Grough Article - Ups and Downs - The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills

Grough Article

The Grough website recently published an article on the publication of Eric Yeman’s book; Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills.  The original article and a link to it on the Grough website appear below.

Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills

Myrddyn Phillips, Guest contributor
Thursday 18 June 2020 09:19 AM GMT

Some people like to ascend hills because they’re there; or because the view from the top is fantastic, perhaps.

Others take a more mathematical approach to their hillwalking, attaching an importance to the mountain’s vital statistics.

Myrddyn Phillips probably has a foot in both camps, but the boot is maybe a little more firmly planted in the latter. He has surveyed or helped to survey numerous British peaks, determining their height and for which list this qualifies them.

In this piece, he details a pioneer of the hill-list publication, and a new book, telling the tale of how Dr Eric Yeaman came to write the ground breaking tome that details 2,435 Scottish hills, 31 years ago.

An Teallach from Beinn a'Chlaidhemh

The publication of the Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills is a 31-year journey in the making, as this book is a sister volume to the Handbook of the Scottish Hills that was published by Wafaida in 1989.

Although sister volumes, the two books are very different; the 1989 publication revolutionised how hills are categorised, while the Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills concentrates on the former publication and details how the book and its contents materialised.

Before exploring the Ups and Downs it is probably best to give some detail relating to the Handbook, after all the 1989 publication turned how a hill is categorised on its proverbial head.

Handbook of the Scottish Hills was published in 1989, but its conception started as early as 1980 when its author Dr E J Yeaman returned from a hillwalking trip to some of his favourite hills: Deuchary Hill, behind Dunkeld, and Clachnaben, above the Cairn o’ Mount. These are not high hills and upon returning home he wondered if a list to lower hills in Scotland existed and found that one did not.

It was soon after that he decided to rectify this and compile a list of his own, but what should constitute a hill?

At the time that Dr Yeaman decided to compile a list of the Scottish hills the Ordnance Survey had just updated their mapping from the one-inch series to the 1:50,000 Landranger series, and the use of these new metric maps suggested that a separate hill could be classified by using a drop criterion of 100m all round.

Eric Yeaman.  Photo: Eric Yeaman

But what about those hills that were separate in distance but not in drop? To include such hills Yeaman added an auxiliary criterion: a summit would also qualify as a hill if it was at least 5km walking distance from any higher point.

The combination of these ‘rules’ gives a unique listing of hills, but the use of the 100m drop criterion literally uprooted everything that came before and led the world of hill classification on a different path entirely. However, as with most things that revolutionise a medium, when the Handbook was published it received little fanfare, and it is only with hindsight that its importance is recognised.

The reason why the Handbook was revolutionary is simple. Before its publication the standard way to classify a hill was by using a minimum height and a minimum drop. These two mainstays of criteria had been used in countless listings over many years, and some examples pre- and post-Handbook that use these criteria are given below:

Corbetts – Scottish hills, 2,500ft minimum height with 500ft minimum drop, with upper height band below 3,000ft.

Hewitts – English and Welsh hills, 2,000ft minimum height with 30m minimum drop.

Nuttalls – English and Welsh hills, 2,000ft minimum height with 15m minimum drop.

By using minimum height and drop a hill list compiler creates a simple way to separate one hill from another. This differentiation works extremely well and is empathised by the popularity of many of its proponents. However, what happens if these two mainstays of criteria are scrapped and are replaced by one criterion? Prior to Yeaman no-one had thought about this let alone attempted to classify hills by such a method.

Although employing the auxiliary criterion of distance, the main criterion of 100m drop turned the world of hill classification upside down, as it meant that there were no bounds except for one, and the one specified could be anything. In this instance it was 100m, but other hill-list authors soon followed with their own take on what has now become known as ‘relative height’.

Dr Yeaman’s Handbook was the first publication to prioritise relative over absolute height.

These two definitions are:

Relative height is applied to hills whose qualification is just dependent upon a minimum drop.

Absolute height is applied to hills whose qualification is dependent upon a minimum height and a minimum drop.

The difference is simple but it has revolutionised the world of hill classification. As with many listings of hills the use of the same or slightly different criteria from one hill list compiler to another gives an evolving feel to many lists.

The original 1989 book

It is no different with Dr Yeaman’s use of relative height as this evolving process has manifested itself with listings that employ this method of classification. Such examples are given below:

Marilyns – British hills with 150m of relative height compiled by Alan Dawson

Humps – British hills with 100m of relative height collated by Mark Jackson

Tumps – British hills with 30m relative height collated by Mark Jackson

Twmpau – Welsh hills with 30m relative height compiled by Myrddyn Phillips.

Although the Handbook of the Scottish Hills was appreciated by some people when it was first published, its significance is only now being fully understood and the publication of the Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills is a timely reminder of what the Handbook has achieved since its publication.

