About four and a half years ago, when I was just getting used to the concept of relative height, I remember glancing through the Lake District Hewitts and thinking 'this is all very fine, but wouldn't it be better to ignore the height cut-off, and see what kind of list a 100-foot drop criterion would produce in the foothills?' As I browsed the maps, something told me there might be quite a lot of work involved.
There was. Nearly 600 little blighters in the Lakes for starters, and the journey had only just begun. Bit by bit I resolved to cover the whole of Britain, mostly filling in the foothills where other chroniclers had worked on the high peaks. By last summer the grand total had clocked in at a touch under 16650 hills with 30m drop. The list of course includes the Murdos, Corbett Tops and Graham Tops, New Donalds, Hewitts and Deweys, as well as Rob Woodall's and Clem Clements' expansive lists of hills between 300 and 500 metres high, and Myrddyn Phillips' list of lower Welsh hills, so the only part of the list I researched myself was the lowest tier. So a massive thank you to everyone who came first!
Warning: This list is only a draft at the moment. It will be a few more years before it's in as good a format as the Humps are, and in the meantime the data may be inaccurate - please consult the Database of British Hills for more up-to-date information on those hills which are in the database. Corrections, omissions, mistakes, queries and anything else are more than welcome.
The lists can be downloaded from the 'Hills of Britain' folder in the files section of the RHB Yahoo group, as well as from viewfinderpanoramas.org (look under 'Relative Height Lists'; there are also Google Earth files). It's divided into the 42 RHB regions. The Marilyns are listed in height order, with each one followed by the hills which lie inside its 'prominence domain'. Also, hills on islands lower than 150m have been allocated to their nearest Marilyn, so that the whole country can be divided up in this fashion. Even East Anglia gets a look in.
I wouldn't advise anyone to try going for an even lower drop limit; the effort would probably kill you. In any case, my experience in the Lakes and elsewhere is that 30 metres is just about the lower limit of what makes a separate hill; these tops at least feel a little like summits. So this is it - the hills of Britain. The business of listing may be over, but there is enough here to last anyone a lifetime.
Indeed, this list is not designed to be completed, for realistically it never could be - it contains over 50 sea stacks in Shetland alone! It's better off used in sections and at will. See what there is to climb close to your home, or near the place where you're staying, or near the route of the walk you're on. Let it take you to the furthest corner of these islands, or find a new view a few miles from your door. Either way, have fun with it.
Malcolm's Head and Fogli Stack, Fair Isle (photo: Alan Dawson)
