This summer I’ve written “my biggest day in the hills so far” or something of that sort more than in any previous year. To some extent this has been the choice of tough route, big days in Fisherfield and in Knoydart spring to mind. This weekend, however, undoubtedly has the right to this description. With the wind and rain of Knoydart, and the difficulty of Fisherfield and its river-crossings, this is likely to retain the record for a while as well.
It all started in late August when Declan texted to say he was doing a Ramsay in September, and invited me to support. I was a bit surprised by this to be honest; I expected he had better-suited and more experienced friends in his own running club, Carnethy, but it was honest on the day and I readily agreed.
The Ramsay Round
Before I dive more deeply into this blog post, it’s worth taking some time to describe what this was all about. The “Ramsay Round” belongs to a rather small eccentric breed of hill-running challenges in the UK which are called the “classic rounds”: each of them requires running a large loop over mountainous terrain within 24 hours. In England the equivalent is the “Bob Graham”, which covers 42 fells in the Lakes; in Wales it’s the Paddy Buckley over 47 summits in Eryri.
The Scottish equivalent thus looks tame at first glance. It only covers 23 summits. However, each of those is a Munro: a mountain of at least 3000 feet. Four of those Munros rank in the top ten highest in the UK. It either starts, or finishes, on Ben Nevis, the highest of the UK’s mountains.
Not only are the mountains high, but the terrain is challenging. Most people who complete the route travel anticlockwise from the designated start point at Glen Nevis Youth Hostel. This means starting on one of the finest ridges on the UK mainland: the Mamores. This has the first ten of your Munros, but being a ridge, requires a fair amount of quite technical running over rock. What I’d regard as the “main” part of the ridge has eight of these, with two on spurs which protrude North off the main ridgeline. One of these spurs has the moniker “The Devil’s Ridge”, in case you were in any doubt about the sort of terrain we’re working with here.
One major advantage of having a ridge like this is that you stay at very high level throughout this part of the route. The ridge itself stays well above 700m for the first eight. The final two Munros are a bit separated, with the drop and then climb back to the tenth Munro, Sgùrr Eilde Mòr, being the biggest single re-ascent in the Mamores.
Completing a traverse of the ten Mamores is one of the big outings in Scottish hill walking in its own right : WalkHighlands describes this as “The classic epic challenge for the hyper-fit is to traverse the whole Mamores ridge in a day - a major undertaking.”
The elevation profile along the route, fairly clearly showing the three primary sections of the route: the Mamores, the Ossian/Treig hills, and the (extended) Lochaber Traverse.
From the Mamores the next part of the challenge involves making your way around to Beinn na Lap, the Munro which stands to the North of Loch Ossian. This is a substantial outlier, and this, along with the four Munros around Loch Treig, are what separates the Ramsay Round from other long-distance challenges in the area. Cut these five Munros out and you have the Tranter Round, which looks, on paper at least, much less contrived. These extra hills, however, substantially increase the total linear distance of the route, and I imagine that in July 1978, when Charlie Ramsay first completed this, that his intention was to make something of comparable distance to the English and Welsh rounds.
The ground in the glen is boggy and filled with watercourses, one of which, the Abhainn Rath, is a fairly substantial river which you need to ford, but eventually does turn into an engineered estate road for a brief time, before then making up the very boggy slopes of Beinn na Lap, and crossing onto its neighbouring Munros on the east side of Loch Treig. By this stage you are a very long way from where you started, and the way back is not exactly smooth. You now need to drop down to the loch, cross an active railway line, and cross the dam at the top of the loch. However, you’ll have covered a very substantial fraction of the total distance: this is around 60km in, and there are only around 35km left.
From the dam you need to climb up another pair of Munros (by the end of these you’re 15 down; plenty of people don’t manage to climb this many in a year, never mind a day!), which are both of more classic Munro terrain: boggy and fairly grassy, then drop down into the Lairig Leacach, where you have the challenge of crossing a second river on the route. From here you climb onto Stob Bàn (your second Stob Bàn of the day!), which is the outlier of the Grey Corries, the moutains which you get a good view of from the Commando Memorial above Spean Bridge. From here you climb onto the second big ridge of the day and start the Lochaber traverse section of the round. Unlike the clear ridgeline of the Mamores, however, you’re now in line for much more varied terrain.