The Ups and Downs explores the conception of the Handbook and leads the reader through many aspects relating to it; this is no ordinary book as it employs a detailed analysis in its method, which is to be expected from a list author who delved into great detail within the Handbook.

One of the fundamental things with any book is that the purchaser has in hand the end product, the months of labour to create it is not on direct show, and in the case of a hill-list author these months of labour consists of meticulous map study and refinement of one’s list, and one of the joys of the Ups and Downs is that it explains this process and gives details to how it evolved for the Handbook.

However, the Ups and Downs goes beyond the rigours of hill list compilation and has chapters giving details on how to approach commercial publishers, and how to self-publish and market and deal with bookshops.

The Ups and Downs is an exploration beyond the Handbook, but stemming directly from it. It includes correspondence that the author received, with much of this detailing that from the late E D ‘Clem’ Clements, the author of the TACit Tables publication The Hewitts and Marilyns of Ireland.

It was a tentative suggestion from Eric and Clem that they should use the same criteria employed in the Handbook and list the qualifying hills for England and Wales, although a co-authored book did not materialise, Clem did compile such a list and the hills therein became affectionately known as the ‘Clem Yeamans’ in honour of the list compiler and the person who invented the criteria used.

It is fitting that the 2,490 Scottish hills listed in the Handbook and its later updates are now known as the ‘Yeamans’ after Dr E J Yeaman; the first person to use what is now commonly known as relative height, and the author of Handbook of the Scottish Hills and its sister volume; Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills.

The author; Eric Yeaman resides in Arbroath, on the east coast of Scotland. He enjoyed bagging hills until an arthritic knee made beach walking a more attractive option. He has produced a number of books including the Handbook of the Scottish Hills and the Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills.

Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills is available as an e-book from Mapping Mountains Publications and Smashwords.

For the original article published on the Grough website

UKHillwalking Article - Ups and Downs - The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills

UKHillwalking Article

The UKHillwalking website recently published an article on the publication of Eric Yeaman's book; Ups and Downs - The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills.  The original article and a link to it on the UKHillwalking website appear below.

Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills

Eric Yeaman's Handbook of the Scottish Hills was one of the most influential hill lists ever produced, says Myrddyn Phillips - but today few people seem to have heard of it. A new e-book, free to download, tells the story of the Yeamans.

Hill classification has been with us for nearly 130 years, ever since Sir Hugh Munro first compiled his list to the Scottish 3,000ft mountains. Over subsequent years many other lists have come onto the scene. Some have become well established, such as the Corbetts, Hewitts and Nuttalls, whilst others have appeared and just as quickly been forgotten. It seems that those that become well established are the listings that rely on simple, straightforward criteria, as over-complication doesn't appeal to the general lay hill walker.

Many listings evolve from those that precede them, and because of this there is an underlying historical element to them. This evolutionary process seldom results in dramatic change, and most such changes go unnoticed by the greater majority who just go out to enjoy what the hills have to offer. But once in a while something more dramatic happens. In the world of hill listings a revolution occurred in 1989 with the publication of the Handbook of the Scottish Hills. Almost unnoticed at the time, it was only in hindsight that its importance was fully understood.

The author © Eric Yeaman...

... and the book that changed the hill classification game

The Handbook contained nearly 2500 Scottish hills and retailed at £4.95, a mere snip of a price considering the revolutionary content within.  Its author was a Scottish teacher named Eric Yeaman, and the revolutionary element that he used was to ignore one of the essentials of qualification.  Before dealing with this it may be prudent to consider how one hill is differentiated from another for listing purposes.

Hill Classification

Making a list of hills is a relatively simple affair. The hill name is a necessity, as indeed is its height and its grid reference and the number of the map it can be found on (to be on the safe side both Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger and 1:25,000 Explorer map numbers can be included). Over recent years the hill's drop is also usually given. This 'drop' figure has become one of the two mainstays of how to differentiate one hill from another, and comprises the vertical height gain between the summit of said hill and its connecting col to the next higher summit along the watershed. 'Drop' is also known as re-ascent or prominence. The other mainstay is that of minimum height. Once a minimum height and a minimum drop are decided upon a hill list compiler can have a productive time scrutinising maps and compiling their list.

These two elements form the basis of many established listings. Prime examples include: Corbetts which use 2,500ft minimum height and 500ft minimum drop (Scottish hills below 3,000ft); Hewitts, which use 2,000ft and 30m minimum drop (English and Welsh hills); and Nuttalls which use 2,000ft and 15m minimum drop (English and Welsh hills).

Without such objective criteria the hill list would plough the path of subjectivity and there, some may say, lies madness. A subjective list is no more than a personal list that cannot be amended, unless of course by its author. I hear a mass choir of Wainwright and Birkett baggers screaming, and to be fair, subjective listings have their place, as their popularity shows. But still...

