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Discussion Forum - Hills and Hill Registers - England and Wales 2000s


Author: David Purchase
Posted: Thu 20th Sep 2018, 12:58
Joined: 1999
Local Group: Essex & Herts
Sorry: I accidentally submitted the previous post before I had finished it !

There have been, over the years, several suggestions that we should have separate Registers for England and for Wales. One walker I know has done everything in Wales several times over, but has never completed England. I have some sympathy with those views. But the practical situation is that we just don't have the data to create separate registers retrospectively, and it would in my view be very unsatisfactory to change only for future entrants to the Registers.

For completeness I should add that I checked with the SMC before adding Register 5B (the Donald Deweys), and they were entirely content. They may, of course, have been influenced by the fact that I compiled the list ! Or more likely because the title of the register was so close to the name of the first First Minister for Scotland, Donald Dewar.

David Purchase
HR Recorder
Author: David Purchase
Posted: Thu 20th Sep 2018, 12:33
Joined: 1999
Local Group: Essex & Herts
I was not, of course, involved when the Registers were originally established, but I think there are basically two reasons.

The first is that at the time (1994) most of those who had already reported to the precursor of the Registers had used Bridge's The Mountains of England and Wales as the source list. Of course by 1994 there were other sources too, notably Buxton & Lewis and the Nuttalls, but these also combined England and Wales (albeit, in the Nuttalls' case, in two volumes).

The second, and possibly more important, is that the Scottish Mountaineering Club published compleation lists (their spelling) for the important sets of Scottish hills. So it probably felt sensible to create registers covering "the rest of Great Britain". At least for Ireland we treated the island geographically rather than politically!


David Purchase
HR Recorder
Author: Bill Lancashire
Posted: Wed 19th Sep 2018, 16:19
Joined: 2003
Local Group: South Wales
I would be interested to hear the 'logic' for grouping the 2000ft tops of these two 'countries' together for the purpose of the LDWA register.

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