The Fours – The 400m Hills of England

 

UKHillwalking Article

UKHillwalking recently published an article on the updated and revised listing of the The Fours – The 400m Hills of England.  A hill list 22 years in the making!

 

The Fours – The 400m Hills of England

With peaks such as Catbells, Dufton Pike and Chrome Hill among them, The Fours, the list of England's 400-500m hills, is big on quality if not altitude. The list has recently undergone a major revision. Aled Williams and Myrddyn Phillips introduced it to UKH readers over a decade ago, and updates in the intervening years have now resulted in one of the most accurate hill lists available for walkers and baggers, they say. Here they explain the resources used to update this list, and the major changes they've made to it.

The 400m hills of England offer a grand variety of upland landscape, including mountain, moor, heath, grassland and high pasture. These hills take in the majority of upland areas the country has to offer, and visiting them will take you on a journey the length and breadth of England.

The Tower, one of the more impressive of The Fours

The listing of these hills has a long history going back to 2002 when the original compilation was uploaded to the RHB Yahoo Group file database. In more recent years the listing of the English 400m hills was published by Europeaklist and the Haroldstreet website. These latter listings were published in December 2013 along with an article on UKHillwalking:

It is now 22 years since this listing's original publication. Such a timeframe has given us opportunity to visit many of these hills. Not surprisingly when dealing with this height band, many of the recognised English upland areas have qualifying hills represented. These take in the farthest north-easterly part of the country with summits in The Cheviot group all the way to the south-westerly part with hills in Bodmin Moor. Between is a wealth of upland with the North York Moors, the Peak and Pennines, Yorkshire Dales, Lake District, the border lands with Wales and the wilds of Dartmoor all well represented.

This should be enough to keep any hill bagger happy for a year or more...

 

Yearlet from the summit of Grindle in the Shropshire hills - rich pickings for Fours baggers

As well as enabling many of these hills to be visited, the 22 year timeframe has also given opportunity for the list to evolve. Its original compilation relied upon the latest 1:25,000 series of Ordnance Survey Explorer maps, with upland areas scrutinised for any qualifying hills. It took many hours of detailed concentration to finalise the original list. The days are long gone when paper maps were the sought after reference to create such a list. Nowadays there has been a revolution in accuracy which not surprisingly has been applied to most hill lists, including this one.

Revolution

This revolution takes in three main sources; independent surveyors, LIDAR and online mapping. The latter of these three is not as important as the other two, but it is still beneficial to cross reference numerical detail produced by independent surveyors and LIDAR analysis with online maps that now take in the Ordnance Survey series of Six-Inch maps, interactive mapping hosted on the WalkLakes website, Ordnance Survey mapping hosted on the Geograph website and the 5m contouring available on the DataMapWales.

There are now websites that host many photos of hills. Importantly these include summit photos that help in determining whether a large cairn has been modelled in LIDAR or whether the highest point of the hill is an artficial man-made construction such as a covered reservoir. All of this helps in producing a more robust list that 22 years ago could only be dreamed of. However, it is independent surveyors using GNSS receivers and analysis of LIDAR that has really revolutionised hill lists.

Attempting to determine the height of a hill for qualification to a list is nothing new, Munro was doing this over 100 years ago with a pocket-sized aneroid barometer. Nowadays independent surveyors using either a level and staff or more probably a GNSS receiver such as Leica or Trimble equipment are producing highly accurate drop, positional and height data.

However, it was not until the upland areas of England were fully covered by LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) that all hills in this list could be accurately assessed for height, position and importantly also qualification. The LIDAR technique relies upon measuring the distance between two points via a laser attached to an aeroplane. The time taken for the laser to bounce back is measured and enables the gathered data to be produced as a digital elevation model. The Environment Agency has been using this technique for many years determining areas at risk of flood and coastal erosion. As well as producing highly accurate numerical data that is now used in hill lists, the use of LIDAR has benefited other areas such as finding previously hidden rooms when mapping the interior of Egypt's pyramids and mapping the ancient Maya landscape, in the process finding hitherto unknown remains of early Mayan civilisation. It's handy technology in many fields!

