Broadcaster, climber and author;

Born December 29, 1914;

Died July 6, 2006

TOM Weir was unique. He was the best known outdoor man in Scotland. His small, almost burly figure, his round face and what he once lightheartedly called his aggressive, round nose, all topped by a goblinstyle, toorie hat, made him instantly recognisable.

He had a distinctive, couthy style of speech, almost slow, sometimes declamatory, but low pitched, clear as a bell and which endeared him to countless lecturing and TV and radio audiences. His name on a poster advertising a slides talk was enough to pack any hall in any part of Scotland.

He was a hill tramper, rock climber, explorer, wildlife expert, writer, historian and outstanding photographer. In popular parlance, he had done it all.

He was product of hard economic times and the will to survive was always accompanied by Glasgow humour. He was born in Springburn, Glasgow, in December 1914. His father had been killed in the First World War and he and his sisterMolly (also to follow a distinguished career as an actress and writer) were partly brought up by a grandmother as his mother had to work as a wagon painter in the Cowlairs locomotive works.

Like others of his generation, he could see hills from high points in Glasgow and set out to find them by bike, hitching, taking buses and trams to the city fringes, sometimes sleeping rough and striving to get back to work by Monday (occasionally Tuesday) morning. It was a scene totally different from today's expensive gear and easyaccess cars.

It bred in him a passionate love for Scotland and it was a matter of deep regret to him that he had reached his senior years without Scotland having her Parliament restored. He explored boyhood canals and rivers, the Campsies and then to the big hills of the north. He first worked in a grocer's shop, read voraciously, tried freelancing, served as a labourer on a farm in Arran, and was called up in the Ayrshire Yeomanry in the Second World War and spent the years 1940-1946 in the Royal Artillery as a battery surveyor.

He wrote his first book, Highland Days, during the war, one of the best of outdoor books, a description of climbing and walking in the Highlands in the days before the modern outdoor boom, before pylons extended their range, dams and reservoirs grew and the landscape was tamed. It was (and is) much loved and was re-issued in recent years.

He became an Ordnance Survey surveyor, but left to go with friends to the Himalayas and this and other expeditions produced other books, The Ultimate Mountains and East of Katmandu. A visit to arctic Norway, the Atlas mountains, northern Turkey, the Alps and Corsica, were intermingled with exploration and climbs in Scotland. All produced books or many articles.

He first wrote for The Scots Magazine in 1949, but his main surge to fame came when the publication asked him to write a monthly column in 1956. It became very popular and later resulted in two books, Weir's Way and Tom Weir's Scotland. He started to appear on TV, then got his own TV series and his face became familiar to thousands of people, while he won TV and radio awards. Other books included The Western Highlands, Scottish Islands, and the two-volume The Scottish Lochs (the latter, a remarkable historical achievement).

Tom was awarded the MBE in 1976. He was a vice-president of the Scottish Rights of Way Society, an executive member of the Scottish Wildlife Trust, president of the Scottish Mountaineering Club from 1984 to 1986, and was a campaigner for national parks. He wrote a history of the Kyle rail line to try and save it.

He survived a bad fall on Ben A'n, in the Trossachs, but for most of his life had what one friend called "chronic health".

He married Rhona Murray Dickson, of Giffnock, in 1959, a fellow mountaineer, and they lived in Gartocharn, not far from Loch Lomond. Famous names from world mountaineering and environmental circles visited them there. It was typical that they spent their honeymoon under canvas on lonely Foula, in Shetland.

In 1994, Tom Weir wrote his long-awaited biography, "Weir's World", which he called an autobiography of sorts: it is a tapestry of thousands of joyful and perceptive experiences, anecdotes and adventures by a man who was full of zest and was truly one of the most outstanding outdoor men Scotland has produced.

When will we see his like again?