There’s a fair bit more up-and-down as you cross over the next three Munros, and, depending on when you started, there’s a good chance you’re doing these Munros in the dark too. In the light and on a fine day these are spectacular hills, but even as you come off the main ridgeline you still have the four big hills left. Looking along the ridge from here everything looks massive. You have a fairly long run before you start on the final four Munros to cross between the Grey Corries and the Aonachs, but you’ll cross several Munro tops along the way (I’ve not actually been keeping count of these so far; they’re the Munros which didn’t quite make the cut, still 3000 or more feet high, but the people who decide what is or isn’t a Munro decided the vibes were off for them; there are a lot on this route; you’re probably on 14, but you could have missed one depending on your exact route choice).
The final section then, covers the Aonachs, Càrn Mòr Dearg, and Ben Nevis. Each of these are over 4000 feet, and you’ll have more big climbs and drops. Aonach Beag is a rocky tower, which is a nice, quick climb in good conditions and when you’re feeling fresh, up to a small, flat, rocky plateau. The spur out to Aonach Mòr is very pleasant running (or would be if you weren’t basically two marathons down at this point). Though the flat expanse is a sharp contrast to everything else on the round; finding the actual summit can be slightly non-trivial even in ideal conditions. You then have a very steep and heavily eroded path which drops down to the final bealach of the day, the pass which connects these hills to Càrn Mòr Dearg. The route-finding difficulty is now over for the day, you just need to climb up a rather scrambly slope to get your penultimate Munro, and behold the massive expanse of the Ben, towering over you, and linked to your current spot by the CMD Arête, a scrambling ridge which drapes between the two mountains like tinsel on a Christmas tree.
The Arête is one of the joys of the Scottish mountains. It’s an easy scramble (when I did it I ran much of it, much to the bemusement and concern of the substantial number of other people on the ridge), and the setting is unparalleled. I’m not sure how enjoyable it’s likely to be on tired legs and with a tired mind. Unless you’re incredibly fast you’ll now have been on your feet for at least 20 hours. The final climb from the end of this onto the summit of Ben Nevis is also considerable (and likely to be either a slog or highly enjoyable, depending on how you approach steep climbs!). It’s also over scree, so tough-going regardless.
The summit, of course, is not the end. You may have finished the 8.5km of climb (or almost one Everest) but you’ve got a few kilometres still to go to get back to your start point at the Hostel. Again, the route off the summit is eroded (unless you choose the switchbacks…), and the summit is just physically a long way from the Glen. You’ll finally finish, however, by crossing the bridge, and carefully crossing the road (where there are now traffic calming measures, for some reason…), and taking your seat on the new Charlie Ramsay memorial bench.
So straightforward, really.
The Best Laid Schemes
I was assigned Leg 2, which would run from Meananach bothy, over Beinn na Lap and the hills to the East of Loch Treig. I know a fair bit of this terrain well: a trip to Loch Ossian Youth Hostel is an annual fixture in the running club calendar after all, and I’ve visited to bag the Munros too. Added to that, it’s the shortest of all three legs and has by far the least ascent. Much as I was excited by the idea of seeing parts of the ridge I’d not seen before, this seemed sensible.
With a planned handover time of about 5–6pm, after an 8am start, this would mean a fair amount of it would be in the dark; that was fine, but would almost certainly constitute my longest run in the dark, and the first time I’d deliberately summited a Munro in the dark without the intention of then camping on it.
As the week in question rolled around the forecasts were looking positive, with a nice area of high pressure expected to form. Unfortunately it formed the first half of the week. By Wednesday things were looking less good, and by Thursday things were uncertain. I’d decided to head up to Fort William after work on Friday anyway, go for a shorter run and enjoy being out of Glasgow for a day or two if things didn’t work out.
By Friday morning the forecast contained gale‑force winds on the tops. The first leg, along the Mamores ridge, is very exposed and continually at high altitude. Text messages were exchanged. I struggled to find the right tone to suggest mild apprehension, but not become the cause of a cancellation. All this while I was expecting a cancellation, and perhaps subconsciously wanting it. This, I was aware, was a rather ignoble thought: Declan had been training for this, a great deal of preparation had gone into this, and here was I, worried about being a bit uncomfortable for a small fraction of the time he was planning to be outside in this.