 

The List

The above resources have enabled us to produce an accurate listing to these hills. This list takes in English hills 400m and above and below 500m in height that have 30m minimum drop. The main list is accompanied by a sub list entitled the Sub-Fours; the criteria for which are English hills 400m and above and below 500m in height with 15m and more and below 30m of drop.

There are 298 hills in the main list and 317 hills in the sub list.

Caer Caradoc

It is not just the resources available that have evolved since this list's first compilation, as the list itself has evolved with all hills now listed in height to one decimal place and the criteria for the sub list now altered. Prior to this latest listing there were three accompanying sub categories, these included two categories of hills at and above 390m and below 400m in height and the Sub-Fours which took in hills with 20m and more and below 30m of drop. The two 390m categories have been dispensed with and the remaining sub category amended to take in hills with a minimum 15m of drop.

The result is a comprehensive list of the English 400m hills, with 615 included in all. That should be enough to keep any hill bagger happy for a year or more!

                                  

• The Fours – The 400m Hills of England is available to download from the Mapping Mountains website
• The list is also available as a Google Doc

 

For the original article published on theUKHillwalking website

 

 

 

Completing the Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru - UKHillwalking Article

 

Completing the Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru

UKHillwalking Article 

UKHillwalking recently published an article on my completion of the 630 hills that make up the listing of the Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru.  The original article and a link to it on the UKHillwalking website appear below.

 

Completing the Welsh Highlands - Uchafion Cymru

Covering 630 hills, from 500m lumps right up to the summit of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) itself, the Welsh Highlands - Uchafion Cymru is a hill list on a grand scale. Myrddyn Phillips co-authors the list, and is also the first to complete it, a process that took nearly 20 years. What's the attraction of a bagging task this epic? Allow Myrddyn to explain...

For many years I hill walked with proverbial blinkers on, concentrating in the main on the Welsh 2000-footers. These hills were repeated many times, and even though I sought out new ground via different ridges and valleys, the need for variety eventually won out. The lower hills beckoned.

Winter on Foel Meirch

These lower hills are based in the 500m height band. Whereas the higher 2000-footers are split between the Hewitts (P30 hills) and Nuttalls (P15 hills), the 500m banding concentrated on the Deweys (P30 hills); a list that I now co-author.

When repeating the Welsh Nuttalls I took up the challenge of finding new qualifying hills by using a basic levelling staff to measure drop, resulting in a number of hills entering this list through this rather esoteric aspect of hill walking. My interest in surveying and finding new qualifying hills now transferred to the Deweys, resulting in more Welsh hills entering this list. When I completed the Welsh Deweys my interest in surveying was extended to the 500m tops with 15m minimum drop. 

This enabled me to venture on to new ground and investigate different hills. It also gave me opportunity to compile a new listing of Welsh hills; one that would fulfil that investigative instinct as well as fulfilling the surveying aspect of my hill walking which had become ever more important for me.

Now co-authored with Aled Williams, the resulting list is named Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru.

The hills range from forested summits in the Elenydd such as Gnol Ddu

 

The List

Wales is blessed with many hills and a widely varied landscape, giving plenty of scope for people who enjoy getting away from the masses. The Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru list fulfils this urge, giving plenty of hills to investigate in some of the most wild and remote areas of Wales.

The criteria for this list are all Welsh hills at and above 500m in height, that have 15m minimum drop. Accompanying the main list is a sub category of hills, these are the Welsh Highland Subs and take in all Welsh hills 500m and above in height that have 10m and more and below 15m of drop. The end result is a comprehensive listing to the Welsh highlands. The list is now co-authored with Aled Williams and as of writing this article there are 630 hills that qualify for the main list from the 500.5m summit of Moel Bowydd to the 1084.8m summit of Yr Wyddfa, with the accompanying sub list taking in 250 hills.

...to the mighty Yr Wyddfa

 

Why do it?

Many of my friends hill walk, but only a few are hill baggers. The latter are people who purposely visit hills to fulfil a greater challenge of completing a hill list. A mantra of sorts is often given by hill baggers to legitimise their obsessional quality; this simply states that ticking off hills in a list can take you to places that you otherwise might never visit.

