It gives me great pleasure to present this motion to Parliament this evening. I extend a warm welcome to the members of the Munro Society who are in the gallery, and congratulate them on the outstanding archive exhibition that they have mounted in the AK Bell library in Perth, which I enjoyed visiting on Friday and which accompanies the exhibition in Kirriemuir about Sir Hugh Munro’s life. I also thank the representatives of other groups on whom we depend for the preservation of our magnificent mountain scenery across Scotland, and I welcome to the gallery a special climber whose name, fittingly, is Hugh William Munro, and who is hoping to compleat in a few months’ time. I wish him well in that.
I was 14 when I was first told about Sir Hugh. I am not sure that I paid terribly much attention to him or to his mountains at the time, although I still have exceptionally vivid memories of walking the Lairig Ghru and seeing the great towering cliffs of Ben Macdui and Braeriach above it, which, perhaps subliminally, inspired me. I will say more about that inspiration in a minute.
Sir Hugh was born in London in 1856. He was schooled in Crieff, Winchester and Cambridge, but it was his early life around the family estate near Kirriemuir, with its scenic backdrop of the Angus glens, and then, specifically, a trip to Stuttgart to learn German, which he combined with a trip through the Alps, that sparked his lifelong love of mountains.
Sir Hugh spent some time in South Africa, working as private secretary to the governor of Natal, before returning to Angus to manage the family estate. Later in life, he worked as a king’s messenger, travelling to Asia, North America and Africa.
What members might not know is that Sir Hugh had a keen interest in politics, and he stood in 1885 as the Conservative and Unionist candidate in the Kirkcaldy Burghs constituency. It has to be said that he did not do so with terribly much success, as he polled precisely three votes for every Munro that he was later to identify.
It was in 1891, in the sixth issue of the journal of the Scottish Mountaineering Club, of which he was a founder member, that Munro published his original list of all the peaks in Scotland with a height of more than 3,000 feet. That list—the outcome of much painstaking research—was drawn up from Ordnance Survey maps of the time as well as from Sir Hugh’s vast knowledge, gained from his trips to the hills. At the time, it contained 283 mountains, something that came as more than a little surprise to many within the Scottish mountaineering community who believed that there were only around 30 Scottish tops over 3,000 feet, albeit that the definition of a separate mountain is much clearer today than it was in his time.
Of course, the list has undergone several revisions since—infuriatingly so for some of the baggers among us who found out that an additional Munro had appeared or that one that we had already climbed had disappeared. As things stand, there are 282.
Sadly, Sir Hugh never quite managed to complete his own list—three summits eluded him. Those were the Inaccessible Pinnacle on Skye—I do not blame him for that, given my own experience on that iconic rock—Carn an Fhidhleir, which is a long trail out into the wilds from Linn of Dee, Glen Feshie or Glen Tilt, and Carn Cloich-mhuilinn in upper Deeside, which, at the time, he believed to be a separate Munro from Beinn Bhrotain.
As well as celebrating his life, we should celebrate Sir Hugh’s legacy this week. We should celebrate his contribution not only to our mountains, but to Scotland in general, given the enormous popularity of Munro bagging both within the United Kingdom and abroad. He can have had little idea of the influence that he would exert on later generations of walkers and climbers. He would never have expected that his name would become synonymous with those mountains and he could not have foreseen the vast numbers of climbers who, more than a century later, would be using his tables as the basis for their leisure activities. He certainly could not have predicted all the books that have been written, the tourist trails that have been set up and the mythology that now surrounds our Munros.
The first recorded compleatist is believed to have been the Rev AE Robertson, who, in 1901, became the first person to climb all the Munros. However, a quite remarkable set of records now exists. Steven Fallon, from Edinburgh, holds the record for having completed 15 rounds of all 282 Munros, and Hazel Strachan from Bathgate holds the female record, with 10 rounds. The record for the fastest round of the Munros is held by Stephen Pyke of Staffordshire, who—without using any motorised transport—completed the round in precisely 39 days and nine hours.
I experienced my own conversion to outdoor education in my early teaching years and I learned almost all that I know about mountain craft from Ian Murray, who was a senior colleague and also a Munroist. It was during those early teaching days that I took part in numerous school projects at Loch Ossian, for which I have an enduring affection. Along with groups of pupils and colleagues, I made regular ascents of the 12 accessible Munros around Ossian, but it was not until the later stages of school projects that the Munro bug really captured me. I completed my round in 2012.
Over the years, that bug has taken me to some of the most wonderful places in Scotland, where I have met extraordinary people and tested my abilities—both athletic and mental—against all the challenges that the elements could throw at me. I have also had the privilege of good companionship, including that of two of my colleagues, Murdo Fraser and Miles Briggs, who will, I hope, also be compleatists—in the not too distant future, if their map reading gets better. [Laughter.]
I will finish my tribute to Sir Hugh by offering some thoughts on three important messages that we must take forward. First, we must do all that we can to pass on his great legacy to the young people of today—a generation for whom it is so tempting and too easy to stay indoors and ignore the great beauty of Scotland. We owe them our knowledge and wisdom when it comes to getting the best out of the great outdoors. Secondly, climbing Munros brings great enjoyment, but it also brings great responsibility—for ourselves, as we embark on challenging adventures in the wilds of Scotland, in weather conditions that can test our judgment at any moment, and for other people, as we guard their safety on the hills. The third message is to respect and assist all those who preserve and enhance Sir Hugh’s great legacy in caring for the environment: those who build and repair the paths, those who look after the mountain bothies and moors, those who rescue people who get into difficulty, and all those who support them. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude because without them, we could not enjoy Munros in the way that we do.
I will finish with some words from the great climber Edward Whymper, who, with his ascent of the Matterhorn, inspired Munro. He said:
“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime.”
Those are wise words, as we remember the legacy of Sir Hugh Munro. [Applause.]