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Autumn weather can be tiresome, with occasional brisk, windswept hill days sparkling within weeks of grey rain like the hill lochs among the Galloway bog. As the range stretches from coast to coast, one end may well have better weather than the other. However, the lack of roads and through-routes doesn’t aid any last-minute shift from New Galloway to North Berwick.

Winter hill-walking here can be a special experience, with its huge and solitary empty spaces. But snow cover is unreliable. Some winters are almost snow free. Others fail to achieve any freeze–thaw cycle, with deep drifts that will rarely have been trodden down by any earlier walkers. In the occasional years when it comes into condition, the Grey Mare’s Tail (see Walk 21) has ice-climbers queuing into the night for its frozen splendours. The steep north and east faces of Merrick can be a crampon-wearer’s playground, with some actual winter climbs in the Black Gairy crags. But while revisiting the walks in this book, my best winter day just happened to be in the small-scale Pentlands (Walk 33).