Yeamans come in all sizes, locations and characters, from the remote drama of peaks like Beinn Dearg Mor

Relative Height

Although the two mainstays of minimum height and drop have formed the backbone of the more objective hill lists in Britain, and have a proven record of working well in combination, what would happen if one was removed? If you'd asked me this question a number of years ago I would probably have reacted with doubt, partly based on acceptance of what was then the norm, and partly based on a lack of understanding. But this simple move, which is rather elegant in its premise and dramatic in its purpose is what Eric Yeaman did - he completely threw out the concept of the double mainstay criteria and opted for one simple criterion based on 100m. Simply put, he revolutionised how to differentiate one hill from another and the niche world of hill listings hasn't been quite the same since.

Yeaman's use of what we now refer to as Relative Height consisted of Scottish hills that have a minimum of 100m of 'dip' from their adjoining col. Minimum height is thus dispensed with, except of course for the stipulated 100m, and minimum drop is also dispensed with as it forms a part of the one set criterion. A 100m high Scottish island would also qualify as a 'Yeaman'. Although the use of 100m is simple in its concept Yeaman also uses distance as a part of the criterion. This complicates matters but also emphasises the unique nature of this list.

Over subsequent years the concept of Relative Height has been used by Alan Dawson in the Marilyns (150m, all Britain), Mark Jackson in the Humps (100m, all Britain) and the Tumps (30m, all Britain), and my own Twmpau (30m, Wales). These are now the mainstays of this Relative Height concept and as their predecessors using minimum height and drop had done before, they have evolved from the first use of what is now known as Relative Height - and that first use was conceived by Eric Yeaman in his Handbook of the Scottish Hills.

The Handbook

When first published the Handbook of the Scottish Hills was met with favourable critique amongst the people who indulged their passions for such things. Many people subsequently communicated with the book's author, but one in particular was E D 'Clem' Clements. Clem had a skill for concentrating on repetitive detail that flourished during his years working in the Meridian Department at the Royal Greenwich Observatory at Herstmonceux. This skill manifested itself during the cataloguing of over 6,000 badger sets for the Badger Trust, and it also set Clem apart from many hill list compilers as he scrutinised maps to an order seldom seen before or since, and incorporated a card system to document his findings. The correspondence between Clem and Eric resulted in a decision to jointly compile and publish a Handbook to the English and Welsh Hills following the criterion used by Eric in his Scottish Handbook. Unfortunately the joint list was not published, but Clem went on to produce his list to the English and Welsh 'Yeamans' that many now refer to as the 'Clem Yeamans'.

The Handbook of the Scottish Hills has sold over 1000 copies and for those in the know it is up there with the likes of the Munros in hill list importance and its author kept testing his criteria by diligently bagging the hills until, with over 1000 done, he considered he had proved his point. But what comes after the many hours of exhaustive map study that resulted in a book that revolutionised the concept of how to differentiate one hill from another? Well Eric Yeaman has put pen to paper, and written Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills.

Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills

This sister volume to the Handbook is not another hill list, but a book explaining the thought processes at work behind the original venture. It details every aspect to do with the original book and explains how it was conceptualised and what has happened to it over the years since its 1989 publication. Importantly the book details the world of self-publishing and will prove an asset for any enthusiastic budding author who wants to see their work in published format. It is a work that has taken thirty-one years to materialise and is a rightful cousin to the Handbook that revolutionised the concept of how to categorise a hill.

About Eric Yeaman

Eric Yeaman lives in Arbroath, on the east coast of Scotland. He enjoyed bagging hills until an arthritic knee made beach walking a more attractive option. He has produced a number of books including the Handbook of the Scottish Hills and the Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills.

• Ups and Downs – The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills is available free of charge as an e-book from Mapping Mountains Publications and Smashwords.
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For the original article published on the UKHillwalking website

Guest Contributor – Eric Yeaman

Introduction 

This page heading on the Mapping Mountains site features articles from Guest Contributors, with the only stipulations being that the article has to be hill related and that I don’t end up in court through its publication!  Otherwise the choice of subject matter is down to the Guest Contributor.  For those wishing to submit an article please contact me via the email address given on the ‘About Me’ page heading.

Guest Contributor – Eric Yeaman

Eric Yeaman

BIRTH OF
HANDBOOK OF THE SCOTTISH HILLS

In the beginning were the Scottish hills.  Then Sir Hugh Munro published his Tables giving all the Scottish Mountains exceeding 3000 feet in Height in the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal in 1891.  After that, there were two kinds of Scottish hills – Munros (worth climbing) and others.  I didn’t know of any discrimination among the others until the early 70s, when the warden of the old SYHA hostel in Crianlarich told me of another elite species – a Corbett.

