Completing the Grahams on Arran

[montie]

Amasing achievement. puts my wee round to shame

[weaselmaster]

Fantastic achievement for both of you, huge congratulations!



What hills will you be climbing next as I hope the weekly trip reports continue!

I'm supposed to be walking the WHW this weekend - was meant to be Cape Wrath Trail but i) couldn't get time off work for that despite being semi-retired now and ii) haven't done any long distance walks so thought the WHW would be useful homework. Hopefully get a Marilyn on the Way.

Next big thing is the Irish Furths at the end of May. Looking forward to that.

Although Marilyns and Simms are up there on my list I'm enjoying Munro Tops again with Allison, so some Second Rounds look likely. I suspect I'll still be posting reports with the same monotonous regularity for a while yet

[weaselmaster]

Amasing achievement. puts my wee round to shame

I'm guessing that this is Monty (as was) - you were a major inspiration back in the Munro days to get me started with your huge and - let's face it- often mental rounds

[weaselmaster]

Congratulations on a mega achievement. I can hardly think of a better place to complete than Arran too.

But what next...??? All the munros, corbetts, grahams, tops, etc. etc. in a logical sequence...??? Scotland could be getting too small for you....

I really fancy a continuous round of Munros, Corbetts and Grahams, but realistically that's not going to happen.
i can see us getting down to the Lakes and to Wales again though

[weaselmaster]

Fantastic effort, congrats to you both, that's some achievement!!

A shame you didn't quite get the weather and views up Beinn Bharrain/Mullach Buidhe but good that it was clear at Machrie for you along with Beinn Bhreac.

So, Marilyns next then...?

Cheers Chris - sorry we couldn't wait to meet up with you, enjoyed your enthusiasm for Arran.
Marilyns are definately on the radar...need to get a new schedule up and running

[Mountainlove]

Brilliant achievement well done to the two of you

[malky_c]

Congratulations again . Rather apt that you bumped into Robert Phillips on your previous trip - the 3 of you must just about share a record for the fastest round of the Munros, Corbetts and Grahams ever.

Classic completion weather anyway (complete with nice afternoon ), and good to see you and Allison at the meet .

[mamoset]

Very impressive, well done both of you

[Sgurr]

Very many congrats. Do you know your Grahamist numbers? I think you must still be under 200 as we completed in 2013 and were in the early 100s. I think I was something like the 19th woman. Anyway, doesn't matter, We met a guy the other day who finished around the same time as us.He is now into Munro tops apparently and had booked a guide to help him complete on Skye. Do you have any more lists in mind after the Munro tops? Many Marilyns are fun, and at your age you could do huge sweeps of them.(Unlike our one at a time approach) which would make it more challenging.

[weaselmaster]

Very many congrats. Do you know your Grahamist numbers? I think you must still be under 200 as we completed in 2013 and were in the early 100s. I think I was something like the 19th woman. Anyway, doesn't matter, We met a guy the other day who finished around the same time as us.He is now into Munro tops apparently and had booked a guide to help him complete on Skye. Do you have any more lists in mind after the Munro tops? Many Marilyns are fun, and at your age you could do huge sweeps of them.(Unlike our one at a time approach) which would make it more challenging.

Thanks Sgurr.
According to the list on RHB, (http://rhb.org.uk/grahams/ad_grahamists.htm) Rick & Jenny were the most recent additions when they finished their Marilyns on Cruinn a'Bheinn. They were joint 160. So yes, unless an unexpected influx of Grahamists in the last 3 months we should be somewhere in the 160s.

I'm looking forward to the Marilyns, though it's chastened by the knowledge that I won't be completing them - sea stacks are beyond me. Getting to 1000 will do as a new target. But it will be good to go to new places (and re-visit some favourite haunts) on the smaller hills. Particularly looking forward to some of the small islands - have been hatching a plot with Scoob & Fi to visit the wee isles south of Barra at some point. Oh and spending time on Skye, Harris, Orkney and Shetland

Some longer routes to encompass a few would - as you say - be an interesting challenge. That was one of the comments that Robert Phillips made - he'd found the single hill bagging aspect of many Marilyns got dull and was relishing some longer routes. At the moment there is immense freedom to choose virtually any part of the country which makes a change after months of having our destinations largely chosen for us by which hills we had left.