This is one reason why a hill list can benefit a hillwalker. However, hill lists themselves have greatly benefited over recent times with the advent of independent surveyors wandering the hills with GNSS receivers and level and staffs in hand determining drop and absolute height of hills. Numerical and positional data have also benefited from the advent of the LIDAR (Light Detection & Ranging) technique.  Both of these have revolutionised hill listing with a plethora of reclassifications involving a multitude of lists, including the Munros, Majors, Corbetts, Grahams, Marilyns, Humps, Nuttalls, Hewitts, Deweys, Y Pedwarau and many more besides including the Welsh Highlands – Uchafion Cymru. Simply put, there is no objective listing to British hills that has not benefited from the use of independent surveyors and LIDAR analysis.

 

The Hills

Using a 15m minimum drop criterion gives the prospect of listing many more hills, which increases diversity in the list. This drop value also works well for Wales, and especially so for the higher tier of the Welsh highlands.

Esgair Pentanau - not many people come this way, and a list is a perfect pretext to visit

There are many hills of lower prominence in this list that stand out; some like Foel Meirch (SH 658 637) in the Carneddau give excellent views up to their higher adjacent hills. A great example is Gallt y Wenallt (SH 642 532) in the Yr Wyddfa massif, which stands at the end of the famous horseshoe walk giving plunging views down in to Nant Gwynant. Some hills are even man-made such as Chwarel Graig Ddu (SH 725 455) in the Moelwynion; a remnant of quarrying activity that has left a hill that qualifies both on height and drop.

However, out of all the individual hills that qualify there is a hill group that for me stands out amongst its peers; this is the land I know as the Elenydd. This area takes in the central part of Wales, much of it relatively remote. Few fences enclose this land, giving it an unrelenting openness. The hills of the Elenydd are not dramatic in sculptured aspect, but they have a beauty all to themselves and one that benefits from the criteria used in this list as those small prominence hills are seemingly dotted all over this landscape.

The Elenydd also hosts the large expanse of the Tywi forest, an infestation of conifer plantation that takes in swathes of land that must at one time have been beautiful open hillside. Many qualifying hills are situated in conifer plantation; some are horrendous to visit with a literal tree bash to get to their elusive summits, whilst others such as Gnol Ddu (SN 823 599) can be sublime to visit in favourable conditions.

Uchafion Cymru includes all the greats, such as Arenig Fawr

Including the listing of P10 Subs also gives a wealth of small prominence hills to climb. These can be combined with their higher prominence neighbours and give different perspectives to the hills. Few of the sub hills can compare with Esgair Pentanau (SN 846 703), which is positioned in the wilds of the Elenydd overlooking the mountain lake of Llyn Cerrigllwydion Isaf and topped with a large boulder requiring a bit of scrambling to gain its highest point.

 

Progress

It took 19½ years from the day I purposely visited my first Welsh 500m P15 hill to the day that I completed. I suppose you could say I made steady progress. Steady or not, other stuff such as life occasionally gets in the way of the more serious business of hill bagging. By October 2010 I only had ten qualifying hills to visit. Due to those pesky independent surveyors and LIDAR analysis the hills to visit kept increasing over the intervening years with a mass of new ones found. It required a concerted effort to finish the remaining hills in this list. 

Moel y Llyn in the Pumlumon hills

Completion

Toward the start of 2023 I decided to concentrate on the few remaining hills I had left. Many of these were situated in the Tywi forest and these would require good weather and open forest tracks. Others were newly discovered through the use of LIDAR. My third to last hill is one such example. This is situated between Moel Hebog and Moel yr Ogof in Eryri in north-west Wales and its summit consists of a small rocky ridge that was decidedly greasy when I visited, and with a wind blowing across the tops I managed to fall down its rocky southern side and remember the shock of seeing rock whizzing past my eyes. Thankfully I ground to a halt with only impressive bruising and the shock of what had just happened as reminders. I was also thankful I did not fall on the northern side as this had a sheer drop down on to rock which would no doubt have been seriously problematic.

During this year my companion on all of these walks has been Aled Williams, the co-author of this list. As well as discovering many of the new qualifying hills Aled has encouraged me towards completion.

When initially compiling this list I remember looking at the Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer map and specifically the three mile long easterly ridge leading to the summit of Esgair Garthen (SN 825 642), and thinking that this hill would be a good one to finish on. And so it proved.

