A new book, The Munros, has been published by the Scottish Mountaineering Club. Here are 16 things to know about the guide book.
1 The Munros are Scotland’s 282 mountains with a summit of more than 3000ft/914.4m. A popular pursuit for hikers is known as Munro bagging.
2 The Munros book is the fourth edition of the “evergreen” book, which sits on many people’s book shelves and coffee tables. The first edition was published in 1985; the second in 1991 and the third in 1999. There have been subsequent reprints with amendments but the fourth edition published this year has had a major overhaul.
3 The book is one of a number of hill walking and climbing guides published by the Scottish Mountaineering Club.
4 The Scottish Mountaineering Club also keeps a list of all the people who have recorded a full round of the 282 Munros.
5 As well as the Munro summits, the book has been updated to include details the 226 subsidiary Munro Tops.
6 The book includes routes to and from the summits, as well as potential extensions and variations. The Munros Book was previously criticised for giving only the time to the summit and not the return or the whole route.
7 The maps are clear and simple and offer a good guide from which you can then plot your route on the ground by OS Map.
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8 The maps have colour-coded routes. A solid red line is the principal (or more frequented) route and red dashed lines are variations and extension routes. A yellow, or yellow dashed line, shows secondary routes and extensions.
9 The book is split into 17 sections by area. Each route is name with a height in metres, as well as a grid reference and the Gaelic translation for the mountain name.
10 There is a full introduction to the Munros and Sir Hugh Munro, the founder of the Munros list, over four pages, followed by three pages of book notes.
11 The back of the book is given over to Munro’s Tables – the list of the Munros – and other useful information.
12 There is also a table of The Furths (the mountains of Munro height in England, Wales and Ireland) and another table of the Munros and Tops in order of height.
13 The authors are Rab Anderson and Tom Prentice. They have spent several years working on the book and acknowledgements are also given to contributions of the authors of previous editions.
14 The Munros guidebook features more pages in a larger format than before and includes more pages of photos.
15 Profits from the sale of the book go to the Scottish Mountaineering Trust, which is a charity that provides grants to recreation, education and safety projects in the outdoors.
16 The book is published at £30 by the Scottish Mountaineering Press.
