If nothing else I absolutely love how they came up with the name, to create a connection with the Scottish Munros – Marilyn Munroe! Which is a classification created by Alan Dawson in 1992 in his book The Realative Hills of Britain. Clem Clemente extended the list to include hills and mountains in Ireland.
Definition of a Marilyn?
Unlike some of the other mountain definitions, Marilyn’s are not all about the total height. In fact that really doesn’t come into it. The defining factor is the prominence in regards to the surrounding landscape being 150m (492ft) or higher!
This does mean that many can’t be defined as mountains, and instead are classified as hills.
How many Marilyn summits are there?
In total there are 2010 Marilyn summits in the British Isles. This is made up of 1,218 in Scotland, 454 in Ireland, 174 England, 159 in Wales and 5 summits on the Isle of Man.
In comparison to some of the other list of hills and mountains there are a lot more Marilyn’s spread out across the country.
How many have I ticked off
Until recently I hadn’t put as much thought into ticking off the summits from this list. By default of completing my Nuttalls list I have managed to bag 29 of these so only another 1981 to go!
When the weather doesn’t allow for summiting some of our higher mountains I’ll be making trips to collect more of these! Starting next weekend with a hike around the Shropshire hills!
Are you on a mission to bag Marilyn’s I would love to hear your favourites and overall progress through the huge list.
Marilyn Tick list
And if anyone is as geeky as me and likes spreadsheets with tick lists to track your bagging. You can download the document below which contains all 2010 of the summits.
A whole lot of mountains
There is a lot of different mountain classifications the spreadsheet below contains tick lists for the Peak District Ethels, the Nuttalls of England and Wales, Hewitts, P600s, Marilyns, Munros and Corbetts.