In September 2003, just before my 40th birthday, I completed a round of Scotland’s 281 3000ft peaks – the Munros. Almost all of these were climbed after my return from living in New Zealand: I think I missed the sense of wilderness when I got back, and Scotland offered it. Anyway, there was nothing remarkable about that first round. I was (relatively) young and fit, and dashed round the hills every spare weekend or holiday I could get up there. So there were a few personal epics (such as 15 Munros in a day from Braemar) but most of the hills I climbed by standard routes. A while after I’d finished that first round I met my future wife, Caroline who, like me, was fairly useless at standard holidays. So I suggested that we do a joint round of the Munros but – and here’s the thing – differently. With hills, as with music, I’ve never seen the point in a straight repeat of something which offers otherwise. Initially, otherwise just meant other ways. These ways were often trackless, and almost always peopleless. But since the standard routes were always the easiest to access, our ways were always going to take longer. Cue tent! For all the discomforts and inconveniences (soon forgotten) of high wild-camping, overnighters increasingly became our preferred option. By the time we finished our round, in August 2022, we didn’t really feel as if we knew a hill unless we’d slept on it.
I started posting reports of our trips on the now-defunct website scottishhills.com. I’m putting some of them back up on this site for anyone who is curious about where a sense of wilderness can be found in a relatively tame part of the globe.