UKC

Hey folks,

Looking to purchase a decent OS map to keep me on track during the longer munro walks.

Can anyone suggest a good fold out or book that covers them all?

Thanks in advance.

Ben

In reply to The Benjo: Which area? The munros are on several OS map sheets. The SMC have a munro's book, as does Cameron McNeish.

You can also get wall charts that display where they all are, and you can tick them off.

Amazon is your friend:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-k...

In reply to drunken monkey:

I have the Cameron McNeish book, it is useful for choosing routses etc but lacks coverage of surrounding areas, was thinking I could get a single OS map or set of sheets that would cover everywhere.

I guess a wall chart makes sense, could just take snippets of the area I chose to go to.

Will have a look at the SMC, amazon does have a large selection. Will rake through those.

Thanks matey.

In reply to The Benjo:

The SMC book is the best book available - Cameron McNeish's book usually only offers a single route, whereas the SMC book often offers a range of options.

For maps, you'll need a selection to get proper coverage with maps that you can actually navigate with on the hills. Some of the Harveys maps have areas selected to cram in as many Munros as possible, but you'll still a few of these, and you will also need a few OS maps for those Munros which haven't been picked for Harveys maps.

In reply to The Benjo:

I'm a little confused about what you are asking for. An average OS map will cover a 50km^2 area. The Munros are spread throughout the whole of the Highlands. Any single sheet covering them all would have to be the size of a tennis court.

Some of the new BMC maps (Nevis&Glencoe, Loch Lomond and Cairngorms) are centred to cover a good selection of the Munros and are a good choice for those areas.

In reply to The Benjo:


Go through the Cameron McNiesh book, and you'll see in the little route descriptions he tells you what OS map you need. Make a list. Buy maps. Job done! (Or get the Harvey map equivalents, as someone else has suggested.)

I reckon I have about 20 1:50 000 OS maps of parts of Scotland, but not all have Munros on. You've got me wondering now, I'll have to check later!

In reply to fimm:
Buy maps. Job done!

The cheaper option is to get down to your local library (assuming you still have one) and borrow. Some OS maps have only a few Munros (or even just one) so it can be expensive unless you plan to do other walks. This is also handy if you want larger scale maps.

In reply to The Benjo: I guesstimate that you'd need 25 OS Landranger (1:50000) maps to cover all the Munros. Any advance on 25? Do I hear 26?

I have pretty much the whole country at that scale, but I'm afraid I'm not going to sift through them to give you a definitive answer.

In reply to Monk:


It would be an absolute b@stard to fold on a windy day too.

In reply to DougG:

But if you got a laminated version it could make a decent emergency shelter.

In reply to tony:

Or paraglider...

In reply to The Benjo: I'd get the SMC one if were you, or if your money stretches, This:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/High-Mountains-Britain-Ireland-Mountain/dp/18985736...

I sometimes wonder if Cameron McNeish was pished were he did his munros, as some of the descriptions and routes in his book are sheeeeeeeite.

In reply to Monk: Or (another) extension to the CIC hut. For the Braying Jeffreys.

In reply to The Benjo:
The McNeish book varies from good to awful, depending on which other book he borrowed that chapter from. Strangely, the best seem to be the ones that he wrote himself so it's strange he didn't do that for more of them.

The SMC book is better but usually chooses the 'tourist' route to each summit.

The best I've found by far is Butterfield's book, I;m surprised nobody's mentioned it.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/High-Mountains-Britain-Ireland-Mountain/dp/18985736...

In reply to Toreador:
Someone else did mention it while I was typing

In reply to Toreador: hahahaha!

It is a great book

In reply to drunken monkey:
You're right, that's a better book than the SMC one - it's the one that gets you thinking more about the mountains and the possible routes. It's a bit dated now, and doesn't incorporate some of the changes to the list, but climbing Munros should be about more than just ticking a list (he said guiltily). Not quite sure how I forgot about it.

In reply to The Benjo: Another option could be to pay a £30 annual subscription (£18 until 30th June this year) to OS Get-a-Map and print off an A4 map covering each route you plan to do.

You can also print OS maps from Munromagic.com which only costs £10 a year. Their map access is based around the routes they list so you might have to resort to a bit of mild jiggery-pokery if you wanted to plan a route taking in a different combination of hills.

I usually tale a scan or print of the area covering my planned route in an Ortlieb waterproof document pocket, and keep it somewhere easy to get to eg a secure jacket or trouser pocket, and put copy of the full OS or Harveys map of the wider area inside my rucksack.

