by Dave Hewitt » Thu Feb 23, 2017 11:20 am
Congratulations on the round - good effort. The Donalds is actually the second-oldest of the main Scottish hill lists - first published in the SMC Journal in 1935 and subsequently in the "lesser heights" section of Munro's Tables, as McMole says. The list of Corbetts wasn't published (at least not in its modern form) until 1952. Munros first appeared in 1891, of course.
There is a list of Donald completers - I've researched and maintained such a thing since the mid-1990s - but it hasn't always been online. It has at times, it isn't at present, but it should soon be back available again (within the next couple of months). There's some Donaldist data to be found on the SMC website, but note that this only records Donaldists who have also climbed all the Munros, and unlike Munros/Corbetts there's a hefty non-overlap between Munros/Donalds. I currently know of 215 Donaldists - well, 216 now with you added - but as ever with these things there are plenty more than that. A reasonable estimate might be 500, but it's hard to know. Percy Donald himself (who died relatively young on the hills near Tyndrum in September 1938) was the first to complete, finishing with Blackcraig on 28 May 1933. He worked through the list as an actual "round", ie although he'd climbed what became Donalds much earlier (the first I know of for him was a Rhinns of Kells outing in April 1922), he did the 133 summits that were in the list at the time in the space of 167 days, requiring 27 days out. (He worked out that this came to 2s 9d per main hill, 1s 10d per subsidiary top.) He also spent a further six days "clearing up points of doubt". Note that the Artney group wasn't in the list at that stage - it was my fault that those hills were added, as I wrote a piece for TGO in the mid-1990s (1994, I think) pointing out that they were just south of the Highland Line and hence qualified, and in due course the SMC picked up on this and added them to the list.
The second known completion is that by the much-missed Ken Andrew who finished with White Shank on 1 November 1969, but there were almost certainly some finishes in that 36-year gap. John Dow (1881-1972) - the fifth listed Munroist and a friend of Donald - came close but appears to have ended about nine hills short. A journalist named Henry Truckell (1880-1967) also appears to have come close to completion - he certainly wrote a lot about the hills in question. The highest number of rounds appears to be four, by Colin Crawford, with several other people having been round two or three times. Your own finishing hill is one of the more popular for such things - that's the sixth finish I know for Cairnsmore of Fleet (and there been nine on the adjacent Knee of Cairnsmore and three on Meikle Mulltaggart, so at least 18 for that cluster generally). Most popular actual finishing summit however is, as almost always, one of the outliers: Cauldcleuch Head (15). Again, all these figures are minimum ones.
I'd be keen to add you to the list, so if you're up for that please mail me via the site with your real name and where you live ie city/town/village. Working backwards from what you say, was your Windy Gyle ascent on 28 June 1981? 35 and a half years is a very civilised timespan for completing a list.