630 summit sin the bag!  Myrddyn on his final peak, Esgair Garthen

Esgair Garthen was kept till last and it proved a perfect day on the hill. When visiting the remaining hills during the year it became evident that if pursuing a completion during this year the last hill would probably be in November. Late autumn can of course give some stunning days on the hill; however it can also give unrelenting days of drizzled mist where grey predominates. Thankfully the 25th proved perfect.  We were walking by 7.30am and 7.45am respectively; Aled up the stream valley of the Afon Arban wanting to visit two sub hills before meeting me on the summit of Esgair Garthen. This enabled me to set my own pace up that long three mile broad ridge that many years ago I looked at on the map.

It was decidedly chilly when I set off with the sun rising only when initial height was gained, appearing as a burst of light over mist that hugged near hillsides and meandererd over the waters of the Claerwen Reservoir. Like so many of the Elenydd hills Esgair Garthen consists of grassland. This can be tough to walk through if no path is evident; thankfully a quad bike track eased passage and took me all the way to the summit. At this time of the morning the grassland was frosted and any bog frozen. The conditions were perfect, with no breath of breeze and tranquility only disturbed by an occasional sheep. The frosted scene was emphasised by blue sky above. I reached the summit at 10.15am with a smile on my face. I had done it; a long journey now completed. Aled joined me 45 minutes later having visited the two sub hills. I celebrated with a mince pie and a giant green balloon.

Many friends have joined me on these hills over the intervening years since initial compilation to the summit celebration atop Esgair Garthen, leaving memories aplenty of good times shared and good hills visited. For that I am thankful.

 

For the original article published on the UKHillwalking website

 

 

Penlan – In Search of Deep Country

UKHillwalking Article 

UKHillwalking recently published an article on Penlan.  This is the house Neil Ansell lived in for five years off grid amongst the Welsh hills and which forms the basis of his book entitled Deep Country.

 

Penlan - In Search of Deep Country

"Living off-grid here must have been a wonderful experience - though one not suited to everyone..." Myrddyn Phillips undertakes some landscape detective work to track down a remote Welsh cottage featured in a classic of modern nature writing.

Many places amongst the hills are evocative. Some draw their power from personal memories, others through their place in shared things such as music, the written word or photographs. All can leave mindscapes full of intimate images.

Some of the most evocative sites in the Welsh hills are the old houses that scatter the landscape, now derelict but all, you can be sure, with a story to tell. Some are now left to wither in inclement weather, gradually becoming no more than piles of rocks where exterior walls once lay. Others are still robust and relatively intact. But few have been written about, and even fewer still have recently been lived in.

Finding Penlan took a bit of doing

It was one such that I set out, with friends in tow, to find. The house is named Penlan, and since reading about it I had wanted to visit. However it took a while to locate.

Penlan was where writer Neil Ansell spent five years living off grid, without running water or electricity. His account of living alone there appears in his book Deep Country – Five Years in the Welsh Hills.

'I lived alone in this cottage for five years, summer and winter, with no transport, no phone' he writes, about the book.'

This is the story of those five years, where I lived and how I lived. It is the story of what it means to live in a place so remote that you may not see another soul for weeks on end. And it is the story of the hidden places that I came to call my own, and the wild creatures that became my society.'

When I read this book I imagined the house was situated somewhere close to the country of the Brecon Beacons. It was the imagery of the place brought on by Neil's writing that had me scanning my mind's eye trying to place Penlan in a landscape that I knew. Another friend told me that when she read the book she imagined Penlan to be placed somewhere near Machynlleth.

It is not my intention to give the place where this house is situated, as part of the fun of such things is delving into clues and finding out for oneself. For me, it was the beautiful pen and ink drawing of the map placing Penlan in its landscape that appears on the inside front and rear cover of the book and its endpapers, coupled with one or two clues interspersed in the text, that had me examining maps and pinpointing its position.

We set out for Penlan on a leaden grey skied day with adjoining hill tops still enveloped in November murk. It was an ideal day to visit as the weather was still, with hardly a breath of breeze. The grey nature seemingly matched that of a house such as Penlan - one that is no longer lived in, now showing signs of weathering with flecks of paint cracked and crumbling, rusted iron gates leading up forgotten stone steps and a tranquillity reflecting the still November day where Red Kites meandered across the skies and except for white flecks of grazing sheep, little stirred.

