I’ve done a complete overhaul of the England and Wales Dewey 500m hill pages on the main site, accessed from the Hill Lists section, and a long and painstaking job it was. Previously they had an esoteric scheme for area identification that was inconsistent with the other lists and not intuitive, and it’s about time they were upgraded to the same level of functionality (as much for our own benefit in recording the information as anything else). Sifting through our trip logs to extract the information, we had walked quite close to some of the summits before we were aware of any lists that included them.
The most useful upgrade is the addition of the Trips column, to bring the Dewey lists into line with the Marilyns, Nuttalls etc., which cross-references the hills to trip reports that cover them. There is very little practical information online about these hills, at least for those that don’t happen to occur in a more popular list, and I’m hoping to expand our coverage this year, mainly in my solo backpacks. I sometimes use the Dewey overlay files for Memory Map (which can be downloaded from the main site) as a tool for generating routes to explore new areas, it gives a structure and theme to a backpack that can produce excellent results, such as the Central Howgills trip that was based on 6 new Dewey tops, a fine walk.
I know that relatively few people are interested in these 500m hills, which is understandable when not many walkers have the time or resources even to cover the more celebrated mountains, but for backpackers who have climbed all the higher peaks, many of them several times, and who are finding the popular walking areas wearing a bit thin, they have a great deal to offer. The photo shows Moel Meirch, one of the best summits anywhere. The splendidly wild regions of the Arenigs and mid Wales also spring to mind, having a generous quota of these hills and almost guaranteeing solitude for connoiseurs who don’t mind some rough stuff.
For completeness our current totals for some England and Wales lists including the Deweys are shown below (Scotland would be an embarrasment!).
Current Hill-Lists table
| List | Total | Ascents |
|---|---|---|
| England Mountains (Nuttalls) | 253 | 253 |
| Wales Mountains (Nuttalls) | 190 | 190 |
| England Marilyns | 179 | 111 |
| Wales Marilyns | 156 | 87 |
| England Deweys | 187 | 109 |
| Wales Deweys | 245 | 80 |
| AW tops | 214 | 214 |
2 Comments
excellent effort in listing these. I cant imagine having the patience to do something like that so hats off to you. It willbe of great interest and use to me in the near future! Cheers Dave (backpackbrewer)
Dave,
Patience and a lot of furious editing!. I started on the wrong foot with the hill listing strategy for the website: it should have been database-driven from the start. As it is, the lists are just flat HTML text but it’s too late now.
You should have some fine trips in these hills.