County Topping

Walkers like lists. There are numerous lists of the mountains and hills of Great Britain; Munros, Corbetts, Grahams, Hewitts, Wainwrights, HuMPs and Marilyns to name but a few. A List gives you a purpose for your walk, a chance to plan, buy maps and guide books, arrange campsites and spend long nights working out the best way to get there. It adds so much more to the walking experience.

County Tops are a list of the highest point above sea level in a county. Simple really! Quite unambiguous and unequivocal you would think. Wrong! Both elements (county and top) are subject to dispute.

What constitutes a ‘county’ is a subject that stirs deep passions. Visit the Association of British Counties website if you don’t believe me. You can have Traditional Counties, Ceremonial Counties, Administrative Counties and Counties that turn out to be unitary authorities (Herefordshire). Some counties persist long after they disappeared off the map (Middlesex) and some blossomed but for a short time, only to be swept away by yet another round of local government reorganisation (Humberside 1974-1996, RIP).

So which list do you pick? There are currently about 180 local authority areas in England (and growing) and the thought of finding the high point of Slough was not inspiring. So I chose the counties that existed when I was born, when the boundaries of my beloved Essex rested on the banks of the mighty River Lea. I make that 43 counties and I don’t care that it doesn’t agree with the Traditional County list of the ABC, who rather inexplicably have ignored the County of London.

Now the Top part.
Some counties now have an Administrative or Current Top to go with their old Traditional top as the result of some land grabbing during local government reorganisation. I shall choose to ignore the interloper in favour of the old time top. In some counties, there is no agreement about where the top is (Nottinghamshire has three contenders), this is often due to the fact although the top is a high point, it isn’t always very high.

It’s a hill Jim, but not as we know it….

Now it seems highly unlikely that Noddy and I will scale the heights of Cumberland (Scafell Pike 3209ft) or Westmoreland (Helvellyn 3117ft) without the aid of Sherpas so we have set our sights a little lower. Our aim (well, mine really) is to conquer all the ones below 2000 feet, (33 tops) and see how we get on with the others. This will make use of some of the natural advantages of living in the South East, we may not have many hills but we have quite a lot of counties.

At the time of writing I’ve bagged 18 Tops and Noddy has bagged 12.

If you want to know more about hill bagging lists, go to www.hill-bagging.co.uk
If you want to check out a website of some very dedicated County Top baggers,
go to www.wheresthepath.com