I only found out about Marilyns two years ago. I completed the Munros in 1973 and spent the next 30 years on the Corbetts, culminating in April 2004 with a fine weekend at Tomdoun and a party on the summit of Buidhe Bheinn, to the north of Kinloch Hourn (the real summit, once this was agreed). I loved the Corbetts for their isolation and separate identities, and was thrilled to discover the existence of Marilyns for more and more of the same - isolated hills, some hard to get at, sometimes being turned back without success. Right up my street.
I found out that you needed 600 of these to get into the Hall of Fame. Well, all the Munros and all the Corbetts must go a long way towards that? Not so - not even 500 of them. Well, they must be easy; they're only small (nice when you're getting older), they're absolutely everywhere, so the totals will soon add up. Again, not so. They can sometimes be found on an orienteering map, and cryptic conversations can be heard in the car park: 'there's one on this map' ... 'if my course goes anywhere near the summit I'm going to go for it' ... 'what's your current total?' Sometimes you can do one on the way home - my husband Jim has become an expert at sniffing them out.
I discovered that two orienteering fanatics, Paul and Fraser, were both collecting Marilyns, and to my surprise I found that Alison, my friend of 45 years, is way ahead of both of these. It's a very esoteric obsession; all of us have had difficulty interesting our other friends. Alison introduced me to the concept of 'par' being two Marilyns per day, and we had a weekend at Oban practising that - we had considered Kintyre but it was too far for a weekend. Then in December 2005 we found ourselves in Tarbert, with short days and still miles away from the southern tip of Kintyre but raring to go - Paul, Alison, Jim and I. Start before dawn. Drive many miles. Work out a way to cover three in one day; first a pair then the single outpost of Beinn na Lice, in low cloud, rain and gathering darkness. YES!! Back to Tarbert late, wet and exhausted. This is the life.
My year-end total is 568, and Paul tells me that the magic 600 can easily be achieved in a fortnight at our Kintyre rate. We'll see. But I'm very happy in the Corridor of Obscurity too.
