“Mountain climbing was the making of me”

The first time I came to the Cuillin, I was 22 years old. I’d travelled up to the Isle of Skye with a friend, a qualified mountain leader, who knew his way around a mountain. The Cuillin is a fearsome challenge for most climbers, and as a relative novice who had only been climbing for a couple of years, it was a lot for me to take on.

We had made a solid plan, but once we got on to Cuillin Ridge, it soon became apparent that we were both out of our depth. Things went wrong. We got lost in the mist and overshot a summit. We couldn’t find the right way up another peak and ended up