From Munros to Marilyns

Relatively curvy hills....

A Munro is a Scottish mountain over 3000 feet high, named after Sir Hugh Munro who first catalogued them. (The man must have been a librarian in another life.) Munro's Tables are the most famous lists of mountains, but plenty have followed where Sir Hugh led. The Munros are quite a challenge as they are very high and a long way away. Munro bagging (as climbing a Munro is called) is very popular and people find all sorts of ways to make a fairly impossible task even harder, like walking them all in winter.

Ben Klibreck (3,154ft)

One thing all the lists (Corbetts, Grahams, Nuttalls, Hewitts etc) have in common is absolute height. Until 1992 that is, when Alan Dawson published his book The Relative Hills of Britain and the 'Marilyn' was born. A Marilyn is a hill with a relative height of 150m (about 500ft) to its surroundings, i.e. it is high compared to the land around it rather than sea level, or in other words, it sticks up.



Slioch (3,217ft)

The advantage of this list of hills is that you are not confined to Scotland, Cumbria or Wales for your challenge, although most of the Marilyns are located in Scotland. Our challenge is to climb all the English Marilyns under 2000ft, modest enough, but sufficient to while away many satisfying hours on planning trips and routes, checking maps and buying more maps. Indeed more hours are spent planning the walks than actually walking them. However there are walkers made of sterner stuff than I who have bagged 1,549 Marilyns out of the total of 1,554.

Wilmington Hill, East Sussex (702ft) 8.30am

Marilyns are distributed throughout the country but most, unsurprisingly are in Scotland. There are 179 are in England (69 in Cumbria alone) and my aim is to bag everything below 2000ft (129). I made a start a few years ago when Noddy and I bagged 5 on a gloriously sunny November day. We left before dawn so had no idea quite what the weather had in store. Sadly, this turned out to be Noddy's last big walking trip as arthritis and other illnesses set in that have curtailed his abilities if not his enthusiasm. To date we have bagged 14.

Firle Beacon (713ft) with Wilmington Hill in the distance

Click here for a list of English Marilyns

Noddy relaxing