At that time, I was running hillwalking clubs for young people from my school and church.  Like everyone else, we ultimately aimed to conquer Munros, but twelve-year-olds need some outdoors experience first, so we started on the lower local hills.  From our bases in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, my favourite hills were Deuchary Hill (behind Dunkeld) and Clachnaben (above the Cairn o’ Mount) – testing enough for the young people, but with variety all the way, and well-defined summits.  I was disappointed that no list existed of lower hills, and speculated on compiling one.

In spring 1972, I was notified of a meeting in Broughty Ferry YMCA of leaders who took young people to the hills.  I assume it was a consequence of the enquiry into the Cairngorm Disaster of November 1971, when five young people and one of their leaders lost their lives in a blizzard on the Cairngorm plateau.  I went along, to an attendance of three – two from the YMCA and me.  I was given a copy of the jury’s recommendations, and no doubt we discussed them, but the talk broadened, and I was given a formula for calculating the energy required for a hillwalk:

E = 100(R + 2C + 4H)

Where E is the energy in kilocalories, R is the road mileage, C is the cross-country mileage, and H is the height climbed in thousands of feet.

At the time, I had no idea of the origin of that formula, but I later found a similar one in early editions of Eric Langmuir’s Mountain Leadership:

E = 100 (10 + R + 2C + 4H)

This formula is credited to Waddell (1965).  In it, E is the energy expenditure over a 24-hour period, and I assume the 100 x 10 is the basic energy your body would use to maintain life, even if you never got out of bed.  The energy must depend on the size of the walker.  This is not specified, but the context suggests an adult male mountain-goer.

Since, as may be obvious, I like tinkering with numbers, I pounced on the formula.  For several years, I used it to assess walks I had done, and walks I proposed doing.  I found it consistent and useful.  For several years, my hillwalking club programme included the energy estimate for each walk.

I’d like to quote a date, and say, “On that day, I started writing the Handbook.”  But I have no record of that.  In the late 70s, however, I was keeping quite a full diary.  It was mainly intended as the Troubles of a Chess Teacher, but I made passing comments on my other activities.

At that time, the Ordnance Survey were replacing their one-inch-to-the-mile maps with the metric, 1:50 000 Landranger series, and my diary records buying these as I found them, e.g. 9 (Cape Wrath) on Saturday 9th December 1978, and 12 (Thurso and Wick) on Saturday 6th January 1979.  On that day, I also note: “During the week, I had the idea of writing an article for The Great Outdoors on calculations about hillwalks.  What I had in mind was metric versions of Naismith and Waddell’s formulae.  I would then go on to my application of the latter to grade walks according to difficulty.”

The following Wednesday, I give an attempt at a metric version of Waddell – inaccurate.  But, after a lot of wrestling, I finally converted the simpler formula to:

E = ¼R + ½C + 0.55H

Now E is in megajoules, R and C are in kilometres, and H is in hundreds of metres.

With a little practice, the mental arithmetic is not too hard.  Add H and H/10.  Halve the result.  Add ½C and ¼R, rounding nonchalantly.

The diary is silent on the subject for more than three months, but I assume I was gathering data for the article by calculating the energy required for various walks, including those to the tops of hills.

That would cause me to ponder – what is a hill?  It should be sufficiently separate from neighbouring hills.  Then: (a) it would have a view, and (b) you would feel you were on a distinct summit, not just a shoulder of something bigger.  What size of dip would give an adequate separation?

The new metric maps suggested a possible criterion – a drop of 100 m all round.  After a bit of work on the maps, I reckoned that might be a suitable basic condition.

But a hill with a lesser drop could be on the end of a ridge, far from anything higher.  So I added an auxiliary criterion – a summit would also qualify as a hill if it was at least 5 km (walking distance) from any higher point.

That ‘(walking distance)’ was an attempt to clarify what I meant.  Clarify?  It certainly didn’t do that.  By ‘walking distance’, I meant along the watershed.  That’s obvious on a ridge but, if a hill has two parallel ridges, I would usually walk round, rather than down into the dip, then up the other side.  After thirty-one years, I’m glad to clear that up.

Using various Landranger maps, I tested the criteria to make sure they identified hills which seemed distinct.  I visited some borderline local ones.

On Tuesday 24th April 1979, the diary records: “I looked for hills on the Glen Carron map.  I hope they’re not all as messy as this one!”

The ‘Glen Carron map’ is Landranger 25.  And a comment the following Tuesday is enlightening: “I also did a bit more hill-spotting on the interminable Map 25 for my book.”

That’s the first reference to my intention to produce the book.  One more trial is recorded.  On Wednesday 2nd May: “I spent much of the evening cataloguing hills.  Today was a successful session during which I polished off all of Skye except the main Cuillin Ridge, where contours are indistinguishable under the black mass of rock symbols.”

