UKC

Hamish Brown turns 90 today, exactly a week after Bonington. Hamish is a bit of a forgotten figure these days in terms of the newer waves of Munrobaggers etc, but he was the most notable person in those terms during the 1970s and he wrote what is still, for my money, the best book on the Munros. His Groats End and Corbetts books are very good too.

He's still doing well last I heard (Christmas), and although his main hill days are done he's still active on smaller stuff and was thinking of the Cairnwell as a Munro to mark reaching 90 - better tomorrow if he does go for it given that today is pretty wet. He's still very with it mentally too - getting books published on a variety of subjects.

'Hamish's Mountain Walk' was an inspiration to me from my teenage years. I would often refer to it to check how my own (far less ambitious!) journeys in the Highlands compared. I still do even though my Munro days seem to have stalled (last on one in 2013).

Likewise for me. Probably one of the two or three most influential books on my life I have ever read. Happy birthday Hamish!

When I was in my late teens I read Hamish's Mountain Walk until I wore out the spine then bought another and did the same again. One person I would like to meet at least once.

Happy Birthday Hamish!

His writings on Morocco inspired me but oddly I haven't read Hamish's Mountain Walk despite him looming large in my early days, he lived not far from me and was the founder of my first club. I will have to acquire a copy and read it, that's definitely a gaping hole in my mountaineering library, and appropriate as I've nearly finished my bagging journey.

The TV programme, 'Wild Walks' where he takes Cameron McNeish on a walk through the Atlas Mountains is well worth seeking out.

Me too - I've since acquired a hardback edition which is still in one piece! The later reprinted version wasn't as good - eg I don't think it had an index. He's very sociable/helpful - and if you're ever in Burntisland there's a fair chance of bumping into him!

It's always worth dipping back into Mountain Walk, particularly these days as it shows just how much easier a round of Munros now is if you just want to rattle round them by standard routes. Back in 1974 - and also still in the early 1980s when I began doing stuff - there were far fewer paths and various of the lower ones were quagmire-ish (Ben Lomond, Ben Ledi, the forest-edge bit of Corrie Fee - gah, what was that like?!), there were hardly any independent hostels (Nancy's, Gerry's) although more SYHA ones. Gear was much less lightweight, stalking was much more of an issue in terms of autumn access, winters were longer (I began from an Aberdeen base and there would often be significant snow on Cairngorms and Lochnagar from late September till mid/late May) and there wasn't the general commercialisation that has crept in - eg folk might hire Gerry Akroyd for the In Pinn but mostly they wouldn't and for the rest of the Cuillin Munros you just did things by your own initiative and it was better and more satisfying for it. Different days now.

A largely overlooked author these days is Walter Poucher.  I think I had his 'The Scottish Peaks' before I got hold of Hamish's books. Both invoke in me times past when the hills were a lot quieter and (for me) an exciting and unexplored world. Whenever I drive past a 'Munro carpark' these days they often appear full to the brim.

I was given Hamish’s Mountain Walk in my teens, just after my first Munro. I finally read it in a hammock in Australia 15 years later and enjoyed it. Another 21 years later I’ve my last Munro in a few weeks and look forward to rereading it. I quite like The Last Hundred, presumably a riposte to The First Fifty.

When we started The Angry Corrie, Warbeck and I (particularly Warb) loved Poucher's books and prose style - The Scottish Peaks as you say but even more so The Magic of Skye, with its Good Companions, "collar work", "Stygian gloom", "coign of vantage" and any number of other striking phrases. Poucher's books were widely read and very useful in their time, but Hamish's Mountain Walk took things to another level - the guy was already on his fourth round of Munros after all, and was interested in and knowledgeable about the people, history and nature aspects of that world as much as in the hills themselves. And he could - and still can - write well. At the time there were no Munro guidebooks, so lots of people, me included, used HMW as a guidebook-of-sorts, resulting in copies falling apart as Kevin described in his comment.

swan and i did a murdo munro cartoon where MM commissioned a film about walt poucher - "stygian gloom"

https://archive.org/details/tac-25/page/12/mode/2up

I agree very muchly about Hamish eclipsing Poucher. I suppose a bit like Wainwright and Baddeley in the Lakes. The phrase I always recall from Poucher is 'Cyclopean' when describing rock walls. There must have been a lot of one-eyed giants in the Highlands at some time.

Yes! Cyclopean precipices, no less.

PS - Have you really not been on a Munro since 2013? (Since Hamish was in his 70s, in fact.)

That is brilliant. I vaguely remember it first time around.

I'm afraid so. I got to almost 200 bagged then life went pear shaped for a while then covid arrived and knocked me out. It's been a case of trying to not stuff myself too much but I've managed a few Corbetts and lower hills over the last couple of years. When I was bagging we'd usually avoid the SMC guide or go on multi day routes (a bit like mini-Hamish trips) just to get into interesting country and explore. I couldn't do that now and I'm not inspired by the obvious path full of other people that I might manage. Once I got out of the list mentality I decided that just having a nice walk anywhere would be good enough. We're off to Coll and Tiree next month so lots of beaches and nothing over 140m I believe. I could be ticking islands ...

Sorry to hear that - but the main thing is to keep getting out in some shape/form and enjoying it. Doesn't matter what, just so long as it does the trick.

