I didn’t simply wake up one day and decide to embark on a Munro-bagging journey. When I first moved to the Lake District, I worked my way through the Wainwrights, and loved the experience of climbing each of the hills, getting to know the various different villages in the Lakes in the process. And probably as a result of Facebook’s algorithm picking up on the fact that I was posting lots of pictures of hills, I started seeing posts from a Facebook group called “I am bagging the Munros”. Still I didn’t pay them a great deal of attention – I would occasionally “like” a photo that I found particularly impressive but didn’t engage with the group beyond that.

But in the weeks and months after my mum died, I went through a phase where I couldn’t stand to be at home at the weekend – and having already realised that the place I felt most at peace was in the hills, I started looking beyond the Lakes for new hills to climb.

Snowdon was first – I had been keeping a close eye on the weather forecast, and one Friday evening made the decision to set my alarm for 4am to drive to Wales and aim to climb it in time to drive back home the same day. The weather turned out to be absolutely ideal – and the beauty of the hike took my breath away. I remember driving home afterwards, tears streaming down my face at not being able to tell my mum all about it, but at the same time feeling like the deep sadness that had filled me for weeks, had started to lift just a little.

I had climbed Scafell Pike a few years previously, and having now done Snowdon, I naturally decided Ben Nevis would have to be next. Anyone reading this blog from outside of the U.K. may not know that Scafell Pike, Snowdon and Ben Nevis are the highest peaks in England, Wales and Scotland respectively, and there is a “3-peaks challenge” which every summer sees people aim to complete all three within a 24-hour time period (usually with a dedicated driver to drive them from one to the other while they try to get a bit of rest). I have never aspired to do something so masochistic, but I did like the idea of being able to say I had climbed all three, even if on completely separate occasions.

So I started looking at logistics – I would need to get up to Fort William, and decided that a good option would be to drive about halfway up on a Friday night straight after finishing work, with the aim of doing a shorter walk on the Saturday, then driving the rest of the way up to Fort William by Saturday evening, arriving in time to get a decent night’s sleep and tackle Ben Nevis on the Sunday. Whether I drove all the way home afterwards, or stayed over an extra night taking the Monday off work, could be decided at the last minute. All I needed was a weekend of decent weather.

As the August bank holiday approached, I saw that the forecast was looking promising and hurriedly booked a hotel just south of Loch Lomond for the Friday night, and in Fort William for Saturday and Sunday. I figured having two nights in Fort William would give me the option to climb Ben Nevis on either the Sunday or the Monday depending on how the weather panned out.

I then started Googling to get ideas of where to go for my warm-up walk on the Saturday – and of course Ben Lomond was the obvious choice. It is listed on many sites as one of Scotland’s “easiest” Munros – as well as one of many people’s favourites. After reading a few walk reports, I established that there are two main routes up and down, either of which I could do as an out-and-back. or I could go up one and down the other. I decided to head up the Ptarmigan track and down the tourist route, having read that the Ptarmigan track is steeper and involves some scrambling – I prefer to scramble up than down.

Unfortunately, having found parking and had a last-minute visit to the loo, I set off straight up the most obvious path, only stopping about 20 minutes in to check the map when I hadn’t yet seen any turn-off for the Ptarmigan path. Of course it turned out I was on the tourist path – and the start of the Ptarmigan path was back at the car park! I couldn’t be bothered to retrace my steps to find the Ptarmigan path so continued on the tourist path, figuring I could always reverse the planned route – which is what I ended up doing.

It was the perfect first Munro. A clear path all the way up and back down, glorious views, lovely sunny warm weather, no technical difficulty and no steep or exposed terrain. The only downside was the midges – this was my first real experience of Scottish midges and I soon realised why they are the bane of hillwalkers’ lives. It was impossible to hang about anywhere near the summit cairn as a pool of water at the foot of the cairn had attracted a swarm of them – and even when I tried to sit down about a hundred meters lower down, to eat my lunch, I was immediately surrounded by midges no doubt attracted by my sweaty body. I was absolutely covered in bites by the time I got back to the car.

The drive from Loch Lomond up to Fort William absolutely took my breath away. This was my first experience of the Highlands and I was quite unprepared for the spectacular scenery on the drive through Glencoe. I was tempted to keep pulling over to take photos but traffic was quite heavy and I was keen to get to Fort William and get my bearings, so carried on.

The next day’s weather proved glorious for an assault on Ben Nevis. I set off from the visitor centre just before 7.30am, keen to get as far as possible before the real heat of the day hit. I took it at a fairly leisurely pace and reached the summit just over 4 hours later.

After spending probably a good hour wandering round, taking photos, poking my head into the summit shelter and just taking in the views and the atmosphere, I headed back down again, my knees groaning with the effort of the looooong descent.

Enjoying a celebratory pizza and shandy later, at a pub in Fort William, I got chatting to a young German couple who told me they had climbed Ben Macdui a few days previously, and were planning on climbing Ben Nevis the next day. They asked me what route I had taken, to which I responded “oh there’s only one official route so I took that”. They advised me they had heard of another, more interesting route, that involved scrambling – this was news to me as I had been relying on an Ordnance Survey map which only showed the main path. But I filed the information away, along with their rave review of Ben Macdui, for a possible future trip.