After discussion, and poring over the forecasts, the decision was made to postpone the start to noon, when the wind would start to die down a bit. However, the reshuffling of times would also mean a reshuffling of support teams. I arrived late on Friday evening, and soon Declan suggested that I switch to Leg 1, with the alternative being a night-time slog through the heavy rain, after a whole day of heavy rain to get me in the mood, I readily agreed.
The noon start time meant that we had a slow morning to prepare, and the cafe in Fort William Morrisons was chosen as the venue for breakfast beforehand. Perhaps at this stage I should have recognised the omens, as we were unable to get an cooked breakfast thanks to there being only one chef available. I picked up a fairly large amount of food anyway that not only would I have the Mamores to run over, but also the fairly considerable walk-out to get to Kinlochleven from the bothy. My choices of two loaves of Soreen, large quantities of gummy strawberries and McVities digestive to caramel squares probably deserve to be re‑evaluated. They did not prove easy to eat when there was no time to pause and open food wrappers.
Setting Out
We returned to Glen Nevis and met Phil, who provided Declan with a satellite tracker, and having met Ali Manson and Grace, we walked around to the start: the new bench at the Youth Hostel. The rain remained blessedly non-present all morning, but as we walked around it started to drizzle.
Photos were taken, and a general awkwardness of trying to work out what you do for the last couple of minutes before setting off on an epic was explored.
(1200; T=0; on-plan) The clock hit twelve, and we were off.
The first section is on tarmac, on the road into Glen Nevis. We made swift progress along this well set path where we cut up to the high forestry track. The disadvantage of needing to run in full waterproofs was already evident, and I was already clammy from the effort. I was, however, very aware that there would soon be a cooling breeze…
In an effort to cut distance, the route we took required cutting up through a lot of recently-felled forestry, which was already slick and slippy. I was very aware that this was not my favourite kind of running terrain, but I quickly caught the others up when we found the main path. We were now on a steep and sustained climb, but the path was good. My lack of fitness started to show at this point—something which was to prove a recurrent theme for the rest of the climb.
(1330; T=1:30; on-plan) We reached the first Munro, Mullach nan Coirean, in good time however, and continued directly onwards, picking the pace back up quite well. This section has a number of cairns dotted along the ridge, rather deceptively, and at least one I was pleased to have finally reached the second Munro only to find it was in fact no such thing!
I had first walked over these Munros in the first year when I was making a serious attempt at Munro bagging. On that occasion I had come to Fort William with the Mamores ten as my only real goal, but the week ended up being very wet, and filled with thunderstorms. When I did eventually decide to try and climb them it was a wet and cloudy day. Today would prove to have its passing similarities. I once again failed to get any real view, but I can imagine you get a pretty impressive vista along here, looking out to the side towards Nevis, and the ridge ahead of you.
(1414; T=2:14; 2 minutes behind-plan) Eventually we reached the second Munro, Stob Bàn, again in good time. I, however, was lagging, and I’d already told Declan that I might skip the out‑and‑back spurs on the route if it felt like I was holding things up, so when we reached the turnoff for Sgùrr a’ Mhàim I did just that, and Declan, Ben, and Neil headed out along the Devil’s Ridge ahead of me.
The rain was driving at this point, and I had no desire to get a map out to check where the turnoff really was — I had mistakenly thought the turnoff was on a Munro, and carried on, bagging myself an additional Munro Top in the process (Stob Choire a’ Mhail). As the ridge started to narrow I decided I needed to check the map, and then took advantage of the first time I had stopped all day to eat something other than a few sweets. As it turned out I wasn’t completely wrong, but the spur is off Sgùrr an Iubhair, which was slightly past the point I was at.
I rapidly regretted stopping. The wind chill was immense at this point in the day, and I was soon getting cold. I decided to keep moving towards the next climb in order to heat up, with the bonus that it would also allow me to get a head start on the climb, and hopefully prevent me from slowing another ascent. I was most of the way to the top of Am Bodach by the time I heard my phone vibrating in my bag. I took this phone, and Declan and co. were concerned not to have found me at the col.