From the start of our walk it was only a short distance to the house, contouring around and then down a steep field on to a green track, from which we had our first view of Penlan. The western side of the house showed off a robust Victorian exterior, the front garden had recently been tended with a number of green sacks laid out full of foliage. Old trees, wind-blown and weathered, looked out from adjacent fields toward the valley below, with light grey silhouetted shapes of hills indicating the landscape that Penlan inhabits.

On our visit the house was locked, although the rear outhouse only had the rusted remains of a green flecked hook keeping its door partly closed to the elements. Large plastic barrels collected water from the truffins. Inside, the ground floor looked similar to a number of bothies I have visited, although these are usually kept neat awaiting their next visitor. In contrast Penlan looked used but now forgotten, scattered with discarded items, with the feeling of the slow ebb of autumnal damp creeping around the inner house. Internally it did not look welcoming, but the house is still intact and is placed in a wonderful position amongst an ancient natural landscape. It was the latter that Neil Ansell discovered when living here. It must have been a wonderful experience, although one not suited to many.

We departed the same way we had come, on the green track, but we soon left this to climb the field behind Penlan. Now behind us, the house disappeared except for its tiled roof, overlooking the land below, standing lonely in the place it had occupied for a hundred years and more.

I was glad I had visited. For me part of the joy of doing such things is to investigate new places. Those proverbial blanks on the map are getting fewer, but thankfully will never be fully filled in; some will always remain - and that is the joy. Seek and find, but leave others undisturbed.

 

For the original article published on the UKHillwalking website

 

  

UKHillwalking - Prioritising the names of Yr Wyddfa and Eryri

 

UKHillwalking Article 

UKHillwalking recently published an article on the National Park’s decision to prioritise the name of Yr Wyddfa and Eryri in preference to those of Snowdon and Snowdonia.  The article was written by Dan Bailey who asked the National Park and me for our opinion.  The original article and a link to it on the UKHillwalking website appear below.

 

Should We All Be Saying Yr Wyddfa? 

Last week's news widely reported the announcement by the Snowdonia National Park Authority (Awdurdod Parc Cenedlaethol Eryri) that the Welsh names Eryri (Snowdonia) and Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) will now be favoured in all National Park material in both Welsh and English. This sparked an interesting - and largely intelligent - discussion in the forums.  However, we were left with unanswered questions. We've put these to the National Park, and an expert in Welsh hill names.

Yr Wyddfa from Yr Aran on a cold winter's day

UKHillwalking: Is the Park just going to use Eryri and Yr Wyddfa in all English language material, or will the names in English publications now appear in bilingual form as Eryri (Snowdonia) and Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon)?  

SNPA: We understand that many will be unfamiliar with the Welsh names, therefore in order to give people time to familiarise themselves with the Welsh names and adjust to the new policy the move towards using the Welsh names only will be a continuous one. In certain contexts, e.g. public engagement and education, we will include the English names in brackets for the time being. In time, as people become more familiar with the Welsh names this practice will be phased out.

The Park Authority's name is set in law, therefore it will continue to be referred to as the Snowdonia National Park Authority.

UKHillwalking: How does the park propose to educate English-only speakers so that confusion can be avoided?

SNPA: The support we have received since the announcement has been overwhelmingly positive by both Welsh speakers and non-Welsh speakers. Along with the support there is a clear eagerness to learn how to pronounce the names. Over the coming weeks we will be looking at ways in which we can help people gain confidence in the pronunciations.

We have a well established Eryri Ambassador scheme with just under 800 qualified ambassadors. Many of these ambassadors are businesses owners or managers in the area's tourism/recreation sector. As part of the Ambassador qualifying training there is an entire module dedicated to the Welsh language – therefore our ambassadors are ready and well equipped to encourage and help visitors to adapt to the new policy.

The Welsh language is one of Eryri's (Snowdonia) special qualities. Through our work in raising awareness of this special quality we will be educating people about place names (including Eryri and Yr Wyddfa) and their role in our cultural heritage. By gaining an appreciation for our place names and an understanding of their connection with the landscape, wildlife and history, we hope that people will embrace and use them to enrich their visitor experience.