One more reference, mentioned later, indicates that I was still working intermittently on the project, but I didn’t buckle down to it for another sixteen months.  On Tuesday 30th September 1980, the diary includes.  “I spent the bulk of the day in Caithness, on the Catalogue of the Scottish Hills.”

Throughout October, comments take me down through Sutherland to Torridon.  By the middle of November, I reached an obvious boundary, the Caledonian Canal.  On Wednesday 26th November, I noted Ben Nevis.

Two days later:  “Home from school to the maps, trying to decipher the wandering contours over the hills of Moray and Banff.”

I hit my local Perthshire hills in early December, then, on Sunday 28th: “broke all records with 118!”  No location is given, but Tuesday 30th says,  “A day on the hills – a dreary bunch of Borders ones – probably nice if you got there, but difficult to sort out.”

Much of that difficulty was due to the new maps.  I had great trouble in determining the heights of the cols.  Many of the First Series of Landranger maps were more metric in spirit than in fact.  They were photo-enlargements of the most recent one-inch-to-the-mile maps, with imperial heights converted to metric.

That included the contours.  The 50-foot contour remained – now (sometimes) relabelled 15.  The 100, 150, 200, 250 and 300 contours became respectively 31, 46, 61, 76 and 91.

That didn’t matter to me if a quick inspection showed a mass of contour lines around a summit, but it was a nightmare on bumpy ridges, especially when the contour lines were sparsely numbered.  I soon learned the values for the heavier contours (every 250 ft) – 76, 152, 229, 305, 381, 457, 533 etc.  Not very memorable.

This wasn’t a minor problem.  It applied to the first Landranger maps of Orkney, the Moray coast, and all from 45 (Stonehaven) south.  A total of 50 out of the 85 maps that covered Scotland.  Another 19 had metric contours obtained by interpolation from the 25-feet contours of the six-inch map.

Throughout the 80s, those maps were updated to fully metric, and I visited the bookshop regularly to obtain the new versions.  At one Christmas season I took my Sunday School class to the pictures in Dundee, leaving the wee souls outside the bookshop en route while I went in to check the maps.  I remember the occasion because I was delighted to find the updated maps of the Perthshire hills.

I spent Monday 5th and Tuesday 6th January 1981 over the 1:25 000 Pathfinder maps in the University of Dundee Geography Department, trying to sort out heights and cols which were indefinite on the Landrangers.

Wednesday 14th January records:  “an epoch-making evening, for I finished the mainland, and have only assorted islands to complete – Jura, Colonsay, Coll, Tiree and the Small Isles.”  Then, next evening, “I finished the Scottish hills!”

For each hill, I used a 5x3-inch file card with a ruler-wide column for data down the right.  The illustration shows a few examples:

File card

In the wide, left-hand column, I recorded:

(1)  the name of the hill, plus code letters for details.

(2)  the bearing and distance of the hill from one of a series of places around Scotland.

(3)  B: the boundary of the hill, starting at the north and going clockwise.

(4)  I: a brief description of the hill – its shape, and the position and shape of any ridges and shoulders.

The data column had:

(5)  the height (in metres, of course).

(6)  the number of the Landranger map/s the hill is on.

(7)  the map reference for the summit of the hill.

(8)  the region and district of the hill.  Two letters, the first indicating the region, the second the district, of the local authorities of the time.

(9)  the number in the data column, under the district code, was part of an early attempt to group the hills.  My diary records several unsuccessful attempts to divide the country into suitable regions.  11th September 1979, for instance, records ‘version n’ with the comment: “I think I might have something there.”  But none of the attempts, based on topography or the national grid, satisfied me.

It finally occurred to me that such groupings may be less helpful to anyone looking for a hill to climb.  But sensible hill-goers – locals or visitors – would buy the relevant Landranger before going out.  With the hills listed by map, users could consult the corresponding page of the Catalogue to find a suitable hill.

(10)  the distance in kilometres along roads and paths; the distance in kilometres cross-country; and the height to climb, in hundreds of metres; to reach the top of the hill from the most convenient place of public access – usually a metalled road, but occasionally a railway station or hypothetical landing place on an uninhabited island.

To measure the distances, I ran my map measurer over the map, following the route I would have expected to take.  I avoided obvious obstacles such as lochs and wide rivers.  But, to the calculated value, I added code letters indicating possible problems shown on the map – “c” for cliffs; “f” for forest; “r” for river, and “b” for bridge – which might have fallen since the map was published.  These warnings didn’t survive into the Handbook.

The listed height to climb is the total, taking into account any dips in the route.  Example: the route starts at 200 m, climbs to 370 m, drops to a col at 310 m, then climbs to the summit at 500 m.  Then the height to climb would be (370 – 200) + (500 – 310) = 170 + 190 = 360 m.  On a bumpy ridge, it’s often easier to subtract the starting height from the final height, then add downhill parts:  (500 – 200) + (370 – 310) = 300 + 60 = 360 m.

