Whatever one’s pastime, the long-daylight time of year ought not to be wasted, as the evenings will be clamping back down before you know it.
There are two general approaches: one is to use the 20-odd hours of daylight to attempt massive outings, the other is to do something – a hillwalk, a climb, a cycle-ride, a sail – surprisingly late in the day. Treat the evening as an add-on bonus, in other words.
The 2011 prize for the most impressive full-day effort (a day-and-a-half, actually) could well go to John Fleetwood, a very strong hill man who specialises in outings that would make even a fairly strong hillbagger blanch.
In a 22 June posting on the Fell Runners Association noticeboard, Fleetwood described his latest effort: “I've just returned from a new round: 21 Munros of Fannichs, Fisherfield, An Teallach (all Corrag Buidhe pinnacles and Lord Berkeley’s Seat obligatory!) and Beinn Dearg. 70 miles 28,000 feet.”
It took him 31 hours of “walking / sort of running”, with a six-hour break at Shenavall bothy. The weather was less than perfect – “thick clag for 75 per cent of it” – and there were problems in terms of injuries.
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“I had a painful knee after 20 miles which was bad news with a further 50 to go,” Fleetwood said. “This meant I couldn’t really run, but I continued in the drizzle. The slow pace meant I had to stop the night in Shenavall (I didn’t fancy the pinnacles in the dark with thick mist, a pathetic emergency torch and anyway, I was knackered).” The scale of the enterprise will be understood by anyone who has tackled any of these hills – particularly the remote Fisherfield Munros – in “normal” terms. Even fit, regular hillgoers tend to view the six Fisherfields as only just about doable in one push, so the idea of linking them with three other substantial hill groups is mightily impressive. “The ground is very unforgiving over Fisherfield and An Teallach,” said Fleetwood, “particularly with a dodgy knee. Loads of angular boulders which were slippy in the drizzle. No crossing of roads for the first 50 miles, so you have to carry all your stuff. I did dump some food at the roadside which I was glad of.” He reckons it was “a wonderful circuit but a tough call for a 24 hour round. I think that even if my knee hadn't played up I’d have struggled to get close to 24 hours with needing to carry food, etc. It’s significantly harder than the Ramsay for example.” The Ramsay in question is the Charlie Ramsay Round, an eastward extension of the old Tranter Round – start in Glen Nevis and, if going clockwise, take in the Ben, the Aonachs and the Grey Corries, then the big drop before the Easains, then another big drop before the pivotal Sgriodain / Chno Dearg / Beinn na Lap group before trundling (or staggering) back via the Mamores. All within 24 hours. It’s a massive effort, with only 61 successful recorded completions (including Jo Scott and Tom Phillips this June) since Ramsay himself set the mark in July 1978, at the end of which he made a 33-minute descent of Ben Nevis to dip under the 24-hour mark with two minutes to spare. Fleetwood’s own Charlie Ramsay Round – a rare unsupported effort – came in July 2003 and forms part of perhaps the most impressive long-hill-day CV of anyone currently active in such endeavours. Some of his undertakings have been detailed in the Angry Corrie – a winter Bob Graham Round in December 2005, a huge winter Shiel/Cluanie/Affric round in February 2006 and a winter Ramsay (in five minutes under 48 hours) in March 2006. Several more outings were summarised in Martin Stone’s long-distance slot in the spring 2011 edition of Fellrunner: a winter Tranter (December 2002), another big Shiel round (February 2005), a winter Paddy Buckley Round in Wales (December 2006), 20,000ft and 48 miles in 26 hours in the Mullardoch area in February 2007, a similar-length effort around Cruachan in February 2009, and a winter Rigby Round – taking in all 18 Cairngorms Munros (20,000ft, 76 miles, 54 hours) – in December 2010. Of the Fannaichs/Fisherfield etc effort, Fleetwood summed it up by saying “The weather might have been disappointing but the round was fantastic – the best I’ve done.” Rob Woodall is no stranger to massively long circuits himself (including the holy trinity of the Ramsay, the Buckley and the Graham – plus the full set of Skye Cuillin summits, Black and Red, inside 24 hours in June 1999), and a couple of weeks ago