I too seem to have got out of the list mentality, at least in orthodox terms. Was never one for chasing down every list (just Donalds, Munros and Wainwrights in that order), but I also gradually chipped away at a Munro calendar round - something I've been discussing in correspondence with Hamish, coincidentally. The latter stages of that, mostly pretty harsh and occasionally rather scary winter days when I shouldn't really have been up a big hill, seemed to do something to me. Got it finished on a lovely day in March last year, but I'd crossed a boundary in the process and ever since then I've stuck to the endless local-Ochiling with just occasional Munro and Lakes raids thrown in. Is funny how one changes over the years, often in unexpected and ambushy ways.

Happy Birthday to Hamish. 

I'm still on my first copy of Hamish's Mountain Walk. I have used it as part of planning multi-day expeditions (that never actually happen, oh well). It is the weight of gear then versus now that makes me think - and yet it doesn't feel like Hamish carried that much more weight? I could be wrong...

Also discussions of safety in the hills, letting people know where you are, personal locators and all that kind of thing - when he did his continuous Munro round his safely update was a roughly once-a-week phone call to someone! 

I got a copy of "Hamish's Groats End Walk" recently which is also quite good. He does like to have a grumble about the way outdoor education is done "these days" though I have never worked out exactly what his problem was or how he thought things should be different!

I first encountered Hamish back in the late 60's when I was a teenager staying at Glen Nevis YH . He was working at Braehead school in Fife in those days and had a party if the school kids with him. Future encounters in the 70s at Gerry's s and Nancy Smith's hostels. Glad to know he is still well. I thought he was 90 this year as he mentioned reaching his 40 th birthday in " Hamish's Mountain Walk" in 1974

I had a similar experience with two vastly different books. During a year travelling I picked up 'Wuthering Heights' and 'The Plague Dogs' in a secondhand bookshop in Kathmandu. I enjoyed both but became very homesick for a while.

When I first started hill walking in the 1970's Poucher's books were an inspiration. I don't think any similar books covered most of the mountains in GB with the exception of Wainwright in the Lakes.

Indeed. That just felt like the norm until fairly recent times. When I did the watershed in 1987 I was similarly on just very occasional phonecalls - which sometimes involved queueing at a phone box, or finding one that didn't work, or not having the right change! Can't say the lack of constant contact options worried me very much, but I was a lot younger and anyway there were no other options. All part of the adventure. (Plenty of postcards and letters were also written. Didn't utilise any pigeons, however.)

A very special 90th birthday Hamish, joined a number of expeditions in the 60s including his group in the Swiss Alps challenged by the like of the north face of the Dom.  Amazing times…so many stories.. thank you thank you.

Well well John, there's a blast from the distant past.  Great to hear from you.

Tales from school perhaps. but I well recall your long hot trauchle around the Engadine to join us in our campsite at Punta Muragl, after Hamish's ingrained parsimony resulted in a cryptically over-compressed telegram to notify you of the rendezvous location.  And your hilariously befuddled state on the Dom summit, produced by you battling up to 4500m on your second day in the mountains, IIRR immediately after finishing your medical Finals.

Amazing times as you say - so many of us owe so many great experiences to HMB.  I can confirm that Hamish is still in fine fettle and plotting his 90th birthday Munro ascent, ideally with downhill chairlift assistance to minimise the impact on his elderly knees.  Incorrigible, irrepressible.

Excellent.

Keep meaning to drop a line Bob to say it was good to see you, albeit in rather sad circumstances, at RNC's memorial do in May. (I seem to have been distracted ever since, sorry - we've had the builders in all summer.) A Festschrift for Robin, as you suggested, would be a fine and fitting thing.

" We're off to Coll and Tiree next month so lots of beaches and nothing over 140m I believe. I could be ticking islands ..."

You may be surprised at the quality of the hillwalking there.

Ran into Hamish many times on the hill - using Nancy's as a base had something to do with that.  Once browsing in Nevisport, I spotted that the new OS map of Glen Spean had Beinn Teallach at 915m and then had the good fortune to run into Hamish at the hostel that night. This ensured the rapid demotion of the hill to Munro's Tables and my admission to the select club of new munro finders.  

My copy of Mountain Walk is worn out and I was fortunate to read it first before knowing much about the Highlands or having many of the maps so was a bit of a voyage of discovery. I really recommend reading it in real time, each day on that day of the year.  

Yes, looking forward to it (weather and Calmac permitting). We were stopped by the police last year at that roundabout near Balloch as the roads to Oban were all blocked by floods and landslides. In March we had to drive round to Claonaig when weather stopped Ardrossan sailings. I climbed the mighty 100m Creag Bhan on Gigha back in April and it was stunningly beautiful looking out to Islay and Jura. Has Hamish written much about the islands? That seems to be where a lot of my attention is these days.

Seem to recall you also "found" the western Top on Beinn a' Chroin which led to the summits being switched - not many folk have two such achievements on their CV.

More than that - the SMC western top was not the summit we know today, that was unmarked and unnoticed at the time. Spotted it whilst on the hill with the new map in 1983. Charles Everett later claimed to have found it and had a full page article in High.

This has been a really interesting and enjoyable thread, and I have now learned that The Angry Corrie is on the internet archive!