Ben More, the highest peak on Mull, has hosted many Munro-completion events over the years. It is far and away the most popular final-hill choice in rounds of the Scottish 3,000-footers, with somewhere in the region of 500 finishes having taken place there – roughly one in ten of all Munro rounds.
Few if any of those completions, however, will have been as remarkable as the one due to be celebrated this Sunday by a hillwalker and climber from Kendal. Why? Because despite having racked up a full and arduous round of the 283 Munros, Ben Fleetwood will be aged a mere ten years and 91 days.
The round started on 31 May 2007, the day after Ben’s sixth birthday, when he climbed the central Highland trio of Beinn na Lap, Chno Dearg and Stob Coire Sgriodain with his father John – who has accompanied him on all the Munros and who will, of course, be there on Mull this weekend. Ben’s mother Alison has climbed roughly half the Munros with Ben – but it is, John says, “really a thing that we do together to give mum a break”.
Father and son are both in the Christian Rock and Mountain Club, but by and large it has been a family affair with only “about 30 Munros in wider company”, according to John. The longest day was nine Munros in the Mamores – something any adult could be proud of, especially as father and son had done “Carn Mor Dearg, the Aonachs and Binnein Beag the afternoon before”.
The Munros haven’t just been tackled by their easiest, guidebook-path routes: “We’ve done lots of backpacking, so have linked hills with no path between them and lots of man-eating tussocks”, says John. “Backpacking the 18 Cairngorm Munros in five days was tough, then there’s the backpack aged six over the hills from Stob a’Choire Odhair to Ben Cruachan in mid-February, camping high in temperatures down to –7C”.
John himself is one of the country’s most accomplished mega-day hill runners – a search of the hillrunning forums for “Full Moon Addict” will reveal some of his remarkable outings when away from family duties. But has a lack of strength and stamina been a problem for young Ben?
“Stamina excellent,” John says. “No problem in Skye, and we also did Central Gully on Ben Lui when in grade II condition. He’s managed very well in instep crampons when we couldn’t get any proper ones for him as he was too small – he did Central Gully in these. He keeps going on boring grassy slopes by virtue of playing imaginary games in his head.
“Like any child, there is a fine line between being very happy and very unhappy, but the unhappy bits haven’t lasted that long. It’s just like adults, but children tend to vocalise it more! He especially doesn’t like spindrift lashing him – we sometimes sing songs to keep spirits up, the likes of Ilkley Moor ba’ tat”.
The wildlife, as so often in childhood, holds a fascination. “He strokes the frogs,” John says, “and likes mountain hares and the like”. An impressive number of Munros – 82 – have been climbed in snow. “I use a long sling and short-rope him in areas where a slip would be dangerous, exposed scrambling such as Skye and on hard névé slopes”.
Ben says his favourite Munros are the In Pinn, Sgurr nan Gillean and Sgurr na Ciche; his least favourite Fionn Bheinn, the Fannaichs outlier above Achnasheen. His father’s favourite hill during the round, however, was “Bidean [nam Bian] in pristine snow… no one else there, knee-deep untravelled snow and blue skies. We had the mountain to ourselves and were down for lunch.”
Mightily impressive though all this is, the inevitable question is whether a child so young is suited to the often harsh, always strenuous and potentially quite dangerous environment of the Munros – something hinted at in the caution expressed by David Broadhead, clerk of the list of Munroists at the Scottish Mountaineering Club. “Over the years I have had a few enquiries about youngest compleater,” Broadhead says, “and have always been very wary of encouraging competition in that area. The issue of pushing young athletes is a whole ethical can of worms. Most Munroists see it as a lifetime’s achievement, so I personally prefer to celebrate that side of things.”
It’s an issue that John Fleetwood is very aware of, having previously encountered it when Ben – then aged six – had a spell as the youngest person to have climbed all 214 Wainwrights in the Lake District. That is a much easier proposition than the Munros, and has seen what appears to be a certain amount of oneupmanship among parents, with children being taken round the hills younger and younger. (The current youngest Wainwright-completer is aged only five.)
“Possibly they [the critics] are right,” says John, “but the same could be said of any challenge. It’s just a different sort of challenge. I think the key thing is that the child has to want to do it for themselves – and you don’t do the Munros if you don’t want to. No amount of coaxing will get you round 283 Munros.”
While there are no formal records or listings for child-Munroists, it appears that the youngest until now has been Lynn Batty of Lochgilphead, aged 11 years 253 days when she completed on Slioch on 17 November 1995 along with her sister Hazel (aged 14) and their mother Patricia, who was finishing a second round. Various other mid-teenagers have been round them all, but the level of the task and the commitment necessary is such that this is unlikely to become as frequent a feat as with the Wainwrights, where the “record” has come down several times in recent years.
Part of the worry is that, were a young child to suffer a serious accident while chasing a target of this kind, quite aside from the individual and family trauma there could also be a significant public and media backlash for the wider hillgoing community, even though the accident might have been of the blameless type that can and does happen to experienced adult walkers and climbers.
Happily, however, nothing of that sort has befallen Ben Fleetwood – no doubt greatly helped by the considerable expertise and care provided by his Alpine Club-member father, who says “Not really – or at least none his mum would want to share!” when asked if there have been any accidents or scares.
“Yes and no,” he adds, when asked whether it been a deliberate attempt to break the record for the youngest Munroist. “I wanted to do this before [Ben] lost interest for other things and wanted to go out with his friends instead, so always foresaw doing this before he got to his teenage years. Then it looked like we could do it by his eleventh birthday and I was 11 when I did my first, so that had a sort of symmetry and would make him the youngest.”
As to whether he was excited to become the youngest, Ben said he was “excited to finish but not particularly to be the youngest”.
So what next for Ben – an only child who doesn’t have any similar-age friends who climb Munros but who does have the usual range of small-boy interests and enthusiasms? (“He likes maths and creative writing. He’s a drummer and likes Green Day and Audio Adrenaline.”)
After the round has been completed on Ben More, it will be time to do something different. “The definite plan is no more peak-bagging for a while,” John says. “He’s done 25 Corbetts but that’s off the agenda. We plan one or two day challenges a year and some backpacks, but not much beyond that. We’ll do something different. We’ve been to the Alps twice and will return. I think both of us are ready to finish now. We’ve spent some time most school holidays bagging over the last couple of years, and we plan to do something completely different after this – maybe tennis!”
Update Monday 29 August – Safely up/down, job done: Ben Fleetwood became the youngest known Munroist at about 12:30pm on Sunday in iffy weather. “John said it was windy and cold with poor visibility. ‘We couldn’t see a thing,’ he added” – see Bob Smith’s piece on grough.
No word, however, on whether the star of the show had a dram on top to celebrate…
Ben’s father John had intended to complete a round at the same time but finished on Ben Klibreck the previous Monday. He then ran up it again and was able to finish a climbed-whenever second round on Ben Wyvis on Wednesday.
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