The distances and height were the raw data for calculating the next two figures.

(11)  the energy to climb the hill, calculated by the adapted Waddell formula.

(12)  the time for the trip.  I calculated this using Naismith’s Rule (1892).  As originally formulated, it gives the time for a hill excursion as 3 miles per hour, plus ½ hour for every 1000 feet climbed, i.e.

T = D/3 + H/2

where T is the time taken in hours, D is the distance walked in miles, and H is the height climbed in thousands of feet.

The metric equivalent is:

T = D/5 + H/6

Now D is in kilometres, and H is in hundreds of metres.  Some sources quote D/4, and that’s the value I give in the Handbook (page 43).

Naismith’s Rule makes no allowance for terrain.  But I had a little information about that – the road/path distance and the cross-country distance.  Hoping it would be helpful to use them, I arbitrarily adapted the rule, using:

T = R/6 + C/4 + H/6

When I prepared the book for publication, I had to limit the data I could include.  It occurred to me that the time taken on a hill would be roughly related to the energy required to reach the top.  By the simple process of comparing the energies and times for a number of hills, I reckoned the simplest approximation was to allow 25 minutes per megajoule.  For the book, I rounded that to half an hour.

(13)  the final entry, at the bottom of the data column, is the six-figure map reference for the starting place.  If there seemed two possible starting places, I calculated the energy for both and gave the lower in the Handbook.

The numbers in square brackets under the place names, and in the data columns, were added after the Handbook was published.  I was groping towards a hierarchy of the hills.  Others have since done this with more persistence.

During the next eight years, the Catalogue transmuted into Handbook of the Scottish Hills.  But that’s another story!

Eric Yeaman


Handbook of the Scottish Hills (published in 1989 by Wafaida)

Ups and Downs - The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills (published in 2020 by Mapping Mountains Publications and Smashwords)

UKHillwalking article - critique of Handbook and details of Ups and Downs - The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills

Grough article - critique of Handbook and details of Ups and Downs - The Story of Handbook of the Scottish Hills

Y Trechol - The Dominant Hills of Wales - Gwent Is Coed

Hill Lists – Cymru / Wales

Y Trechol - The Dominant Hills of Wales

Introduction

To access Y Trechol - The Dominant Hills of Wales

Listings of hills in Britain have progressed since Sir Hugh Munro first compiled a list to the Scottish 3,000ft mountains that eponymously now bear his name of the Munros.  Since Sir Hugh’s list was first published in the 1891 Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal the concept of how to differentiate one hill from another has developed with this association now mainly relying upon what is referred to as prominence.  This term is also known as reascent and drop, with this being the height gain between summit and connecting bwlch to the higher parent peak via the watershed.

Although differentiating one hill from another mainly relies upon prominence, it is not the only tool used to do so, as such criterion as distance, and height and prominence combined have also been used.  But prominence is now the main criterion used to differentiate one hill from another.

The concept of prominence was first investigated by the early hill list authors such as Corbett and Moss who employed the use of a single ring contour in their listings.  This system for cataloguing hills relied upon maps of the day that were based on ring contours at 50ft intervals, therefore a hill may be included that had a 5ft prominence or less because it had a separate ring contour, this is an obvious failing in this system.

However, Corbett had initialised the concept of objective judgment in how to make this all important differentiation between one hill and another, whereas Munro relied upon subjective judgment when he differentiated between his Separate Mountains (Munros) and their Subsidiary Tops (Munro Tops).

This objective judgement took its next stage forward when Carr and Lister used a 100ft criterion to differentiate one hill from another in their book to ‘The Mountains of Snowdonia’ which was published in 1925 by John Lane The Bodley Head Limited of London.  This use of 100ft by Carr and Lister can be considered as the first objective height differentiation and therefore the first use of how we now view the term prominence.

Although, as mentioned previously, there have been other use of criterion to differentiate one hill from another, there is a definite line between how the use of prominence has evolved, this line can be viewed as a link, but this link does not have many connecting parts to it, and up until the Dominant listing that this Introduction details, that connecting part only involved one link, and that is Relative Height, and now the second connecting link of Dominance has been added.

The difference between Prominence and Relative Height can be summarised as the following, with the explanation of Dominance then following:

Prominence is applied to hills whose qualification also depends upon minimum height.

Relative Height is applied to hills whose qualification is just dependent upon a minimum prominence.

Dominance is applied to hills whose prominence equal or exceed half that of their absolute height.

