Hamish Brown was the first person to walk Scotland’s 282 Munros in a single trip, using only ferries and a bike as transport between the mountains.
Over the 112-day adventure, he covered 1,639 miles and wore out three pairs of boots.
He documented the epic 1974 journey in the book Hamish’s Mountain Walk – a volume which has inspired generations of hillwalkers.
Now aged 89, and with his 90th birthday on the horizon, the Fife-based mountaineering legend has no plans to slow down.
His summer diary is already filling up with adventures – and he’s marking his 90th in August with a fundraising abseil from the Forth Bridge.
Milestone year for mountaineer Hamish Brown
It’s a milestone year for Hamish, with the recent release of his last ever book.
He’s a hard man to pin down. Busy doesn’t even begin to describe his whirlwind life.
He looks after a garden in what he describes as “an old folks’ home” in Burntisland, walks regularly, judges photography competitions, gives lectures on the outdoors and past adventures, and he’s fresh back from a trip to the Inner Hebridean Isle of Lismore.
Isn’t he exhausted? As soon as we start chatting on the phone, I realise Hamish (who has a very youthful, upbeat voice) is a man who doesn’t do things by halves. His energy is unreal.
So what inspired him to write Walking Borders: In Fife and In Fancies, his latest book?
Mountaineer Hamish’s last book
“It’s a curious book. I must’ve produced well over 30 books so it’ll be the last,” he says.
“I’d walked the entire Fife coast from Kincardine to Newburgh for a book about the Fife Coastal path. A friend asked me what sort of daft ploy I’d come up with next.
“I thought, why not complete the bounds of Fife by walking the overland border from Kincardine to Newburgh? I wasn’t in a hurry. I waited for good days.
“It was fun because it’s not a route with ‘capital letters’, like the Fife Coastal Path. I had to find the route and work it out. It’s completely illogical.
“It doesn’t follow rivers for any length. It doesn’t fully traverse any major hills – it goes all over the blooming place.”
Hamish, who lives in Burntisland, set off during autumn 2020, with the frustration of Covid-19 restrictions. This meant relying on public transport, which was sketchy at times.
But he was determined to get out there, despite the challenges of logistics.
“The old begrudged the pandemic as much as many,” he reflects. “We have limited time left and resented seeing it sucked away fruitlessly.”
Fife Border walk
The Border walk, he says, was done “piecemeal”, but saw him experience all sorts of meteorological variations, from unseasonable heat to “burly” winds, shrouding mists and glowering clouds.
“Each day was an entity, almost a personality,” he muses. “There was always a different setting and terrain, and it meant engaging with fields, with forests, with hills, and a kiss of sea to start and close.”
He had a few misadventures, one being to fall asleep on the bus to Kincardine and wake up in Cumbernauld…
While his book takes readers on a journey of discovery in Fife, with a great deal about the pleasures of nature, it also weaves in stories, reflections, memories and history. Hamish also throws in a fair share of quotes from Robert Louis Stevenson.
“Ever since reading Kidnapped as a boy I’ve been an enthusiast for the man and his work,” he explains.
As he passed through rural landscape, Hamish, also a professional photographer, was delighted to discover it rich in wildlife.
“I called it The Void of Fife,” he says. “It’s very low-level farming, but it’s incredibly good for wildlife as a result. When you get to the Howe of Fife, which is intensely farmed, the wildlife is terrible.”
50 years since Hamish became famous
The book was written as a “fun celebration” of someone in his mid-80s, says Hamish.
And of course, it’s 50 years since he became the first person to do all the Munros in a single walk.
“That’s the thing, in 1974, that made me famous, so to speak,” he muses.
“There were bits where we used bikes – and we used ferries to get to Mull and Skye – but apart from that it was self-propelled.”
What was the biggest challenge of that epic adventure, I ask.
It wasn’t any of the Munros, says Hamish. It was the weather.
“I nearly got hypothermia in the middle of summer, getting out of Knoydart,” he recalls.
“The thing about doing these long walks is you get to a level of fitness where you just float – you don’t feel tired, you don’t get muscles cramping.”
Does he have a favourite mountain? He laughs: “If I had a favourite hill I wouldn’t tell you.
“There’s no dull hill – there’s only dull people. Some are better than others, obviously.”
Daredevil 90th birthday plans
Having abseiled 165ft from the Forth Road Bridge for his 80th, Hamish plans to do the same for his 90th in August to raise money for Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland.
