What is a Mountain?

And therein lies the sixty-four thousand dollar question!

I’m sure that many words have been written about the physical characteristics of mountains, such as location, elevation, prominence or shape.  Perhaps the answer is as philosophical as much as it is physical and just to add confusion, what is the difference between a hill and a mountain?

To keep things simple, I’m going to restrict myself to the “mountains” of England and Wales.

The website of the Long Distance Walkers Association maintains a register of those who have completed the “the 2000ft Mountains of England & Wales”.  The LDWA gives details of a number of hill lists that contain “mountains” and you can be included on the register if you have completed just one of those lists (within certain restrictions).  Quite a few have completed more than one of the lists but out of all who have completed at least one, over 70% have completed the Nuttalls.

John and Anne Nuttall had their two volumes of “The Mountains of England and Wales” published in 1989 and their list has probably become the nearest to being definitive.  They defined a mountain as being at least 2000 feet high and having a prominence (I’ll talk about that in the next blog) of at least 50 feet.  And of course it has to be in either England or Wales and as the Isle of Man is not part of England (or Wales!), Snaefell was excluded from the list.

Whenever a mountain is surveyed and found to be higher than 2000 feet, the British press inevitably publish a headline similar to “New mountain found!”  There is no official minimum height criterion for defining a mountain but it has generally become accepted that anything under 2000 feet doesn’t make the grade.  The press, the Nuttalls and the LDWA all seem to agree.  Even the Ordnance Survey makes reference to 2000 feet as the benchmark in some of its blogs.

There is some dissention however.  Some people regard 1000 feet as the minimum limit and Emily Rodway – the current editor of “The Great Outdoors” magazine – says in the September 2017 issue that a mountain is “usually defined as a hill over 600 metres” which is of course a metric alternative.

But I was born into a world of feet and inches which means that I’m going to take the imperial view of the majority.  So 2000 feet it is!

As mentioned earlier, there are quite a few lists of “mountains” in England and Wales so which should I aim to complete?

I’ve said in previous blogs that I’m working my way through the Nuttalls which I regard as the definitive list.  But to be pedantic and for the sake of a comprehensive completion, would it be reasonable to complete ALL of the lists?  It may be taking things a bit too far as a number of the summits are mere moorland bumps, but it would be a challenge to give it a go.  According to the LDWA register there has only been one person who has completed all of the 2000 feet England and Wales lists.  By aiming for all of the summits on all of the lists, there is no doubt that extra effort would be required but I’d be compelled to visit some remote corners of the country and my navigation skills would inevitably improve!

Although the lists are different, there is a lot of overlap between them with many summits appearing on most of the lists, which means that there aren’t that many less-favoured summits that will need to be visited.

So that’s the decision made, I’m aiming for them all!