Not a particularly good haul of Marilyns this year for a number of reasons, including having a bumper year on the guiding front; end-of-list-mania taking hold on the Corbett and Graham Tops (duly polished off by the end of June), and guidebook work taking up much of the later part of the year.
Most of the Marilyns I did do were of the 'token small hill done in disgusting weather before the pub' variety. Exceptions to this included a lovely round of the Broughton Heights tops in sun and big winds, and a sharp clear morning on Easaval on South Uist - although 'before the pub' was still true in both cases as the Broughton Brewery tap was too good to miss and my group would have lynched me if we had not gone to the Politician bar on Eriskay (purely for historical and literary reasons, you understand). The only other Marilyn ascent that stands out is a morning on Beinn Dubhain above Helmsdale, great views again and a whole field of butterfly and fragrant orchids on the way down.
By contrast I had loads of superb days on hills other than new Marilyns (many of them previously-done Marilyns, of course). A big day on An Stac and Meith Bheinn in South Morar in June stands out, although I was so shattered I was reduced to sitting down every 15 minutes on the final pull back up from Loch Beoraid. Five thousand feet of scrambling on the Buachaille was another goodie, and there were other fun scrambling days on Lochnagar and around Loch Avon.
Crystal clear days on Ben Loyal and Ben Hiant were a reward for some rather epic weather in the rest of their respective weeks, with gusts up to 90mph in the Ardnamurchan case. Probably the best day of all was a January outing in the northern Cuillin, with rock-hard snow down to 500m, stunning views and only two other people on the hill.
Best week was an easy meander down the Outer Hebrides in August, with continuous sunshine, lazy but midge-proofing breezes and machair colours the best I've ever seen.
The 'climbing my age' game continued, with 53 routes after work on Windgather in April (OK, they're only 25 feet high but they're great fun), and the 'calendar round' game has reached the stage of having only six missing days for a 2000-foot summit round and four different ones for a rock climbing one. Hopefully I'll get 29th February out of the way in 2012. The latter game did lead to a ludicrous attempt to solo a diff in Glen Coe on an October day of bucketing rain and 70mph gales, predictably a dismal failure. Made the beer taste good though.