“I’ll do it again in 10 years,” he adds.
Born in Sri Lanka on August 13, 1934, Hamish lived in Japan and Singapore as a child before it fell to the Japanese.
He then lived in South Africa for two years as a war-time refugee before returning to Scotland.
His family lived in Dollar and Hamish spent his teenage years exploring the Ochil Hills.
Pioneering outdoor educator
He was the first person to be an outdoor educator of a British state school in the 1960s, at Braehead School in Buckhaven, now closed.
“Right through the ’60s, which I regard in some ways as the best years of my life, I was taking Fife schoolkids out into the wilds,” he recalls.
“We were basically pioneering what has become outdoor education.
“It was quite acceptable that the kids wore donkey jackets and tackety boots. There wasn’t any gear. I applied to the council for primus stoves for camping.
“Had I asked for cricket bats or footballs, I’d have got them the next week. But they were like – what do they want primus stoves for?”
One of Hamish’s greatest delights was the companionship of two Shetland collies, Kitchy and Storm.
He inherited Kitchy when his father died and he became the hill mascot of the Braehead kids. Both dogs did all the Munros.
After the school closed Hamish became an advisor for the council. He didn’t enjoy this and sought to make a living from being outdoors more – hence freelance writing and photography.
He spent a lot of time climbing in the Alps and fell in love with the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. He’s been there 53 times!
‘We relied on gumption!’
So how did Hamish cope with clothing that was light years behind the technical walking gear at our disposal today?
“We relied on a marvellous thing called gumption,” he says.
“We’re so dominated today by the demands that things must be made super-safe. Kids nowadays are often flabby little creatures, whereas the kids I took out were sons of miners and tough little lads – none were obese.
“The world has changed utterly and completely. We’re a soft, silly society nowadays.
“Yet at the same time we see lots of young people doing marvellous things in sport, music and in all kinds of ways. It’s what’s in people that will determine how they live.”
Hamish staunchly flies the flag for “old people”, although he’s well aware people complain about the huge numbers of elderly and how to support them.
“All us oldies grew up in wartime and post-war austerity,” he elaborates. “We ate food uncontaminated with chemicals and additives.
“We walked to school. We played lots of outdoor games. We were a fit, healthy generation and so we’re all happy alive in our 80s and 90s.”
A reason to walk
So what does walking look like for an 89-year-old Hamish Brown?
He admits he needs to have something to spur him on and describes himself as “actually a very lazy person”, although I beg to differ.
“I’ve so many interests,” he says. “I look after a garden in the old folks’ home in Burntisland, for example. But I go off walking when we can. I like having a reason.
“Some people pooh-pooh the Munros, but to me the Munros give people something to aim for. It takes them out on days when the weather suggests it’d be much nicer sitting in front of the fire. It gives a challenge.”
While he’s not planning to scurry up a Munro any time soon, Hamish still walks all over the country – although he does have a few issues with his feet.
“The soles give me hell if I walk for two or three hours these days,” he laments. “So I tend to do things when there’s something to aim for.”
And while he says his new book, Walking Borders: In Fife and in Fancies, is his last, he won’t stop writing.
Later this month, Hamish will be in Montrose to celebrate the TGO Challenge, an annual self-supported walking event across the Highlands, from coast to coast. Launching in 1980, it was Hamish’s brainchild.
“I go up every year to present certificates to people who’ve done the crossing, ” he explains.
Corncrakes in Coll
He’ll then join the Hill and Mountain Walking Club in Coll in August.
“They used to be called the Over the Hill Club, and I preferred that!” he chuckles.
“My aim, when I go to Coll, is to hear some corncrakes again. You used to hear them on Rum in the ’60s but I haven’t heard them in years.
“I’ve booked an e-bike and I’ll use it to get me to the far end of Coll. I’ll try anything once.
“I’d say 90% of people in the world are bored. They don’t know what to do with themselves. But you just need to get out there and make things happen.”
Before we break off our chat, I ask Hamish if has any kids, or perhaps grandchildren.
He laughs: “Nobody could catch me! I was too quick to pin down!”
- In 2000, Hamish was made an MBE and a fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
- He was awarded an Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution to outdoor writing/photography in 2015.
- In 2017, he was named the 10th recipient of the Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture.
- Hamish’s book, Walking Borders, is £11.99 and published by Eventispress. It’s available at Waterstones and can be ordered via independent bookshops.
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