UKHillwalking: Did the decision of the Park Authority take into account the historic roots of the name Snowdon? And does the park see a distinction between contemporary re-naming into English of existing Welsh placenames, and a name such a Snowdon that has been around in some form for many centuries?

SNPA: Yes, the decision took into account the fact that Snowdon is a historic name, dating back at least 800 years. Such historic place names are recognised as being an important part of the cultural heritage of the area, distinct from more recent coinages, which often rename places and features with existing Welsh names. To this end, Yr Wyddfa is unique in Eryri, as the only summit with two historic names, one in Welsh and one in English.

Over recent years, the National Park Authority has prioritised the names Yr Wyddfa and Eryri in English language text, following the Welsh names with (Snowdon) and (Snowdonia). This change has been widely accepted and popular English language publications and broadcasts such as the Guardian, Telegraph, Times and BBC Countryfile have adopted the form.

The Authority's decision took these factors into consideration, and ultimately, members felt that using the Welsh names in both Welsh and English would be a worthy celebration of our exceptional cultural heritage and of the Welsh language and place names as some of the area's most precious special qualities.

 

Pronunciation for non-Welsh speakers:

Yr Wyddfa urr-with-vah

Eryri err-uh-ree (roll those r's)

 

Yr Wyddfa from Crib y Ddysgl

View from a Welsh hill name expert:

To give the discussion some extra depth, we asked Welsh hill aficionado Myrddyn Phillips for his take. Myrddyn is joint author - with Aled Williams - of our guide to Welsh (Cymraeg) for hill-goers:

UKHillwalking: As you understand it, what are the historical origins of the names Snowdon/Snowdonia and Yr Wyddfa and Eryri?

Myrddyn: The excellent Dictionary of the Place-Names of Wales by Hywel Wyn Owen and Richard Morgan documents the name of Snawdune recorded in 1095, with the elements being Old English snāw (snow) and dūn (hill). Whilst the origins of the name Yr Wyddfa can be traced back to the name Weddua vaur recorded in 1284, with the elements composing gwyddfa (tumulus, grave) and mawr (big). The use of each name will of course precede each recorded instance.

Again the Dictionary of the Place-Names of Wales gives documental records for the use of the name Ereri in 1191 and Snoudonia…terram Snaudoniae in 1284.

UKHillwalking: Given the long usage of both forms, do you think it's 'fair' (for want of a better word) to favour just the Welsh versions in all the National Park's English language material?

Myrddyn: Simply put, yes. I don't think 'fair' comes in to the debate, logic should though. This relates to a Welsh hill and where it is situated. If Welsh names exist for both, which they do, then use them.

UKHillwalking: Do you think the Park's decision is realistic: what are the chances of English-only speakers adopting or understanding the Welsh, and how might one go about educating people to do so?

Myrddyn: As a Welsh person who can only speak English I often enjoy countering such a question and trying to put myself in the proverbial shoes of let's say, a person who can only speak Welsh who is confronted by an English name. In this instance I suspect they would try their utmost and use an appropriate name in an appropriate context. Reverse logic dictates that a person who speaks English, but not Welsh, such as myself, do likewise. In such a circumstance as this I would suggest that the names Yr Wyddfa and Eryri are the most appropriate ones to use.

Possibly the best educational tool in this circumstance is to do what the National Park plan on doing, and that is just use the Welsh names Yr Wyddfa and Eryri; I'm sure people will get used to it in time. On a personal note, when I first discovered the hills I mainly used the English name of Snowdon and Snowdonia; I now do my utmost to use Welsh names where they exist, including that of Yr Wyddfa and Eryri.

UKHillwalking: Aside from the historical bilingual name of Snowdon itself, what do you think about the tendency more recently to rename into English places with perfectly good existing Welsh names?

Myrddyn: In general any language and its used should be respected, and this applies equally to English as it does to Welsh.  However, respecting a language should also be characterised by its use, and unfortunately there are instances where long standing Welsh names have been supplanted by newly created English names. The use of the Welsh language is historical, cultural and contemporary, it is a living embodiment of the country of Cymru and transferring Welsh names into English should be considered regressive and countered at every instance. This applies equally to a house name as it does to the iconic status of Yr Wyddfa.