[Sgurr]

We loved the Bishop Isles. It's one of the few TRs I put up here as well as on Scottishhill(Squiz), so you might find it useful

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=55370

I no wish we had brought camping gear and got Donald to leave us overnight, but this would have cost us more, as he would have had an empty couple of seats on each of 2 trips.

[basscadet]

At the moment there is immense freedom to choose virtually any part of the country which makes a change after months of having our destinations largely chosen for us by which hills we had left.

I realise this is going to fall on deaf ears but you have just mentioned the reasons why it is good to give up the bagging - You then have the freedom to walk anywhere and everywhere - nothing matters but your own enjoyment - freedom is everything when it comes to hillwalking, and if you are ticking you are not really free

[Dave Hewitt]

Congrats on the completions. Re the question of numbers and positions in the list, a couple of things should be borne in mind. One is that as well as the rhb list of Graham completers mentioned upthread, there's also an SMC version which can be abstracted (admittedly not easily) from their list of Munro completers. A couple of years ago I had access to the big batch of 2012-14 Munroist etc letters to the SMC, and the "etc" sections included a surprising - and apparently increasing - number of Grahamists whose names didn't and still don't appear on the rhb version. Relations between the two camps aren't the best, and as discussed recently in another place there's also now the problem whereby the new rhsoc people seem to be telling Grahamists that they aren't actually Grahamists at all (because rhsoc is only interested in UK-wide lists), so that is likely to further increase the number of Grahamists only registering on the SMC side of things, I would imagine. (Note however that the SMC list only covers Grahamists who are also Munroists - although that does tend to mostly be the case anyway.)

The other thing is that numbers of women in lists of completers should be treated with considerable caution in statistical terms, as there's evidence that the proportion of women who complete hill lists but who don't register is quite a bit higher than the proportion who do. Again as part of the big piece of Munroist research, a while back the proportion of female Munroists in the main SMC list (which stood at around 5000 overall at the time) was around 18% as I recall. I also have a separate and (of course) unpublished list of unlisted Munroists (if that makes sense), and while this is a much smaller sample (350ish last time I did any work on it) the proportion of women in that was up at around 25%. Quite why this might be is an interesting question, but there is anecdotal evidence (ie me asking some of these women!) that even women who tick hill lists don't necessarily want to then be in the people lists. There's a fair chance that kind of situation applies to Graham completers, too.

Of course the numbers attached to people in any of these lists don't mean much anyway, given all the out-of-synch people, the duplicates (at least eight in the list of Munroists) and the actual absentees. The latter category is considerable in any list, although isn't really calculable in any sensible way given that so many people do this kind of stuff below the radar. With Munroists, it's certainly a hefty additional number - eg it's fairly likely that Munroist no.3907 is actually up near 4907 - and an add-on of something like 15 to 20% would be a safe-ish bet with any of the lists.

[weaselmaster]

We loved the Bishop Isles. It's one of the few TRs I put up here as well as on Scottishhill(Squiz), so you might find it useful
.

Yes - your report was the starting point for our interest - I remember reading it previously, will scrutinize it again nearer the time if we do get it arranged

[weaselmaster]

At the moment there is immense freedom to choose virtually any part of the country which makes a change after months of having our destinations largely chosen for us by which hills we had left.

I realise this is going to fall on deaf ears but you have just mentioned the reasons why it is good to give up the bagging - You then have the freedom to walk anywhere and everywhere - nothing matters but your own enjoyment - freedom is everything when it comes to hillwalking, and if you are ticking you are not really free

Aha - but the ticking is also part of the enjoyment for me It's just when the number get low on one particular list that one gets rather straight jacketed into little choice. Given that every hill (pretty much) is on some sort of list means that if one is going to do say a dozen different lists at the same time (eg Munros, Tops, Corbetts, Grahams, Marilyns, Simms etc) then options are wide open and should stay that way for quite some time