A bit late in the day with just 12 of my 601 all-time Munro Tops left to do and Slioch waiting for 30 May but, prompted by Robin Campbell’s receipt of the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture at last month’s Fort William Mountain Festival, I’ve finally bought and read The Munroist’s Companion. And predictably found much of interest there, not least (given the roots of my ‘purist’ approach in concerns with what’s listed in what category, or indeed at all) in David Purchase’s essay On the Classification of Mountains: a graphical approach, where he proposes well-considered objective criteria for distinguishing between Munros and Tops that would keep the list close to its current shape while removing all the obvious anomalies. So, while I’ve no time for inadequate web/media statements like ‘there are 282 mountains over 3,000ft in Scotland’ (contentious!) and still regard just the 282 (or 284, 276 or whatever it happens to be at the time) as ‘Munro-lite’, I might qualify that by suggesting that adding just Purchase’s nine remaining promotion candidates to a current ‘full-Munro-only’ round of 282 removes the worst of the ‘lite’. Do Glas Leathad Beag, the Affric Sgurr na Lapaich, Sail Mhor and Coinneach Mhor on Beinn Eighe, Stob na Doire on the big Buachaille, Cairn Lochan, Beinn Iutharn Bheag, Sgor Choinnich (Corrour Forest) and Creag Dubh (Mullardoch) and you’ve got a pretty good baseline for 291 ‘mountains’. Demote Carn Ghluasaid (which Purchase recommends but you can’t leave out so long as it’s still listed!) and you’ve got 290. All water off a duck’s back to me when I’m sticking to my 601, but surprising how little still needs changing to arrive at a decently objective list!
Might just add that I’m with Campbell on completion/compleation and expect to be completing (not compleating) on 30 May:
The use of Compleation strikes me as twee, or should be it be twea, and I have studiously avoided and expunged it in favour of completion.
His quote, my italics… very funny! :-)