A note on timings
Before I go on, I want to include a note about the timings for a Ramsay Round; before writing this up this isn’t something I’d really thought about. As of July 2025 (the most recent data I have), 280 people have successfully completed a Ramsay.
The record for the fastest completion is the insane effort of Finlay Wild from August 2020: a time of 14 hours and 42 minutes. That’s very much an outlier however. The next three fastest were all under 17 hours (including Jasmin Paris in 16 hours and 13 minutes). These times are not normal, however. (A time of 18 hours 21 minutes will push you past one of the people supporting this effort, Ali Masson, who is in 8th place on the tables at the moment though.)
10% of completions do so with less than 15 minutes to spare, and 50% with less than 45 minutes.
Declan’s aim was 23 hours, a time which would comfortably put him in the top 38% of completions. His spreadsheet had a column of timings for a 20 hour completion, which would put him in the top 6%.
The Ridge Goes Ever On and On
(1555; T=3:55; 18 minutes behind-plan) The crew caught me up at the summit, where we continued on. They’d just had the return over the Devil’s Ridge and a gale‑force headwind.
The traverse to the next section of ridge is not long, but it felt like probably the hardest work I had ever done in the hills. I was, fortunately, feeling buoyed by having eaten something, but this didn’t really make up for nearly being blown over by the strongest gusts of the day!
(1627; T=4:27; 24 minutes behind-plan) At Stob Coire a’ Chàirn I was once again aware that I was holding things up, but I at least made sure that Declan knew my plan to push on over the next bit of ridge while the others went out to An Gearanach.
I’d first walked this route in 2018 in much less windy but wet conditions. On that occasion it took me much more time to reach this point, and I had decided to cut the traverse short at An Gearanach. As a result I was feeling pretty good that we’d made it this far this fast given the conditions. This also meant that the next section of ridge was new to me.
I can’t say that I found the three metres at a time that I could see terribly memorable, but it was not problematic, and I reached Na Gruagaichean well ahead of the rest of the pack. The wind briefly died right down, and I took advantage of the relative shelter of the cairn to put on another layer, only for the zip to break in my haste. I’m not sure how long I was waiting here, but by the time Declan arrived the rest of the group’s morale seemed to take a bit of a dip. (1743; T=5:43; 31 minutes behind-plan).
There’s a nice bit of ridge from here to Binnein Mòr however, and we seemed to move well over this again. The weather was finally easing, and I, at least, had lost all sense of time as we headed through more miles of cloud. By this stage individual summits had near‑enough blended into one, and as we descended towards the lower bealach with Binnein Beag we realised that we were now in the home stretch — for Leg 1. We had crossed Binnein Mòr while barely realising we’d done it. (1830; T=6:30; 53 minutes behind-plan)
The Darkness
I again elected to skip the final out‑and‑back Munro, Binnein Beag, and opted to head onwards to Sgùrr Eilde Mòr, becoming aware that we were very close to losing the light. Ben and Neil joined me this time, and Declan was left to solo the scree slopes on his own. Meanwhile we had what ought to have been a trivial job of gaining the path which contours around the lochans below next Munro. I had done this last year so it should have been trivial. The weather improved for a bit, and it was possible to make out the outlines of the hills. This was likely source of the mistake, as I chose the wrong one to head towards. We then started reascending another ridge of Binnein Mòr. Fortunately I did realise this before we were too far off the path, but as we returned to the correct route we saw Declan’s head torch headed fast towards us.
The group reformed, we had a slog of a climb up Sgùrr Eilde Mòr in the dark, and once again, the rain. There were a number of points where I was glad that we had finally got to the summit, only to discover it was not. The ground at this point was just slick, the fine scree had no purchase.
I assumed we were a bit behind time as we stumbled about, and didn’t want to ask to avoid sounding negative.
