THE COUNTY TOPS
Whatever county you live in, there’s a local hill or mountain standing above all else. This collection of summits is known as the ‘County Tops’ and if you’re looking for new places to walk, it’s a tick-list packed with inspiration. There are 108 Tops in total across the UK, ranging from high and wild in Scotland to flat and featureless down south. But if you’re just looking for a flavour of what they have to offer, then the 10 highest in England are a great place to start.
When it comes to British mountain tick-lists – Munros, Wainwrights, Trail 100s, Welsh 3000s – they generally involve great adventures, a lot of determination, a bit of suffering and often a lifetime achievement. The beauty of peak-bagging lists is that as well as the motivation and achievement, they take us to places we’d never imagined. But get a little further down the ‘baggers lists’ and everything gets a little more geeky… Sat very politely, bespectacled and with nose in book, are the County Tops. For a start, even deciding on what actually constitutes a County Top requires a certain level of nerdery. It turns out there are all sorts of interpretations of what constitutes a ‘county’. There are historical, administrative, geographical, cultural and political county divisions, and these have changed over time… Who knew?!
To save us any unnecessary time working out what actually constitutes a County Top these days, Matthew Arnold has come to our rescue with his Peak Bagging Log Book: County Tops of the UK. Having already done the hard work, his book presents a definitive list of the highest points in each modern county that make up the United Kingdom. A total of 108, with 48 in England, 32 in Scotland, 22 in Wales, and 6 in Northern Ireland. Sorted.
So as way of introduction to your next obsession, we present to you England’s 10 highest County Tops. From the meaty mountains of Cumbria to the wild moors of Devon, this quick foray into County Tops is just a small sample of how this tick-list showcases the country’s diverse and ever-changing landscapes.
1 Cumbria | Scafell Pike | 978m | NY215072
England’s highest mountain and top of the ‘Tops’ needs no introduction. It’s estimated that 250,000 people climb it every year, but for those who have resisted the allure of climbing England’s highest mountain, it has a dark and foreboding presence.
Surrounded by rocky architecture of towers and gullies, its broad rocky top is crowned with a huge 7.5m wide summit cairn, so no-one can actually measure how high it really is. Lord Leconfield donated the peak to the National Trust in 1919 to honour all those who served in the Great War and a memorial is built into the summit cairn, making it