The only way to do what I think you want is electronically - Satmap loaded with OS maps for example. Probably about £400 or thereabouts I'd guess. Best book with routes? Butterfield's High Mountains as referenced above, then the SMC Munros book. McNeish's book will probably cost you under a tenner a few nice pictures but otherwise so-so, he insults the intelligence by telling them not to be like sheep and go up the same routes while, yes detailing those very routes. There are loads of books available, some of them area specific - I think the series linked here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultimate-Guide-Munros-Southern-Highlands/dp/1906307... are quite good having lots of info, maps etc with the benefit of being up to date. Once you get the hang of an area you can leave the map at the side of the PC and on reaching the car park realise this (the day went well, a bit more relaxed without pulling out the map to see what height the summit was, how far was I, how far was the next Munro etc, although I can't recommend this approach, can I?)

In reply to Toreador:


I'm always a bit annoyed that it just says 'go up this ridge and come down that one' rather than 'this ridge is nice, this ridge is scrambly, this ridge is a boggy nightmare, this ridge has no sensible valley path to approach it' so you can choose which of the obvious lines up and down you want to use... it seems kind of contrary to the spirit of a mountaineering guidebook to use the same basic format as "easy pub walks in the cotswolds" or whatever.

In reply to tony: I agree it is a great book and really adds to pondering of routes and combinations. His suggested routes sometimes seem a but macho though, often needing >12 hr days...

In reply to The Benjo:

OK, I had to count. I have 31 maps of Scotland, of which I guessed 15 have at least one Munro on them. I don't have every map I need to cover all the Munros, though.

In reply to fimm:

You can join Grough for 1.25quid a month, which lets you print maps etc. Its an online version of memory map basically, but unlike memory map, its constantly updated with the latest maps, so they never go out of date.

The Harverys Munro and Corbett map is good for ticking them off and it shows coverage of all the 1:50000 maps over the munros so you can see which you need to buy for which walks (I wish you could get one that showed the 1:25000 coverage as well...)

Craig.

In reply to Pritchard: if you use google earth then this is good

http://www.gearthhacks.com/dlfile30169/Scottish-Mountains.htm

In reply to The Benjo:

Experience has led me to believe that both MacNeish's book and the SMC munros seem to endeavour to find the dullest possible, most-direct-route-of-least-resistance up the Munros.

Although I often still look at the books, I normally make a point of choosing different routes.

I think you may well struggle to find a one-map-covers-all solution but the Harveys maps are of a very good standard and often useful where the OS maps just don't cut it eg. Skye

In reply to pog100:

One significant difference between Butterfield and the others (apart from the sheer beauty of the book) is that his routes also cover the Tops, which don't always come easily but give the satisfaction of doing the job properly. On which note, my understanding is that Munro himself was trying to do them all (which maybe tells us something about how he viewed the sometimes arbitrary distinctions) whereas Robertson (historically accepted but now controversial first Munroist) caught and passed him by taking the 'lite' option of just the separate Mountains.

In reply to mikesuth: Digital maps are a good place to go. I got the whole of GB for £70 recently. Scotland comes cheaper.

The erosion books are of little use. I found the SMC district guides to be of great value when starting out but they are expensive or out of print. Sadly since we lost Rob Milne, progress has been slow on these lovely books.

There is no substitute for getting the maps out and planning a good route. There are also plenty of online resources - walkhighlands and Scottishhills are good places - they do not charge, for route suggestions. Streetmap will provide the maps.

In reply to Fat Bumbly2: I have Scotland on my wall in the form of the OS travel maps (discontinued?) with all of the hills shown complete with contour lines and graduated brown shading to depict height. Not every munro is named but the vast majority are. They are 1:250000 scale and I had to cut and paste 3 of them to get full coverage.

Like these: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Scotland-Isles-Travel-Map/dp/0319230880

Is about 5' by 4' and, sadly, I never get enough of looking at it...

In reply to petestack: The story related in the "Munro - Mountain Man" TV programme was that Munro wanted to do each summit as a separate trip, whereas Robertson was happy to link two or more summits in one outing, hence he was quicker than Munro.

I believe there is still doubt about one of the summits that Robertson claimed to have bagged.

In reply to Martin W:

Pretty sure the Tops thing is relevant, so just been Googling it and found a page at http://www.munrobagger.info/sir_hugh_tmunro.html that says:
'Of the 538 tops he listed, he climbed 535.'.


Ben Wyvis. Hadn't climbed (or claimed) the Inaccessible Pinnacle either, although Munro had strangely listed the summit of Sgurr Dearg instead...
http://www.smc.org.uk/Gallery/SMC%20Pioneers/AER.php

In reply to The Benjo: From Munro's Tables I calculate 22 OS sheets (1:50000) are needed for all Munros. For those sheets which are densely populated with Munros I would recommend laminated - even with a top quality waterproof mapcase, the constant folding soon trashes paper maps. I've never gone "digital" so no experience. One advantage of paper maps is being able to record the route in pen for future reference.
I wouldn't be too reliant on guide-books, it's much more fun to plan your own, which you have to for multi-day backpacking treks.