I find http://www.hill-bagging.co.uk a very useful resource for visiting less popular summits in the UK. I have just returned from the NW of Scotland activating a very hot and cleg infested GM/NS-121 and GM/NS-115. I noticed on the hill bagging map another summit that didn’t appear on https://sotl.as. The hill is Mountain Search. I noted this was promoted in 2018. So I went to check the ARM and noted that it hasn’t been updated since 2009. So that explained my initial confusion.
It seems that the RHB website was kept up to date until at least 2018? But I thought I would see if http://www.hill-bagging.co.uk had something similar. There is but it has updates for all hills and only covers back to July 2020. However, I noted that Mountain Search has been demoted from Marilyn status and this isn’t on the RHB website. Does anyone know if there is a single-point of reference somewhere?
If I know that a remote Scottish region has a hill to be added at some point soon, it may influence whether I wait for the new hill to be added before visiting.
There is a pending update for Scotland. As we still have un-activated summits there’s been no rush to add or delete summits. The update will delete a number of summits and tweaks most positions by a few metres. There’s also one points change from 10 to 8.
Some deletions have a corresponding new summit as the repositioned summit is outside the originally AZ.
It always has been the best source of information for British Hills. There is an Android app that is supposed to track it but that seems to have fallen behind.
I hadn’t seen that website before. The granulation of the classification of hills never ceases to amaze me.
For example, I hadn’t heard of Dodds before - 500m to 599m altitude plus 30m of prominance. And for those who need a finer distinction there are Subdodds which are hills which didn’t quite meet the Dodds criteria.
I had more typical weather for this pair in early September - cold, clag and heavy rain… Broke the walk-in with a night at Strathan Bothy, no footbridge over the burn, crossing was interesting particularly on the way out after 24hrs of rain…
I did consider during some of the least enjoyable moments if I would have preferred cold, clag, heavy rain etc. I’m still undecided.
I left the Sheigra campsite at 6am to try and beat the heat, but by 8am it was already too hot. Some streams were dried up which made cooling down tricky. The clegs were often worse on the summits, almost 1 bite every 5 seconds (or so it seemed) and the bite through clothes. The ground was completely dry and I was grateful for that. I planned to add in GM/NS-141 but the heat and clegs won and I made it back to Sheigra beach for lunch and a well earned rest after 26 km of getting bitten by flies. A satisfying outing while the rest of the family enjoyed the beach (and dodging jelly fish). Thankfully, no clegs or midges at the beach!
The whole area is stunning and has a great wilderness feel. I can’t wait to go back.
