Britain’s 40 Finest Mountains

The Spring 2018 issue of The Great Outdoors magazine, as part of its “40^th Birthday Collectors Edition”, included a supplement called Britain’s 40 Finest Mountains.

In the introduction to the list it is said that “Of course, any such list is highly subjective…” but it would be hard to argue against many, or perhaps even any, of the mountains that are included.  Although there are a few that I haven’t yet climbed – all of those are in Scotland – their reputations alone make me think that the list has been chosen on merit and I haven’t spotted any obvious exclusions.  Having said that, only Scafell Pike of the National Three Peaks does not appear but its neighbour Sca Fell does!

Some years ago TRAIL magazine published a list of “the 100 finest UK mountains” which I always felt contained some entries that were chosen based as much on their geography as on their mountain characteristics.  The TGO 40 doesn’t appear to suffer from that bias and I feel that it is a purer list, albeit quite a bit smaller.

Of the TGO 40 list, 37 of the mountains are also on the TRAIL 100 list.  The three that aren’t are Ben Loyal, Braeriach and Creag Meagaidh.

Of course, I now have to amalgamate the TGO 40 into my own combination of hill lists, but I only have to add two of the mountains as Braeriach is already on my list as a Scottish 4000 foot summit.