A bit more spare time in summer 2015, so my new Marilyns total for the year crept up to a mighty 19. Most of these were in the Borders, escaping the largely rubbish weather in the Highlands during the spring and early summer. At one point I even fled as far south as Devon to pick up my final Simm, Cut Hill on Dartmoor. Actually, I had forgotten how nice the place is, I used to guide tours there 20 years ago. Camping out in glorious weather and clambering around on the odd tor. Even Lewesdon Hill in Dorset, my final English Marilyn, was a pleasant stroll up through beech woods to a hill fort, with lunch in the excellent village pub at its foot. Rewards for the lunacy of going from Glen Coe to Arran via Dartmoor over a four-day weekend.
Two other bagging games got finished off this year. I did Pennant Rib, the last of the scrambles in Steve Ashton's Snowdonia book, not a great scramble but a fun day out in a lovely wild place. I also completed a calendar round of 610m tops, with a wild and windy trip up Kinder Low on Boxing Day night, just getting down before the real deluge. I still have one day outstanding for a rock-climbing round.
Best outing of the year was a traverse of Beinn Alligin in lovely winter conditions and superb weather at the start of May, just after it went overnight from 23C shorts and t-shirt weather to snow on Ullapool beach. Everybody I met was doing the round clockwise, because that is the way suggested on Walk Highlands, whereas anti-clockwise means doing all the best scrambling up rather than down and avoids the slog up Coire nan Laogh. This worked to my advantage, giving me untracked snow and no people until the second Munro. The fantastic weather over September and October also produced some superb days, mostly used to get photographs for Highland scrambles south, with days on Aonach Mor, the Buachaille and Ben Macdui the stand-outs. Squeezed into this were a great scramble up Sgurr na h-Uamha in the Cuillin on some of the coarsest gabbro around, a day on Am Faochagach with stunning reflections, and a wild rough day in Galloway doing Taucher's couloir on Mullwharchar - a lot easier when it is not an icicle-draped waterfall, as on my previous visit.
Best new Marilyn is getting to be a bit barrel-scraping, as I am largely left with either lumps or difficult-to-access islands, but Beinn na h-Uamha in Morvern made a fun round with its non-Marilyn neighbour Beinn Iadain, and I enjoyed being out in the sunny wilds of Creag Scalabsdale in Caithness, gloatingly watching it snow heavily further west. I am running up against the usual problem with prominence-based bagging, in that it emphasises the fringes of ranges rather than the heart of them, as these are more deeply dissected. Look at the Ultras in the Alps or the Highland fringe. I much prefer to be up amongst the higher hills and as the nice jaggy lower hills get picked off it is getting harder to get motivated to climb some boggy lump well away from the main excitement.
