Читать книгу Great Mountain Days in the Pennines. 50 classic hillwalking routes онлайн

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The original intention of including at least one mountain in every route was thwarted, partially by the nature of the terrain, but mainly by a desire to ensure that worthwhile lower-level routes were not pushed out by the need to tick off even the dullest of summits. In any case, the Pennines boast remarkably few ‘mountains’, with barely 80 summits higher than 600m. The walks in this book do, however, visit 19 of the 32 Marilyns – summits with a relative height of 150m (492ft) in relation to its surroundings, regardless of actual height – in the area covered by this book. There are just two Marilyns in the Dark Peak, two in the Howgills, three in the Southern Pennines, five in the Northern Pennines and 20 in the Yorkshire Dales. Embracing mountain summits in every route in this guide was always going to be difficult but among the moors and valleys of the Pennines there has been no shortage of terrain with a mountainous feel to explore.

In choosing the walks, the defining criteria was the Pennine watershed. The watershed, if defined literally, is a fine imaginary line that would divide in two a drop of rain falling on it, sending half to the North Sea in the east and the other half to the Irish Sea in the west. The nature of the watershed, which turns out to be nothing like as fine as that dividing line, is admirably described in Andrew Bibby’s book The Backbone of England (see ssss1).