he added arguably the most notable long-evening effort of 2011. The distance covered – on foot at least – was negligible, but it saw a rare climb achieved and, in the process, a curious list of hills completed. Peterborough-based Woodall motored across to Cheshire to climb the Old Man of Mow, an overhanging lump of rock near Kidsgrove. There were two notable aspects to this. One is that the Old Man isn’t often climbed these days, having been officially deemed off-limits since the 1980s due to concerns that it might collapse. The other is that its summit is the key test in the subMarilyns, and in climbing it Woodall appears to have become the first person to complete the list. The 200-odd subMarilyns relate, as might be expected, to the main list of Marilyns – those 1554 hills in Scotland, England, Wales and the Isle of Man which have 150 metres or more of separation on all sides, first published in Alan Dawson’s 1992 book The Relative Hills of Britain. No one has yet climbed all the Marilyns, and Woodall is one of several people waiting patiently / completely stuck (delete as appropriate) at “the wall”, two short due to not having climbed the St Kildan sea stacks of Stac Lee and Stac an Armin. SubMarilyns comprise the near-miss annexe to the Marilyns: hills with 140–149 metres of separation. (Remapping prompts occasional promotions to, and relegations from, the main list, a bit like League Two and the Conference in English football.) The original list of subMarilyns included the stroll-up summit of Mow Cop, but people with an interest in these things came to realise that the nearby Old Man was slightly higher – but still not high enough to boost it to full Marilyn status. (That really would have put the cat among the bagging pigeons, as the easiest way up is Very Severe, four climbing grades harder than the easiest way up those other notoriously awkward hill-list targets, the Inaccessible Pinnacle and the Basteir Tooth.) Even though the Old Man of Mow is not remote – it’s a world away from Fisherfield – climbing it required a certain amount of planning. “I was contacted by a friend,” Woodall said, “who said a friend of his was interested in the St Kilda stacs. We got discussing climbing, I asked if he knew about the Old Man of Mow. He didn’t, but quickly agreed to take up an occasional climber at the edge of his comfort zone. "Another friend of mine lives next door to the Old Man – literally. We blocked out two weeks around midsummer, the plan being to choose a dry weekday and to climb late evening when our climb on the ‘forbidden’ pinnacle was less likely to attract attention.” Woodall is keen to stress the role of his helpers – lead climber Paul Reeve and local “base camp” man Geoff Pettengell, who also climbed the Old Man. The first week of the allotted fortnight brought poor weather, but the Tuesday of the second week, 14 June, looked much better. “Driving over with Paul mid-evening,” Woodall said, “I wasn’t at all sure that I’d get up it, fazed by tales of slippery hardly-climbed algaed rock, a hard-to-protect traverse, the danger of coming off and going for a big swing. “The climbing itself (at VS) was harder technically than I expected, but the hard moves were very well protected with a vertical rope from the belayer and no danger of swinging off. Finally sitting on top just after sunset, looking across the Cheshire plain, was fantastic. The descent was the sting in the tail. I’ve done plenty of abseiling but never down an overhang, hanging free. Good fun once you start, it turns out!” Others have climbed the Old Man, or have been chipping away at the subMarilyns list (which includes hills from Shetland to Devon, as well as on islands as diverse as Rum, Tiree, Lundy, Wight and Man), but no one else seems to have combined the two. “Amusing comparison,” said Woodall when asked whether he or John Fleetwood had had the harder time. “I had much the easier day of it. Up 6am, finished packing gear, work 7:30am, left work 4pm, picked up Paul 6:30pm, Mow Cop about 8pm, climbing by 9pm, abbed off probably 10:30pm, Sheffield midnight, home about 2am. “Having had a vague intention for over a decade to do the climb, in the end it had all come together in six months and gone better than I dared expect.” And now? “Back to the St Kilda stacs waiting game…”.Donate to us: support independent, intelligent, in-depth Scottish journalism from just 3p a day
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