Whenever I mention my Munro bagging hobby to people overseas they look at me with surprise. I tell them, I walk mountains with a summit of 3,000ft. That’s 914.4m in metric terms, I add.
Oh, but why not walk 1,000m summits, they ask? So I tell them about the history of the list created by Sir Hugh Munro back in the day when Brits only used imperial measurements.
These days many of us use a mix of imperial and metric measurements. I might talk about miles when driving to see a friend, but kilometres when doing a 10k running race.
Added to this, OS maps have been metric for about 40 years.
So, it makes perfect sense for people to tick off hill walking lists that are rated according to the metric system. Hence, we now have Marilyns, Tumps, Humps and New Donalds to name a few.
While researching this topic I also came across many other less known lists, such as Caleb’s List, Birketts, Washies, Dillons and Dodds.
I wrote about the growth of the 21st hill baggers for the Ramblers’ magazine, Walk. It’s fascinating, if you ask me! Read the pdf of join The Ramblers to receive their latest magazine.