Three Munroes in One Day

A Munro is a mountain over 3000', and the sport of climbing munros is called 'Munro Bagging'. While I wouldn't want to be known as a Munro Bagger (since there are lots of worthwhile hills less than 3000') I suppose if you're going to do one...

It was nearly four, but we didn't climb the Devil's Penis because we might have ended up quite shagged. The final list was Beinn Bhrotain, Monadh Mor and Cairn Toul. While three 3000' mountains in one day might sound impressive, of course there was only about 300 or 400 m of drop between each one, I think I worked out that we ended up doing about 1,500 m of climb in our day.

We climbed more than three peaks, but there are some complex rules about how much vertical drop, and horizontal distance, there must be between any two peaks for them to both be considered Munros. Our three are all in the Cairngorms, within striking distance of the Brown's house in Braemar - the strike in question being a 1 1/4 hr scenic bike ride up the Dee river.

As you can see from the photos, we had a bit of cloud about and compass navigation was required a couple of times. It's quite a barren landscape when you can't see much but the views certainly improve with a good opening in the clouds.

By the time we got to the bottom of the Devil's Penis, we knew we were already short on time - following our descent, we had a 6 km walk/run back down the Dee to where we'd stashed the bikes, so regrettably would have to leave the ascent of that protuberance for another day. As it was, we just got back in time to watch Scotland beat Italy in the World Cup, and for a yummy dinner cooked by Sylvia :-)

Mhairi gazes longingly at the Devil's Penis

Fortunately we stopped long enough on our slog back down the river to catch this view! This is the route followed by the Lairig Ghru, the route from Braemar to Aviemore throught the Cairngorms.