The dullest square

Alan’s fascination with grid squares included a hunt for Britain’s most boring one in the 1990s. Writing in The Angry Corrie hillwalking fanzine (now sadly defunct), he revealed he couldn’t find any blanks on OS Landrangers, so he studied the 1” Second War Revision sheets from the 1940s and nominated square A5971 in Yorkshire, ‘which is as blank as you’ll find. I suspect however that a contour intrudes fractions of a millimetre into the southeast corner.’ Today’s maps show a wiggling contour in square TA1252 (the closest approximation on the current grid), and in 2001 the OS named SE8322 near Ousefleet (below) as the most featureless in Britain, with only a pylon. Alan signed off his article as Dr BowringSquare and posed a final question: ‘Anybody know which square on the OS 7th

Series 1” maps contains both a Munro and a complete absence of contours?’

Answer on p122; enjoy the full Angry Corrie archive at shorturl.at/akJX9