Blog Aims

As was the case for the English Nuttalls Peak Bagging Blog, the aim of the Scottish Munros Peak bagging blog is to provide a record of all my walks from a novice point of view in the form of a photo diary including our experiences and any lessons learned no matter how obvious.

After 241 of the 253 Nuttalls completed (at time of writing, Nov 2012), 4 years and over 90 separate walks in all four seasons and weather conditions, I think I can consider I have graduated from a novice to a hill walker. This does not leave room for complacency at any time, especially where Scottish hills are concerned. Even with my limited experience north of the border it is obvious to me that in terms of quantity, gradients, remoteness and most certainly weather, hill walking in Scotland is an entirely different proposition.

It therefore seems clear to me I have as much to learn at this stage going forward as I did four years ago starting as a novice.

The backlog caused by starting the English Nuttall blog two years after I started walking has diluted these aims resulting in many incomplete pages and a continual “job in progress” to catch up whilst at the same time going on additional walks and documenting these.

Furthermore other activities like planning, diary and hill logging where introduced resulting in even more work. In hindsight I find the activity of blogging is almost as hard as the actual walking, but in return provides nearly as much enjoyment.

After all when you live in the south 3 hours drive away from the nearest significant hill you need some way of satisfying the call of the hills.

With this in mind the structure of this blog is being designed to take all of these extras into account within the limited capabilities of Blogger. In addition to all this I found many aspects of my walking were excluded, including lower level walks and even walks to Non-Nuttall summits.

Accompanied by my wife, apart from the joy of her company and shared experience, I have already discovered the benefits of visiting lesser (for want of a better word) summits along with valley and other lower level walks. I am therefore going to expand the scope of this blog further to include ALL walks and trips in Scotland, not just those involving Munros.

It is for this reason I have started the blog now before the first Munro has been visited. Please be patient it will happen.

Finally it is not intended as a reference. I am nowhere near qualified enough and there are many excellent sources of reference both on-line and in books, many of which I will refer to in this blog.

If nothing else it will sit on a server somewhere and who knows one of my descendants may come across it on whatever medium information is accessed in the future and maybe say something like “Could they not find anything better to do than that?”

Well the answer to that is “No. Give it a try yourself - the mountains will still be there”