One of the tasks I set myself during the spring lockdown was to catch up with logging my Marilyns on hill-bagging.co.uk, having realised that I was four years behind. As of today, I am completely up to date.
Occasionally people ask me how many Marilyns I’ve visited and I very seldom know the exact answer. At times I’ve struggled to even guess at a rough estimate. Happily I now have an exact answer, and if I manage to keep my logs up to date from now on then maybe I’ll be better equipped to answer next time I’m asked.
So, for the record I have to date visited 469 Marilyns. That includes 146 in England, leaving me with just 29 to complete the country. Sixteen of those are in the South West and could, I reckon, be sensibly tackled in a single trip. The rest are rather scattered and include:
Crowborough – on a residential street so I’ll only visit it if I’m in the area;
Mickle Fell – legally permission from the MoD is required as it’s on a firing range;
Normanby Top – walked within 500m of it on our Lowestoft to Ardnamurchan walk and being a trig point in a field next to a road, it’s not worth a special trip to go back, so it’ll only get mopped up if I happen to be in the area (okay, so I may engineer myself being in the area, but I’ll have to find more things of merit to do nearby to justify the trip)
Swinside – on private land, and I’ve already made one aborted visit to its foot. I’ll only visit it if I can either get permission or if I’m nearby in circumstances that suggest a quick sneak up and down would be feasible.
As nice as it would be to complete England, given that I will never complete the entire Marilyn list, there’s no logical sense in spending significant resources on going far out of my way to mop up the last dregs. I do, of course, still have a significant part of Wales and Scotland still to go (99 to go in Wales; Scotland is full of Marilyns and I’m not likely to exhaust the supply any time soon!).
We did Mickle Fell without permission under our own interpretation of the rules.
ReplyDeleteIf you want the info here is my post about it:
http://conradwalks.blogspot.com/search?q=Mickle+Fell
Unfortunately, I can't read the rules in a way that allows access without a permit, even on a non-firing day:
Delete"Access to Mickle Fell is available (subject to training, high fire risk etc) on a permit system only. Applications should be sent to the Range Officer..."
However, one is allowed to access the public footpaths without a permit on a non-firing day, and my sense of direction isn't always great...
I'm glad you pointed me towards re-reading your post (I remember you doing Mickle Fell, but not the details). I had been minded to take the most direct route from the cattle grid and hadn't even considered the route you took. That has now become my favourite by virtue of both the access land and the track.
Delete