2013 was spoiled by illness so it is with relief that I can report that 2014 was a much better year. It was, however, not without its problems.
The first highlight of the year was completion of my 14th Wainwright round on Tarn Crag, above Easedale, on a crisp February day. This preceded a two-week trip to north-east Scotland where I hoped to add to my Marilyn tally. All was going well for a few days until leaving the summit of Craig nam Fiadh, when I felt a sudden stabbing pain in my knee. Clearly this was not the familiar grumbling of incipient arthritis and I was forced to return to the valley using my wife's trekking poles as crutches. The following day I could not put any weight on the leg and the final week of the holiday was abandoned in favour of staying with friends in Glasgow and Fife and birdwatching around both locations. The problem was diagnosed as patella tendonitis, presumably caused by the repetitive strain of a week spent walking on trackless, often tussocky, ground where jarring the knee is a virtual inevitability.
Two months spent playing computer games, reading and watching TV followed. After this I cautiously started walking on the flat again, slowly progressing to easy hills and longer distances. I invested in trekking poles for the first time, which involved some psychological angst. I am a reluctant pre-geriatric who is still coming to terms with slippers, and see trekking poles as pseudo-walking sticks and therefore somehow emblematic of the dying of the light; presumably pyjamas are next. I do have to admit, though, that the poles have helped and my hillwalking is now more or less back to where it was, although I still get slight twinges in the knee.
A May hillwalking holiday in the northern Highlands was out of the question due to the knee, so we went to Shetland for a month's birding instead. I had previously climbed all of the Shetland Humps and Marilyns other than the ones on Fair Isle, Foula and Noss, so the temptation to risk the knee was not too great. Noss was much enjoyed and a period waiting for weather good enough for Foula and Fair Isle was spent in highly enjoyable birding in generally fine but windy weather. In the final week the wind dropped enough for this hater of small boats on big oceans to risk a sea trip but we did not have time for both islands and chose Foula. There followed a terrifying journey on a tiny boat, through mountainous seas, with a worryingly laid back crew who seemed to have no understanding of the peril we were in. The sight of the framed ship's safety certificate in the cabin was reassuring until noticing that it was three years out of date.
Foula was my highlight of the year. For those who have not been, imagine a small area of pleasant and shapely but unremarkable hills rising from rough fields and scattered houses - the Eildon Hills would be a good example. Then cut around this on three sides, straight through the highest point on the fourth, and drop the resulting portion into the north Atlantic Ocean. The result is the most stupendous sea-cliffs imaginable, 400m high and pretty much vertical. The traverse of the tops tested my recovering knee but was amply recompensed by the awe-inspiring scenery. I have not been to St Kilda, where the Conachair cliffs are slightly higher, but photographs suggest to me that they are less sheer than those of The Kame on Foula. I have sat on the summit of Croaghaun on Achill Island in the west of Ireland where the 670m drop is regarded by the locals as the highest sea-cliff in Europe, but there the angle is barely steeper than 45 degrees and it would be possible, with care, to pick a route down to the shore below. Lying on the summit of The Kame with my head over the edge it slowly dawned that the tiny white dots far below were actually not gulls but gannets, and later a fishing boat drifted by to add more scale to the proceedings.
The next Marilyn-bagging trip was to Mallaig in July, on my own, where I took boat trips to Rum, Eigg and Knoydart to climb single remaining Marilyns in each area. We probably all occasionally muse on the silliness of the numbers game; my 2014 epiphany resulted from a snap decision to climb Beinn an t-Sidhein above Strathyre on my way home, purely because I had noticed that I was on 1299 Marilyns. I went up from Glen Buckie as it gave a higher starting point but the going was dreadful and the rain poured down. I returned soaked to the skin and drove home to discover that a summit in southern Scotland had been deleted and I was still on 1299. There may be a moral somewhere.
A trip to Arran in November did get me over 1300 and I advanced this to 1305 to guard against further unpleasant surprises. Prior to this, to celebrate my wife, Ann's, retirement, we had six weeks birding in East Anglia with not a hill in sight.
In 2015 we hope to take advantage of our new-found freedom by travelling to Greece in our camper van and staying away for up to six months. There are likely to be few new Marilyns as a result.
