Marhofn 316.18 - May 2016

Society news and relative matters

Martin Richardson

Welcome to the all-colour final edition of Marhofn. Before you get upset about the demise of Marhofn, please read on. We have three major and exciting proposals:

1. To create and establish a not-for-profit Relative Hills Society (RHSoc)
2. To publish a new annual magazine - Relative Matters
3. To establish a new and interesting website dedicated to the relative hills of Britain.

The old hill lists - with their antiquated imperial height limits or their lack of consistent criteria - have their support from the Munro Society, the Scottish Mountaineering Club, the Wainwright Society and the Long Distance Walkers Association. However, up until now there has not been a society to represent the relative hill-baggers.

The content of this magazine has in recent years not just been Marilyn related. Information and discussion about the other relative hill lists has entered in a piecemeal fashion. The website at www.rhb.org.uk is functional and purposeful, however it is mainly about Marilyns. It is not proposed to compete with the hill-bagging.co.uk website - we will still encourage people to use that site for recording their hill bags.

Criteria

All three proposals will have the same criteria for the relevant hill lists.

• Relative hills - ie the lists will be based on drop/prominence. No subjective lists, whatever their history.
• Metric measurements for height, for drop (prominence) and for the range of heights, for any lists with absolute height limits.
• Non-parochial - ie the lists will cover the whole of Britain and not just local areas such as southern Scotland, the Lake District, Wales.

Relevant lists

The British lists that currently meet all three criteria are:

Marilyns - hills of Britain with a prominence of 150 metres

Humps - the hundred metre prominence hills of Britain

Tumps - the 30-metre prominence hills of Britain

Simms - the 30-metre prominence hills, 600 metres or above high

Dodds - the 30-metre prominence hills between 500m and 599m high

Sibs - the 30-metre prominence islands or 30-hectare area islands.

We also propose to include reports of activities and adventures on relative hills in other countries.

Want to know more?

Details of any future changes to these hill lists will be published in Relative Matters. To receive a copy, you will need to either join RHSoc or subscribe to the mailing list. See rhsoc.uk for more details.