Moonwalker

When Alan Rowan finished his shifts as a sub-editor at a national newspaper at midnight, he knew he was too jacked up on deadline adrenaline to attempt sleep. At the same time, he was starting to worry if he would ever complete his ambition: to reach the summit of every "Munro" in Scotland—those peaks of over 3000 feet. One crazy night, he decided upon a single solution to both problems. He would begin his ascents in the middle of the night, see the sun rise above the clouds and then come down the mountain just as everyone else was going up, before arriving home to have breakfast with his unsuspecting family. Moonwalker is part guide to the magnificent Munros of Scotland, part memoir, part comedy, part adventure yarn, part tragedy. We see Alan’s transformation from desk jockey to midnight mountaineer, meet dodgy car salesmen, rabid sheepdogs, charging deer, superstitious Germans and crooked confectioners—all the while seeing the best of Scotland in a unique light.

Alan Rowan has been a journalist for more than 30 years and a mountaineer for almost as long. He writes a nationally syndicated column in the UK as Moonwalker and lectures on journalism.