For those that are not initiated with the intricacies of hill list criteria the above explanation can sometimes be a difficult concept to understand, but the essence being is that Prominence is used as part of a criteria in conjunction with another criterion which is usually Minimum Height, whereas Relative Height is normally used as a singular criterion that is not dependent upon any form of minimum height except for that stipulated for its relative height, whereas Dominance relies upon the relationship between the hill’s prominence and its absolute height and is part of a criteria in conjunction with another criterion which is Minimum Height.

The first use of what we now refer to as Relative Height in a published hill list was by Eric Yeaman in his ‘Handbook of the Scottish Hills’ which was published in 1989 by Wafaida.  However, the term Relative Height was coined by Alan Dawson for the Marilyns which were first published in ‘The Relative Hills of Britain’ book by Cicerone Press in 1992.

These two publications dispensed with the concept of Prominence with Eric Yeaman using 100m of Relative Height as the main part of his Scottish list and Alan Dawson using 150m for his British list.

The next link in this small chain that takes in Prominence and Relative Height is Dominance, and therefore Dominance can be viewed as the next step in the evolutionary process of Prominence.

Dominance is a new concept for a published list to hills within Britain and to the knowledge of the author was first used for hills within Britain in early 2009 under the working title of ‘The Ultra Prominent Summits of Wales’, this title was shortened to the UPPs and was later changed to ‘The Dominant Hills of Wales.’  The change of name was instigated after a discussion with Mark Trengove who pointed out that the same concept of Dominance had been used by Eberhard Jurgalski in written format in 2001 and in published format in 2004, and as the 5,000ft prominence world peaks are known as the Ultras, their title having been shortened from the Ultra Prominent Peaks, it was sensible not to use a working title that was similar to another list that used different criteria.  Therefore, the title of Y Trechol - The Dominant Hills of Wales became the norm and the term of Dominance used to describe it, with the term Y Trechol being the Welsh for ‘The Dominants.’

The concept of Dominance was independently conceived by the author and was not copied from Eberhard as until discussing the concept of this list with Mark Trengove, I had not heard of Eberhard Jurgalski, but the term ‘Dominance’ follows Eberhard’s lead, as this is the norm when dealing with terms such as Prominence and Relative Height, each in turn were coined by someone and then they have become terms used by many.

To fulfil the qualification of a hill being Dominant its prominence has to be first known.  Therefore a Dominant list cannot be compiled unless the Prominence of each hill is known beforehand, and for a country such as Wales there are many hills that qualify under a stipulated minimum prominence of 30m.  I thought it wise to follow this minimum prominence figure as this had been previously used in a number of listings, these are briefly detailed below.

For Wales these 30m minimum prominence based lists were first published over a period of 20 years from 1984–2004.  These listings were reliant upon data produced by Terry Marsh, Michael Dewey and Myrddyn Phillips.  However, although all the lists produced by these people specified a minimum drop of 30m none of them listed the actual drop figure; this was added at a later date.  During this time listings to the majority of these hills were also independently produced by E. D. ‘Clem’ Clements whose work appeared on the RHB Yahoo Group database.

The theory of Dominance was conceptualized shortly after all the drop values were added to my hand written Master Lists and the 100m height bands expanded upward to include all P30 summits in Wales.  This Dominance criterion was conceptualized at approximately the same time as that of Remoteness, with both taking form from the same question – ‘what else can be considered once prominence values are given to all hills?’  Once this question was asked the theory of Dominance sprung in to my mind and that of Remoteness soon followed.

The Remoteness list was later published on Geoff Crowder’s v-g.me website in 2011, and updated and co-authored with Aled Williams and published by Europeaklist, Haroldstreet and Mapping Mountains in April 2015.  But until now the Dominance list has never been published.

Before detailing what Y Trechol - The Dominant Hills of Wales list consists of it may be prudent to detail the qualification for the main list:

Those P30 hills whose prominence equal or exceed half that of their absolute height.

Also included is a list to the Lesser Welsh Dominants, these are the additional P30 summits whose prominence is between one third and half that of their absolute height.

To access Y Trechol - The Dominant Hills of Wales

The list consists of the following:

Group:  Each hill appears under their Group, this is the group / range that the hill is a part of.  For example; Carnedd Llywelyn (SH 683 643) is part of the hill group known as the Carneddau.  The Groups are arranged from north to south on a west to east orientation.  The names of the Groups used in this list have received extensive input from Aled Williams.

Name:  This is considered the most appropriate name for the hill with respect to the information available to the author.  Sometimes the name used does not correspond to current Ordnance Survey map spelling and composition or the name may not appear on any map.  Where no appropriate name has been discovered for the hill from any source, the Point (for example; Pt. 78m) notation is used rather than making up a name that has no local or historical evidence of use.  The Welsh place-names that appear in this list and that were sourced from Ordnance Survey mapping are reproduced as simple compositions, with hyphenated and compound names reduced to the component elements.  It must be noted that this process will on occasion result in loss of pronunciation information and as such, is not ideal.  However, this protocol has been implemented in order to simplify the composition due to the inappropriate and inconsistent hyphen use that Ordnance Survey maps are prone to.

