fine days in the Blackmount just before the end.

These, then, were my influences. They were all from the mountaineering tradition. It was only after the Walk I read books or articles by Hillaby, Merrill or Snow, and they rather frightened me with their disciplined, clockwork routine. I prefer Eric Newby – or Shipton and Tilman who are perhaps my oldest mentors. They are in line with the most traditional means of travel. Adam and Eve walked. Amazingly, despite all man has done to himself, he still can walk. The greatest feats are all unrecorded, lost in anonymous treks of Boers or Americans, of Bushmen or Asians, of Aborigines or Russians. Our self-conscious efforts are mere self-indulgence, irrational and unnecessary. I have no guilty feeling, however, for if we did not, ‘‘whiles, dance, we would aye greet.’’

GENESIS

Genesis is good for you! The decision to do this trip certainly was refreshing and though it was a snap decision in some ways I had no illusions about what was involved. So much of my reading at this time was of others doing things yet I was desk-bound and frustrated, kept from action even at my job.

It was around Hallowe’en 1972 that I spread the map on the office floor – and knew just what I would do in 1974. The period between was the Walk in some ways, the toil was there, not in the actual walking. Right from the start I knew it would be a largely solo trip. It would simplify a whole host of problems – not even a committee of two to delay things and, God knows, I’d had my fill of committees. Tentage, the doubling of every bit of food, finding a second cycle or canoe, the difficulty of back-up and above all finding the right person – all these problems just did not happen. Close proximity with anyone over a long period, especially under stress, can be unhappy if not worse. Simplicity is the forgotten virtue.

I cannot recall when the actual timings were decided but obviously not immediately, as 1974 and not 1973 was chosen. I had some obligations to my job! That first winter, though, I doodled maps endlessly as I tried to link up the best line between the 277 summits. They even grew to 279 before I set off, as the O.S. caught up on their inadequate surveying of our North West. A mapboard faced desk/bed at home but of course much of it could be done in my head anyway. This gave me a pre-occupied air which some took for avid concentration on work in hand. One obvious joy would be the chance of activating what an old friend Willie Docherty called ‘‘the creed of the long traverse’’.

The route clarified in general, though it was never static and in points altered even in the course of doing the trip. Sanely, not racing, how long would it take? I tackled this in various ways and the answer always seemed to be 3½–4 months. May and June are usually the best months. There was the Stalking after July. That would suggest a start in early April; in fact the first of April seemed the obvious choice.

I went south-north both for romantic and practical reasons. I hoped for the better weather in the north and west. By starting on Mull I cut out one long arm. Bothies and huts in the north would help once into the midgy months, when the enjoyment of camping is apt to wear thin. All previous trips had been done north-south so perhaps there was an element of cussedness too.

The costing was approached from various angles and gave £400.

The route eventually was worked out on ½-inch maps which went to my brother so that he could follow my doings, and then the 1-inch which I used. I needed 22 maps in all. Both Dollar and I would have identical route-books with the day-to-day plans and a list of places where I would phone, a safety factor. I began to accumulate gear for the trip, selecting and testing – breaking in three new pairs of boots till I knew they were comfortable – over Christmas-New Year doing two weeks’ non-stop to see how the unfit body would take it. In January I began bringing in S.M.C. and B.F.M.C. friends who could act as weekend support and, when David (my brother) and his wife, Marina, agreed to act as ‘‘base’’ and even come as field support for the first part, I really felt a surge of faith that it would ‘‘go’’. Later Mike Keates agreed to come out for the last two weeks in the north. David lived at Dollar in Clackmannanshire, Mike at Inverness, so this really covered the land.

I thought of sponsorship but as I had saved enough, it was not a desperate essential. If the Walk succeeded I could cash in a bit afterwards; but I wanted to enjoy it as my journey, untrammelled, and not as a public stunt. There was also the lure of the priority. This was not just my dream. Being first has its place, transient though it be; someone can always do it faster or shorter, cleaner or bolder, backwards or on their heads. The vital thing is to enjoy the doing of it.

