Marhofn 255.14 - May 2012

Baglogs:

Audrey Litterick (+50=1007)

My year was dominated by moving house twice; once into temporary accommodation and again, after four months, into our new house in Highland Perthshire. I cannot recommend a double house move but if you have a choice where to live whilst your new house is being built, choose a place where you have lots of new hills to climb.

We found a great place to stay with a friend and new HoF member, who was prepared to tolerate our presence in her peaceful home, and I managed to do 20 new hills nearby whilst staying there. One was done direct from the door, without motorised transport.

Highlights for this year included:

• Brown Cow Hill in June. How many people would claim that they had spent one of their best days in the year on Brown Cow Hill? This was our 'farewell to Aberdeenshire' hill walk. We had warm, gentle sunshine and perfect peace and quiet other than the calls of abundant moorland birds. We met a lovely chap who had borrowed the key to Corndavon Lodge for the day and he invited us to join him and his grandson to see the amazing wall paintings inside. Quite a place and quite a story behind them. The summit was calm, with some of the clearest views I have seen for a long time of the Cairngorms and beyond. No pinnacles or precipices, no wild adventures, just a very peaceful and beautiful place to be on that warm, spring day.
• Shetland Marilyns in March. Memorable partly because they were 'free' hills since I was being paid to be in Shetland and I crammed the hills in around my work. but also because the wind never dropped below about 35 mph at sea level during the entire four-day visit. I have never crawled into the teeth of a gale for so long on so many hills in such a short time. White Grunafirth, in particular, was a horizontal, tussock and bog-covered rock-climb in a hurricane and may not have been achieved without the aid of teeth as well as hands and feet.
• Walbury Hill in October. Memorable only because I achieved this at a company marketing meeting which I had cunningly arranged in the pub at the bottom of the hill. Neither colleague was remotely interested in walking and they do not know what a Marilyn is but the idea of a quick breath of fresh air between discussion points was eagerly accepted. It does feel good when you achieve a Marilyn in the middle of a work meeting when nobody other than you realises what is going on. (AD: But did you give the game away by taking a photo of Flapjack on the summit?)
• Cruach Tairbeirt. A totally foul day. Heavy rain, low cloud and gales, but special nonetheless because I was there with five of my best friends to climb my 1000th Marilyn. We might just have made it to a rain-free summit if the slightly tardier pair in our party had made it to the start at the appointed time. As it was, we didn't and conditions at the summit were sufficiently awful that it was all we could do to claim the summit briefly with a few photos and then stagger back down to the cover of the trees to celebrate in more traditional (liquid) style. It was not quite as I had imagined it would be, but I will not forget my 1000th Marilyn.



Audrey Litterick on the way to 1000 on Cruach Tairbeirt