David Barraclough is a Yorkshireman. Born and bred in the West Riding. He was exiled on Tyneside for over forty years before returning to his native county eleven years ago. He climbed his first Munro – Skye’s Sgùrr nan Gillean – at the age of fourteen, while on a school youth hostelling trip which marked the start of his love affair with Scotland’s mountains, but not the birth of an ambition to climb all the Munros. That came some time later, but the competing demands of family life and a busy professional career meant it was over fifty years before he “compleated” his Munro round on Beinn Dòrain in 2010.
Since the Rev A E Robertson first accomplished the feat in 1901, over 6,500 people have registered their “compleation” of the Munros with the Scottish Mountaineering Club. There are records for the fastest round; for “compleating” in a continuous walk, or in a single season; for the greatest...