The summit of Yr Wyddfa

UKHillwalking: While many non-Welsh speakers exclusively use the name Snowdon, some who like to make an effort with Welsh placenames might (rightly or wrongly) have said Snowdon in reference to the whole massif, but Yr Wyddfa for the highest summit. If we do away with English, does the Welsh name cover both the high point and the entire thing?

Myrddyn: Cadair Idris is similar as it has a summit named Pen y Gadair which some people also consider can be applied to the singular hill, with Cadair Idris applicable to the massif. In this instance I've always considered Cadair Idris to be the name of the hill and the massif to also be the hills of Cadair Idris. Similarly for Yr Wyddfa; the tumulus/grave is the summit area, but I've always considered this also applicable to the singular hill, whilst the topographical area taking in the accompanying hills is the Yr Wyddfa massif.

 

For the original article published on the UKHillwalking website

 

UKHillwalking - Chwarel Graig Ddu

 

UKHillwalking Article

UKHillwalking recently published an article on the discovery of a new 2,000ft mountain top in Wales.  The original article and a link to it on the UKHillwalking website appear below.

 

New Welsh Mountain Unearthed

Aled Williams and Myrddyn Phillips

Aled Williams and Myrddyn Phillips are keen hill surveyors and co-authors of summit lists, and frequently contribute to UKHillwalking on the subject. In recent times they have been responsible for a number of significant hill reclassifications, and here they explain their latest find. It's one that may be contentious.

Contains spoil(ers).

Hills come in all shapes and sizes, some high and dramatic with pointed peaks whilst others are lower in height and less defined in profile. However, these differences are not just down to the natural order of landscape where weathering and erosion create change over many millennia - humans have also had a say in things; we also change our landscape. This can include such things as cuttings for rail and road, which change connecting cols between hills, but even the summits of hills can be influenced by our intrusion.  

For countless years we have dug for mineral wealth, this has been heightened since the industrial revolution with coal and slate being two such examples. These mining activities have had a dramatic effect on our landscape, especially so for many hills, and nowhere more so than in Wales.

Chwarel Graig Ddu qualifies as an independent summit

Quarrying has created a wealth of new tops where none existed before. For Wales, there are many such examples, such as Bersham Bank and Pandy Bank close to Wrecsam (Wrexham), both created by waste spoil from mining activity. There are many examples in south Wales; Teisen Priodas and the three summits around Twyn y Waun being just a few. These examples come in two main categories; one where waste spoil creates a large lump of a hill, high enough and with sufficient drop to qualify for a list, and the other where quarrying has taken away a large chunk of hillside creating a new summit with what remains.

Some people view these new tops as artificial and therefore discount them from any form of list. We take a more sympathetic view for our lists and include hills such as these if they are considered solid and stable and meet the set criteria. This at least treats landscape as it is today, otherwise one would be prone to ignore things that undeniably exist, such as cuttings and quarried tops.

Man-made mountains still count, according to Myrddyn and Aled's criteria

The above explanation sets up the contentious aspect of the new 2,000ft peak that has been discovered. The hill has been formed from quarrying and is positioned above Blaenau Ffestiniog in north-west Wales. This area of Wales has been mined extensively for slate and the newly discovered hill is part of the Chwarel Graig Ddu quarry.

We had been aware of this hill's potential for the last two years as online mapping with 5m contouring shows it to have a summit over 610m in height and a drop exceeding 15m. What was needed was a visit to the adjacent hillsides to confirm its existence.

This inspection was carried out in early 2022 and confirmed the existence of the Chwarel Graig Ddu top. Based on online mapping, this top meets the requirement of our Welsh Highlands list, which combines a minimum height of 500m with a minimum drop of 15m and has been extensively written about on the Mapping Mountains. Here are the details of the top:

Chwarel Graig Ddu

• Summit: 613m (SH 725 455)
• Bwlch:  592m (SH 724 457)
• Drop:  21m

And for those who like their Welsh mountain tops to be at and above 2,000ft (609.6m) in height with 15m minimum drop, this hill also qualifies under these criteria. In fact, Chwarel Graig Ddu could well be the last of the Welsh 2,000fters to be discovered.

 

For the original article published on the UKHillwalking website