My first residency in the Hall of Fame lasted a matter of weeks - the period between my ascent of Lingmoor Fell on 7 March 2009 and the demotion of Raw Head shortly afterwards. But I crossed the threshold again on 17 May when my planned post-HoF entry celebratory walk turned into a 600th party on Norman's Law, a wee gem of a hill which I would not have visited if it were not for RHB.
I'd been up Raw Head at least twice, as it was typical of our family walk destinations during my Cheshire childhood. We were not a bagging family, so I have been cautious about counting hills ascended according to family mythology. Great Orme is one such. My grandparents holidayed habitually in Llandudno and we always made a day trip to visit them. I'm sure we went up the Great Orme but I've no idea what the summit looks like so I haven't ticked it.
I was, however, confident that Moel Famau was my first Marilyn as it was a regular destination and I have a proper memory of the Jubilee Tower at the top, but the question remained of when I first climbed it. My father claimed I was a mere three years old, but I turned to the documentary evidence of my diaries, kept from the age of seven. A 1968 entry records a Boxing Day walk 'in the Welsh hills' which was almost certainly to Moel Famau, but the first confirmed ascent was 27 December 1970. So that's fine, but the diary trawl also revealed a note of climbing Worcestershire Beacon during a family camping weekend in Malvern in July 1970 and an ascent of Holyhead Mountain during guide camp at Bangor in August 1971. A new first Marilyn and two new armchair ticks? I have no memory of either day and I don't know if they're the sort of hills where you could feel you've climbed them but in fact avoided the actual summit. Two Scottish examples of this phenomenon are Conic Hill and Ben Venue. On my regular visits to Conic Hill, my guess is that only one in ten visitors goes to the highest point. How many baggers have ticked Conic Hill on the basis of a long-past family visit undertaken before the need to be certain of the true summit? Similarly, many non-bagging walkers assume that the top of Ben Venue is the trig point. Easy to tick in innocent ignorance.
However, there remain 600+ Marilyns that I have definitely climbed. Highlights have been lower hills, especially sections 19A and 19C where I've walked mainly alone and rarely seen anyone. I've also experienced the bagger's perverse pleasure in reaching some of the less traditionally enjoyable summits. As we flogged through the undergrowth on Newtyle Hill back in 1998, I thought at the time that I probably knew most of the people who'd made that trek. The experience of crawling beneath the sitka to White Top of Culreoch was heightened by the knowledge I was struggling in the knee steps of Hamish Brown.
Val Hamilton on Norman's Law (photo: Alan Dawson)
My 2009 Marilyn count has been the lowest for many years, due mainly to the travails of house selling and buying which seemed to occupy the whole summer. Then, although moving further north has revived the prospect of new easy day-trip hills, at present it's hard to drag myself away from the intriguing exploration available from my new front door, especially with the best skiing conditions for years. But when the thaw comes and local novelty begins to pall, I have plenty of RHB plans at the ready to take to me to the places other lists don't reach.
The summit of Moel Famau (photo: Vernon Miles)
