Marilyns are one of the only hill lists where the hill’s prominence and not its height is the primary factor in its inclusion.  Indeed, in the case of the Marilyns height is not a factor at all.  The Marilyns are simply defined by a requirement for a drop of 500ft (150m) on all sides.  This is clearly a much stricter requirement than a number of the mountain lists, and as a consequence a lot of well-known mountains don’t qualify.

Of course what this list does do is include lower hills from all over the country.  Generally any separate range of hills which reaches at least 500ft high is going to have a Marilyn in it.  Marilyns acquired their name, by the way, as a reference to the Munros (you can work it out).

The vast majority of the 1554 Marilyns are in Scotland (1216), and realistically I have no chance of doing them – especially as some of them are sea stacks requiring specialised climbing skills.  I’m not even targetting doing the English and Welsh Marilyns, but am simply keeping a note of the ones that I do do.  I do, however, expect to complete all of the Lake District Marilyns as a natural consequence of doing the Wainwrights and later the Outlying Fells.

Because of the drop criteria, I’ve done many fewer Marilyns than I’ve done mountains.  Here is the list in order…

Numbers in brackets after the name shows the count as each one was bagged (e.g. 17 indicates my 17th for this particular list). (R) indicates a repeat of a summit previously counted. (Fail) indicates a failed attempt to summit. Names, heights and grid refs taken from v11 of the Database of British Hills.

The classification codes used above are:
4 = 4000er
3 = 3000er
T = Trail 100
U = Munro
H = Hewitt
N = Nuttall
5 = Dewey
M = Marilyn
P = HuMP
W = Wainwright
O = Wainwright Outlying
B = Birkett