M is for mountain

YES, BRITAIN DOES have them. No, there isn’t a strict definition. These are two statements you need to commit to memory in order to head off any debate about British mountains with a ‘civilian’. Because in few other circumstances does the phrase ‘If you have to ask, you won’t understand’ more strongly apply. And that’s largely because in no other field is a discussion of an apparently key quality – altitude – so immaterial. Put it like this: who would you rather meet on the field of combat – 6’ 2” Jacob Rees-Mogg or a 5’ 3” Gurkha?

Britain’s mountains are gnarlier, more characterful, more various in visage, more dappled in every nuance of colour and shade and mood, more wide-ranging in their approaches and ways of being dumb-strikingly beautiful than any other country. Don’t think of them as lacking 10,000 feet in comparison with the Alps, or 20,000 compared with the Himalaya; think of them as all top; just the best bit; an ascent to the heavens you can have in a day without missing any toes or dinner. Any country the size of Michigan that boasted Tryfan and Mam Tor and Blencathra would be considered wealthy in mountainous good-looks; one that added Snowdon, Great Gable, Kinder Scout and Ben Arthur, a superpower; a nation that could boast on top of that Liathach, Yewbarrow, Haystacks, Scafell Pike, Pen y Fan, Sgurr Alasdair, Helvellyn, Ben Nevis, Cadair Idris, Penyghent, Schiehallion, Glyder Fawr – let alone the hundreds of other jewels that encrust our isles – a too-good-to-be-true Valhalla. Outsiders underestimate Britain’s mountains to their cost – but no mountaineer does. With his kukri a Gurkha can peel an orange or repel an advancing army. With a British mountain you can doze on a south-facing slope above a sparking tarn – or train in deadly earnest for summit day on Everest.