Tiny Hill Appreciation

Panoramic view from a tiny hill, Sleat, Isle of Skye, October 2020

A hill bagger is a wonderful thing when you are chronically ill and still want to get out in the great outdoors. Not for them, the vague query "would you like to go out for a walk?" No, if you go out with a hill bagger they will know precisely which hill they wish to summit, where it is, where they will park, how long the walk is, and how steep the climb. Of course, not any hill bagger will do - if their sights are set on the lofty peaks - the Munros, the Corbetts and so on - they are no use at all. What you want is a hill bagger who collects Tumps. A Tump, for the uninitiated, is a hill with 30 metres of prominence - that is a drop of 30 metres on all side. There are approximately 17,000 of these in Britain. No one is ever going to climb them all, but a Tump bagger is always keen to check another one off his list. And as road builders do not restrict roads to the very lowest parts of valleys, the walk from a car can be as little as a metre or two. Some even have paved paths to the summit. 

I met my hill bagger, Nick, in 2018. Thanks to his encyclopedic knowledge of exactly what any prospective hill involves, I have been to more summits in the last two years than I could ever have imagined would be possible. Having had ME for almost a decade, I had come to a sad acceptance that outdoor pursuits were no longer for me. How wrong I was! Together we formed the Tiny Hill Appreciation Society and are on a mission to find and climb the most accessible hills of Britain.  

For those not blessed with a numerically obsessed hill bagger, this blog will detail the best hills we have climbed, complete with as much empirical data as you could wish, and various subjective opinions on the merits of the hill, the walk and the view. No walk will be longer than 5k and most will be significantly shorter. They will usually involve some kind of summit: often, but not always, a Tump. We may occasionally branch out into trig points (always worth checking out because they are often near roads and were built to have good views) and even the occasional flat walk. Because the important thing is getting out there and exploring new places. Adventure awaits: you just have to make sure you are working on the right scale!

Rosaidh and Nick on their first tump bagging outing, April 2018

Dedicated to everyone with a love of the outdoors, but especially my fellow spoonies and hill walkers under the age of 5. I hope you find it useful!