Dominance:  This is the Dominance of the hill’s height between bwlch and summit (its prominence) over that of its height from sea level (Ordnance Datum Newlyn) to its bwlch.  The Dominance is given as a percentage.

Region:  There are three Regions in Wales; North Wales, Mid and West Wales, and South Wales.  The Regional split of Wales used in this list has received extensive input from Aled Williams and will be detailed on the Mapping Mountains blog at a later date.

Sub-Region:  There are a number of Sub-Regions in Wales and those used in this list have received extensive input from Aled Williams and they will be detailed on the Mapping Mountains blog at a later date.

1:50,000 Map:  This column gives the number or numbers of the 1:50,000 Ordnance Survey Landranger map that the summit of the hill appears on.

1:25,000 Map:  This column gives the number or numbers of the 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey Explorer map that the summit of the hill appears on.

Grid Reference Summit:  This is the ten figure grid reference (10FGR) for the summit of the hill.  This has either been produced by an accurate survey, a map spot height or when neither is available by a centralised position in an uppermost contour ring.  When the accurate survey has been conducted independent of the Ordnance Survey a (S) for ‘survey’ will appear adjacent to the 10FGR, a (TP) if the 10FGR is taken to a ‘trig pillar’, a (B) if the 10FGR is taken to a ‘bolt’ or a ‘block’, a (L) if the 10FGR is ascertained from LIDAR data, a (LV) if the 10FGR is taken to the position of a ‘levelled’ height on old maps, a (HH) if the 10FGR is taken from a ‘hand-held’ GPS unit, a (SH) if the 10FGR is taken to a ‘spot height’ either on current or old maps and an (I) if the summit position has been ‘interpolated’ from contours.

Height (m) Summit:  This gives the map height in metres of the hill above Ordnance Datum Newlyn (ODN), often referred to as sea level.  Where a height is quoted to a decimal place it implies that the hill has been surveyed by GPS / GNSS receiver (these heights may not match current Ordnance Survey map heights) or it has been ascertained by the analysis of LIDAR data.  Where a ‘c’ (circa) appears preceding the height it means there is no known spot height available and the height has been estimated from contour interpolation.  Where an * appears against the height of the hill it means that this height has been converted to OSGM15.

Grid Reference Bwlch:  This is the ten figure grid reference (10FGR) for the bwlch of the hill.  This has either been produced by an accurate survey, a map spot height or when neither is available by a centralised position between converging hill to hill and valley to valley contours.  When the accurate survey has been conducted independent of the Ordnance Survey a (S) for ‘survey’ will appear adjacent to the 10FGR, a (L) if the 10FGR is ascertained from LIDAR data, a (LV) if the 10FGR is taken to the position of a ‘levelled’ height on old maps, a (HH) if the 10FGR is taken from a ‘hand-held’ GPS unit, a (SH) is the 10FGR is taken to a ‘spot height’ either on current or old maps and an (I) if the bwlch position has been ‘interpolated’ from contours.

Drop (m) Summit to Bwlch:  This column details the prominence of the hill; this is commonly referred to as ‘drop’ or ‘reascent’.  The drop is the height difference between the summit and connecting bwlch to the higher parent peak along the watershed.  The letter ‘c’ before the drop figure signifies there is no spot height or surveyed height known for either summit or more usually, the bwlch, therefore a part of the drop figure has been estimated from contour interpolation.  Where an * appears against the drop value of the hill it means that this figure has been ascertained from the conversion of the summit and bwlch height to OSGM15.

Drop (m) – Bwlch to ODN:  This gives the map height in metres of the bwlch above Ordnance Datum Newlyn (ODN), often referred to as sea level.  Where a height is quoted to a decimal place it implies that the bwlch has been surveyed by GPS / GNSS receiver (these heights may not match current Ordnance Survey map heights) or it has been ascertained by the analysis of LIDAR data.  Where a ‘c’ (circa) appears preceding the height it means there is no known spot height available and the height has been estimated from contour interpolation.  Where an * appears against the height of the bwlch it means that this height has been converted to OSGM15. 

Notes:  This column gives details relevant to the hill.

With special thanks to Aled Williams and Mark Trengove for their continued support and to Eberhard Jurgalski for taking Dominance to the masses.  Thanks are also due to the people who submit 10 figure grid references to the Database of British and Irish Hills (DoBIH) and for DoBIH making these available for public use.

The Dominant Hills of Wales has taken three years and ten months to list via group format on Mapping Mountains and the fourty sixth group is Gwent Is Coed.  This now completes the listing of Y Trechol - The Dominant Hills of Wales.

To access Y Trechol - The Dominant Hills of Wales