Up a hill, down a mountain
‘Is it a hill? Is it a mountain? Perhaps it wouldn’t matter anywhere else, but this is Wales. The Egyptians built pyramids. The Greeks built temples. But we did none of that because we had mountains.’ It’s a scene from the movie The Englishman who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain (1995) starring Hugh Grant, based on a story about The Garth above Taff’s Well in South Wales. Set during World War I, two English cartographers arrive to measure the local peak. They declare it is 980 feet tall and therefore not a mountain; the villagers respond by building a 20-foot mound on the top, to push it back into mountain territory. According to current OS maps The Garth is an above-dispute 307m or 1007 feet, and it’s a fine viewpoint across the valleys. We’ll skim over the fact it’s marked as Garth Hill, and that the film was shot at Gyrn Moelfre up near Oswestry, which is positively gargantuan at 1716 feet/523m.
Newspapers have delighted in the headline ‘The Welshmen Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain’ in recent years, as surveyor Myrddyn Phillips, with friends John Barnard and Graham Jackson, have spearheaded the reclassification of hills to mountains. There have been four so far, with 2000 feet as the magic marker. First was Mynydd Graig Goch at the west end of Snowdonia’s Nantlle Ridge in 2008, then Cumbria’s Thack Moor in 2013, Calf Top in 2016 and Miller Moss this summer. The trio don’t haul earth to bolster the summit those vital few inches, though; they spend hours taking precision measurements using GPS and then inform the OS when the summits prove to be mountain high.
uWalk Britain’s newest mountains with free route guides for The Calf and Miller Moss (a short detour east from Great Lingy Fell on a Carrock Fell walk) at www.lfto.com/ bonusroutes