(2037; T=8:37; 101 minutes behind plan) We reached the summit, and I braced myself for the presumably steep descent to the bothy; I hadn’t really studied the map after changing the leg I was on, and this section was completely new to me.. As it turned out the route off the mountain in this direction is markedly different from the rather relentless climb to get here. Instead we had a gradual and grassy slope which in other conditions might have been quite runnable, but which wasn’t (though this may not have been helped by my increasing exhaustion). Coming off the mountain in this direction meant following a bearing, which we mostly managed without incident, but in the pitch black of night and the driving rain we at least once started turning around, and near‑constant checks against the bearing were required.
We did, finally, catch sight of a light which could only be the bothy, but trying to judge the distance was hard. I had already lost all sense of time, and now distance was a myth. All I had was direction, and being dragged ever onwards towards this minuscule light.
Wilderness Aquatics
I don’t think I appreciated just how tired I was at the time. In contrast to some of the big hill days I’d done in the past, when I’d felt physically sore after this sort of distance, I actually felt quite strong. My knees were aware that I’d had a long day, but they were coping admirably.
Psychologically, however, was another story entirely. I was holding on by a thread, or so it felt. Getting to the bothy was my singular goal in life now. Once in a while I’d have the passing recollection that after the bothy I had another 12km to go to egress at Kinlochleven. But these thoughts would always pass. There was only the bothy.
When we finally started to reach ground which was levelly enough to run on I remembered that we had something to do prior to the bothy. We needed to cross the Abhainn Rath; with the amount of rain through the day I guessed this would be non‑trivial. It’s probably as well that I didn’t think about it previously when worrying about the route. I’ve now done all of the big river crossings on my Munro round, but the significant ones — the Geldie Burn, the crossing for Am Faochagach, the crossings in Fisherfield — had all caused me undue stress when planning. Indeed, crossing the Water of Nevis years ago when I’d done the Western Mamores had been deeply unpleasant. I can’t actually recall exactly what happened then but I think I wrote several years later imply that I fell in the river.
(2200; T=10:00) Arriving by the ruins of Luibeilt happened suddenly in the dark, and they were accompanied by the roar of the river. This was distinctly non‑optimal. We spent some time looking around to find the optimal line across what appeared to be a torrent. I’m not sure how long precisely, but looking messages on WhatsApp later on it was revealed that we had been stationary at the river for an extended time. [Looking later at my own GPS trace it was around five minutes.] It was also long enough for the Leg 2 support team to leave the bothy and come to our aid.
Eventually we settled on a line directly across the river, right by the ruins. This was very hard going. The water was waist deep and in spate. Staying upright was a major challenge without also needing to advance across. There was basically no purchase underfoot, just slick rock with water flowing over the top. Gripping onto a walking pole for dear life felt like it was about all that could be done at this point. Somehow we made it to the far side, cold, and very wet.
The Bothy
After this it was a short jog to the bothy, but my knees were now just a bit uncomfortable; my muscles had not taken kindly to the sudden freeze treatment. It was a massive relief to get to the door of that little cottage, and suddenly be propelled into a different state, one where the air was not beating against me, and where the rain was not falling. And a strange little Universe this was. We had company. These men had a fairly impressive spread of food and alcohol on the go when we arrived. I didn’t quite take it in at this point, but I became aware of a charcuterie board being handed around. Ten minutes earlier I had persuaded myself I was probably about to die; now I was being offered chorizo. I managed to eat some cheese and onion rolls, while a critical discussion was going on about section timings.
I hadn’t thought a great deal about the timings for some time; I knew we must be a bit behind, but my lack of awareness of the passage of time until it got dark was absolute. It turned out that we were now two hours behind schedule. Declan declared that he thought this was probably it for the attempt.
There was no situation in which this was not the correct decision. The conditions had been thoroughly miserable, and the idea of going on for many more hours and still not finishing in time would have been insane. The next leg was the boggiest of all three; my own experiences of Beinn na Lap had been in dry weather and yet it was pretty miserable even then.
Yet the sense of disappointment I had in that moment was total. I think I told Declan not to be ridiculous that of course he should go on, when he refused to agree I think I was briefly angry at him, though perhaps restrained myself from verbalising that!
I fairly quickly saw sense, only to realise that there was an awful consequence. We were on the wrong side of the river. We packed everything up to go once more, had our photo taken by one of the other bothy inhabitant’s polaroid camera, and set out once again.
