An Angus scaffolder is halfway through his mammoth challenge of biking Scotland’s 282 Munros.
Sean Green, from Carnoustie, came up with the idea three and a half years ago after always having had a love for being out in the hills.
The 31-year-old said: “I’ve been biking properly since I was about 11 and then within a couple of years of that I started taking things really seriously, I started racing and stuff.
“I’ve done it for the last 20 years and I just got a bit fed up of the sort of stuff that I was doing, just the normal difficult stuff.
“I ended up just wanting some bigger hills, different terrain, so around three and a half years ago this idea came to fruition.
“I had been climbing Munros sort of on and off basically my entire life – it was something my dad was always into so as a family we would always be out in the hills or away camping, so it was just like a natural progression.
“When I was out walking, I’d always think ‘oh I wish I had my bike’ and even as a kid I would pretend I had my bike, so just one day I decided when I was looking across towards the Cairngorms, I’d go exploring.
“It’s pretty magical”
“Obviously a large part of it is for the biking, but even like aside from the biking I just love being in the hills.
“I enjoy the hike up just as much as the descent. For the descent I get to have a little bit more fun than anybody else who is hiking.
“It’s the sights you see, the sunsets, the sunrises – even when the weather is horrendous, it’s just the sense of being out in the wild, the atmosphere. It’s just pretty magical most of the time.”
How it began
After biking around 15 to 20 Munros, Sean bought a map of all the Munros in Scotland and then told his wife what he was planning to do.
He said: “I walked into the living room and I pulled it out and showed my wife and I said ‘I’m going to bike every single one of these’ and she just looked up and me and said ‘well let me know when you are done’ and that was sort of it.
“I’ve basically done it since – I’ve been a bit obsessed about it.”
Sean is just over halfway through his goal, having completed 145 Munros, and is determined to finish the challenge.
He believes he is the first person to attempt to ride down all 282 Munros, however, well-known climber Paul Tattersall, from Gairloch, is believed to have been the first to take a bike to the summit of each.
He said: “I’ll definitely finish it, some are obviously a lot harder than others and involve next to no riding at all.
“I might as well get it done.
“I do ride where I can but most of it its not worth trying to ride up, for me its all about the descents.
“The quickest ones I think I have been up and down in less than two hours, but then there are days where its taken me nine-ten hours just to get to the summit.”
To keep up with Sean’s journey, check out his Facebook page, Grizzly Munro Diaries.