Carnedd y Filiast (this particular one, because there’s two mountains with that name) sits at the northern end of the Glyderau in Eryri, above Bethesda, and has two summits. The main one is a proud 821 metres and unquestionably a mountain. The second, the North Top, half a kilometre away and 100 km lower has had a bit of an identity crisis. Originally considered a mountain (according to the Nuttall’s definition) it was later deleted from the list because the drop between summit and col was only 14 metres (a metre short of the qualification).

And then re-instated in 2007 after a more accurate re-measurement.

Trouble is, I’d ‘collected’ the main summit on a visit way back in 2003, along with neighbours Mynydd Perfedd and Foel Goch, but had looked at the North Top (out of favour at the time), given it a miss, and headed for home. To date, I’ve done 163 of the 188 ‘Nuttalls’ in Wales, and one of my post-lockdown resolutions is to finally tick off the remaining 25. So I had to go back, didn’t I?

And that’s the thing about peak-bagging. It kind of plans your outings for you, and becomes an exercise in getting a tick in a box.

It’s something that, at one time, was the preserve of single middle-aged white men in anoraks (a profile I probably fit a bit too well!) and who, if they weren’t bagging summits, would probably be sat on the end of a platform at Crewe railway station ticking off engine numbers. But things have changed, at least if Instagram is to be believed. It’s ‘on trend’ again with millennials. Profiles on Instagram which show personal scores of “120/188 Welsh Nuttalls, 200/257 English Nuttalls” or “190/214 Wainwrights” or whatever becoming quite common. Encouragingly, that’s often on the profiles of 20-something or 30-something females, or people from a wider ethnic background than in the past.

At its worst, peak-bagging can take you to some fairly unremarkable hills, and when you jump out of your car to do 1 mile trudge through heather to tick off Foel Cwm Sian Llwyd in the Berwyn it can all seem a bit unsatisfying and futile. But it’ll also give you a structure to your hiking, and an incentive to get out, when sitting on the sofa watching Netflix might seem a bit more appealing. It’ll take you to areas that are stunning, but vastly under-rated purely because they’re not on the main tourist A-roads. And it’ll take you away from stoned paths, easy navigation and crowds, and hone your map-reading and compass skills and, critically, your self-dependency.

And in my opinion, that’s a good thing.