As a keen canoeist I thought of canoeing to and from the islands (Mull and Skye) but this would be too great a risk of precious time. Later I did bring in the canoe for Loch Lomond. A cycle too could be used on the long, dull, tarred roads which could not easily be avoided. So long as it was all self-propelled it was valid.

I started using lunch breaks for wee jobs: mosaic-ing the maps to suit, trimming candles, preparing labels, making lists; at weekends in the north I would note the sites of telephone boxes and nibble away at the weight problem, endlessly trying variations of gear. I could not afford to buy much new stuff, so expediency played its part. My major worry was a tent. I had a good Vango featherweight but it had so many guys and bits and pieces – and it was nylon which meant condensation problems. This became almost an obsession, but when Dave Challis heard he offered me a tent, also nylon, 3 1/2 lb weight, with, he said, no problem. I was sceptical!

He brought it to a conference later and pitched it on display. It was not even new. It was all mine. A few filthy weekends persuaded me he had been correct. There was condensation, but it did not matter; by the simple method of keeping the tray-shaped groundsheet away from the walls with elastic the condensation just ran into the ground.

Various courses and a season in the Alps gave a pause in the summer, and once back I handed in my notice so was free to do again: a Hebridean trip in November, a month on the schooner Captain Scott, then the usual holiday courses in the North West. Time suddenly was running out.

Back home it was already mid-January 1974. The stockpile came down from the loft, a last big shopping to the Alliance Cash and Carry (could I eat all that?), and from Hughes, our local grocer. The dates of a proposed visit to the Polish Tatras eventually became known and put the starting date back a few days.

On the fourth of February we had an unusual wine and cheese party. We looked at slides of the Alps and various odd club doings but the main activity, saving me a 100 man-hours, was breaking down bulk food into one-man size pokes. Chaos: Ian and Mary in a bedroom dealing with a seven-pound bag of curry (one beer for every pound, it took), John and Penny in the kitchen with a sack of raisins (busy adding wisecrack comments on slips of paper), Val, Ian Mitchell and Patrick were in the front room and Bob and Liz Wallace, George and Beryl slaved in the hall, with peas, carrots, beans, coffee, tea, cocoa and so on. John Dunnett and Mike Duncan came in later and wondered what was going on – not being in the secret. Mother had wisely gone out to visit friends.

Not all even then knew the whole truth, which was disguised simply as a ‘‘marathon walk through the Highlands and Islands’’. It says something for the dream that quite a few people at once suggested the truth. I even had two telephone calls from people thinking about such a project and wanting advice. As they hoped it would take two or three weeks of a summer holiday, a few statistics ended their hopes.

Many food parcels were going to be required along the way. I had worked out three motor itineraries to lay these caches, entailing a thousand miles of motoring. The physical work of parcelling was immense. Cards were prepared for each parcel, for no two were the same, and these were scattered throughout the house. A sample card might look like this:

The translation: ‘‘Loch Duich cache site, food for four days plus reserves to see me to Affric Lodge. Map 18 to go into this parcel and it was to go to Mike Keates who would deliver it.’’ There were 42 of these labels. Each type of food, plus things like candles, matches, toilet paper, film, books had to be taken round, in turn, from label to label and the right estimate left. This game was played by mother and I; you can imagine what the house looked like at the end of it.

The worst job of all came next – doing it all up. Again, no standardisation was possible, some were going to be actually buried in the hills, others would be safe indoors, most were going to destinations as yet unknown. We used 2,000 polybags from tiny to sack-size. Friends had been hoarding cartons and string for a year. A parcel took a good half-hour usually; each was double-checked against a ‘‘standard’’ list, and only a packet of Vitawheat was missed, all through. I reckon there are few mothers (never mind being an O.A.P. grannie too) who would take to grovelling on the floor for days playing this mad Father Christmas game.