Skip to content
OutdoorSCOT

Hill list

Scotland's Marilyns

562 hills with at least 150m of prominence — the list that ignores height and rewards isolation. Every Marilyn stands genuinely alone. Plus 63 near-misses.

Marilyns are hills with a prominence of at least 150 metres — meaning they rise at least 150m above the surrounding terrain on all sides. Unlike Munros, Corbetts or Grahams, there is no minimum height requirement. A 200m coastal hillock qualifies alongside an 800m Highland summit, as long as both stand genuinely alone.

The list was compiled by Alan Dawson in 1992 and named as a play on “Munro” — Marilyn Monroe. There are 1,218 Marilyns in Scotland. The 562 listed here are the Marilyn-only hills — those not already classified as Munros, Corbetts, Grahams or Donalds. A further 63 near-misses (sub-Marilyns) sit at the foot of the page.

Bagging Marilyns takes you to places no other list reaches — island summits, coastal headlands, Lowland outliers and forgotten Highland knolls. Many have no path and see fewer than a dozen visitors per year. The prominence rule guarantees that every summit has a view worth the effort.

Coverage note: every one of Scotland's 1,218 Marilyns has a full guide on the site — the 562 Marilyn-only hills below, with the rest under their Munro, Corbett, Graham and Donald pages. The 63 sub-Marilyn near-misses are listed separately at the foot of the page. Log all your completions in the Hill Tracker.

Map of Marilyns

Loading map…

Tip: click a marker for the hill name and link to the full guide.

All Marilyns with route guides

The near-misses (sub-Marilyns)

A Marilyn needs 150m of drop on every side. These 63 hills have 140–149.9m — what the Database of British and Irish Hills calls sub-Marilyns. A metre or three of col is all that keeps them off the list proper, and that margin matters: re-surveys promote and demote hills across the 150m line often enough that serious haggers track the near-misses too, in case one of them is quietly promoted under their feet. They are not lesser hills — one is a 1,010m Munro Top, several are ex-Corbetts — they just miss the cut. Each page says so plainly.

Scotland's Marilyns — common questions

What is a Marilyn?
A Marilyn is any British or Irish hill with at least 150 metres of topographic prominence — meaning it rises at least 150m above the lowest contour that separates it from any neighbour. Unlike the other Scottish hill lists, Marilyns have no minimum height: a 200m coastal stack with steep drops on all sides qualifies. The name was coined by Alan Dawson in 1992 as a pun on Munro / Marilyn (Monroe). There are 1,218 Marilyns in Scotland; the full British and Irish list runs to 2,011. The 562 on this page are the Scottish Marilyns not already listed as Munros, Corbetts, Grahams or Donalds.
Why use prominence rather than height?
Because prominence captures what makes a hill feel like a separate hill, regardless of altitude. The 2nd-highest summit on a long ridge — even at 1,200m — looks like a bump from below; a 250m isolated coastal peak with cliffs all round looks like a mountain. The Marilyn list rewards the second category and quietly ignores most of the first. The result is a list that includes some surprising hills (St Kilda's stacks, isolated coastal Marilyns in the Hebrides) and excludes some surprising tops (subsidiary summits along long Cuillin ridges).
What is a sub-Marilyn?
A hill whose drop falls just short of the 150m Marilyn threshold — the Database of British and Irish Hills (DoBIH) uses the label for anything with 140–149.9m of prominence. A metre or three of col is all that separates them from the list proper, and re-surveys regularly promote and demote hills across the line, which is why baggers keep an eye on them. We carry full guides for 63 Scottish sub-Marilyns in the near-misses section at the foot of this page, each clearly labelled on its own page.
What's the easiest Marilyn?
Conic Hill on Loch Lomondside (357m, a 2-3 hour up-and-down walk from Balmaha) is the consensus easiest Scottish Marilyn — accessible by bus from Glasgow, the West Highland Way passes over the summit, the views across Loch Lomond are exceptional. Dumyat above Stirling (418m), Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh (251m), and Tinto in Lanarkshire (711m, also a Donald) all qualify as easy walker-friendly Marilyns within an hour of the Central Belt.
Are Marilyns harder to bag than Munros?
The Marilyn list contains many genuinely difficult peaks — the Cuillin Marilyns, the isolated Hebridean island Marilyns that require ferries and rough walking. But it also includes hundreds of easy walking peaks that the Munro / Corbett / Graham lists ignore entirely. Marilyn-bagging is a longer commitment than Munros (more hills) but the average difficulty per hill is lower. A determined hillwalker can bag 30+ Marilyns a year as day trips around mainland Scotland.
What is a Marilyn hagging?
Marilyn 'hagging' (the spelling deliberately separates it from bagging) is the practice of climbing as many Marilyns as possible, often pursued by walkers who have already done all 282 Munros. The Marilyn Hall of Fame at TACit Press lists hagging records — over a hundred people have done 1,000+ Marilyns; only a handful have done all 2,011. The Marilyn list is the most-bagged hill list outside Wainwright country.