The River. Again.
Upon returning to the river it looked clear that things had not improved; in the minutes we’d been at the bothy, indeed, there was now no obvious easy across, and we simply tried to re‑use the line we had crossed earlier. This rapidly proved difficult. The flow was now much more violent, and moving was almost impossible. Declan and Ben headed out first, and Ben eventually made it to the far side with considerable difficulty. Declan got most of the way across before turning back, and then in clear distress, became stranded, and turned back again. He eventually made it to the far side. Neil and myself were struggling. I had perhaps managed a third of the way across when Neil started to slip. I managed to help steady him, but shortly after we were both knocked over. I was now drenched still further. Neil decided against trying to cross again, but I had the stupid desire to get to the other bank. I remembered my long walk out from Glen Nevis before, and had no desire to repeat it. I tried again, but quickly realised my folly. I was resigned to the mammoth walk-out back through the glen.
Egress
Fortunately, the leg 2 crew, Ally, Thomas, and Grace, were familiar with the route, and I was able to mostly turn my brain off and just follow. I was, I now realise, exhausted, and very, very cold. I was slow, and not really very sociable. The others tried to make conversation with me, and I was failing to reciprocate. Their chipper enthusiasm was a discord to my own rather miserable state. We trudged over a muddy trod for miles, repeatedly crossing little burns which had become deep and awkward. Eventually we had to confront the Abhainn Rath again, albeit much higher up. Even this was challenging, not quite as bad as on the way to the bothy, but time‑consuming and unpleasant. This did, however get us onto a better path.
Time having no meaning was again the state of the world. For what I think was a brief period it cleared up completely and we could see stars, and it got colder. But then the rain started again.
We walked for days. Days in which it never got light. At some point we tried to explain my job to Neil. My brain was not working correctly, I have no idea what he thinks I do. At some point we suddenly seemed to be on a much better track — we had finally reached the place where the path to Steall Falls ends. We found a bridge. We had encountered civilisation.
We soon picked up the path which I recognised, running above the river at a point where the water fills the bottom of the glen. Here the path is rocky, and tonight, slippy. These short miles extended, and it was as bad as I had remembered. Some time earlier I had remarked that we were about a third of the way through. I had no faith anyone would be waiting at the car park.
Eventually the path turned a corner.
There were headlights.
Endgame
We were met by Pat and Oly; I have never in my life been so pleased to see a car, and happily told them so. I fumbled to get my walking poles folded — my fingers had long since stopped bending. I got into the car, and mostly quietly, enjoyed being off my feet. I was dropped back at the campsite, and was very glad of a warm stove, then insisted on sitting in the car and drinking a can of beer before realising it was past 3am. It had taken us three hours to get back from the bothy to the car park. I got into my tent to find it had flooded, but fortunately I’d camped on enough of a slope that all the water was at least on one side.
I woke up a few hours later, still exhausted, and shivering. I’d had almost three hours of sleep. I eventually started to warm up after substantial amounts of coffee and hot chocolate, and made it home later on Sunday evening after some stops on the way. Declan and Ben had made it back safely to the campsite about an hour before we did, and somewhat infuriatingly, Declan was looking pretty fresh after the night before (and would end up running up another hill on his drive home).
So, editing this a week later, would I do it again? Yes. I’ve always been tempted by the idea of this round anyway, and I’ve already promised to assist again. I’ve also promised to try and be a bit fitter next time… For something which was ultimately a failure, I’ve come away with a set of surprisingly positive insights. First, I was genuinely impressed to have survived. Second, I could clearly now do the Mamores in a day (albeit, a better day…), and third, that I covered a little over a marathon distance with surprisingly few consequences. That said, I’ve also had a bad cold all week, so it wasn’t all positive consequences. I do find myself wondering about the spectacle we presented ourselves as to the other folk in the bothy that night.
I think my approach of skipping the “spurs” on the route was a good one; I was carrying the heaviest stuff (including the emergency supplies and lots of water, ironically), and conserving my energy this way was probably wise. If it hadn’t been for the wind chill the ability to rest would have actually been valuable.
So this is probably not the last you’ll read of me and Ramsay rounds…