Talk:List of mountains and hills of the United Kingdom

Top 10s

Surely any list of the highest mountains needs to define the basis on which a decision is made as to whether separate tops are separate mountains. Many would say that the only logical way to do this is on the basis of relative height, but if other criteria are used (distance separation, aesthetic merit, personal preference, "famousness", named on maps of a certain scale, or whatever) then those criteria should be indicated.

For example, England is currently listed as Scafell Pike, Sca Fell, Helvellyn, Skiddaw, Bowfell, Great Gable, Cross Fell, Pillar, Esk Pike, Fairfield.

Using the Hewitt list (relative height of at least 30m), the list would be Scafell Pike, Scafell, Helvellyn, Ill Crag, Broad Crag, Skiddaw, Great End, Bowfell, Great Gable, and Cross Fell. (This list then extends down to include all those on the current list, i.e. the current list is a subset of the Hewitt list.)

Using the Marilyn list (relative height of at least 150m), the list would be Scafell Pike, Helvellyn, Skiddaw, Great Gable, Cross Fell, Pillar, Fairfield, Blencathra, Grasmoor, St Sunday Crag. (This is a subset of the current list.)

This is not to say that either of these is better than the list currently given, or indeed that there is anything wrong with the current list itself, but without stating criteria or source, how can one understand the current lists or check they are correct?

StephenDawson 19:29, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think you're right - and I'd personally go with Marilyns. Same for Wales too. We can stick with the Munros for Scotland. We should have a note explaining the rationale behind the lists.

- Grinner 10:45, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

Finally got round to doing this. Grinner 16:02, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

moving to British Isles

For the same reasons given Talk:List of mountains and hills of the British Isles by height, and so that it shows up nicely with the others in the combined category.

--William Allen Simpson 02:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

But the British Isles inlcude the republic of Ireland. This page doesn't ; it is about the UK's mountains only. I would prefer it moved back. Grinner 11:28, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't all heights be given in feet?

The vast majority of fell walkers, ramblers, climbers in the UK all measure height of mountains in England, Scotland and Wales in feet, just as we measure road distance in miles and as we have done for many centuries. Measurement in feet is more accurate and precise than in metres as the unit is smaller and metres are never quoted in fractional terms only as whole units. Would it not be better to quote all these different height measurements of English, Welsh and Scottish peaks in feet instead of or as well as metres so that people from the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia etc who are still measuring a lot of things imperially or only recently converted to Metric system can also understand this not just people from continental Europe? John10001 (talk) 18:08, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I beg to disagree. As far as I know the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain has not published a map with contours and heights measured in feet since the 1970's. Conequently the majority of UK hillwalkers now think metric. Re precision, the error margin in UK contours and heights is typically about 2.5 metres so the extra precision would be of no consequence. Many maps (albeit not all) maps published by other English speaking countries are also now metric, so metric units are generally understood by people from these countries. Viewfinder (talk) 00:51, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm agree with Viewfinder here. It's not my experience that British walkers work in feet. I'm not aware of any British maps that still use feet. And if I look at the walking books I have next to me at the moment, some work exclusively in meters (e.g. SMC Munros book, SMC Corbetts book, Munro's tables, TACit tables when referring to drops, all O/S maps), others put the metric height first with the imperial one afterwards or in brackets (TACit tables for heights, RHB, Dewey's tables), some put the imperial first and the metric afterwards (Nuttalls, Butterfield) and one works solely in imperial units (Wainwright; I expect Poucher does too but I can't find him right now). Wainwright's books (and Poucher's too) are 40–50 years old and were published in a time when everyone was using feet, so I think we can ignore them. The rest? They either use both units or just meters. — ras52 (talk) 11:53, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

There's no reason why feet can't be used. It's the norm for the citizens of the UK in general, who are, by and large, more numerous and more important than those who choose to climb the mountains and hills.

It's our country, and our standard system of measurements should be used.

The reason why Ordnance Survey use the metric system is because we joined the forerunner of the EU in the 1970s and the State has been converting to metric ever since.

Getting Ordnance Survey to run things in parallel - and thus not alientate the largest proportion of the population of the UK - has so far proven impossible.

UK List

There is no reason to deliberately omit a list of the UK's peaks. The reason given on the page is flimsy at best. It isn't a reason, it's a half-hearted stab at justifying a fragmented list.

No other country - not Germany, , not Spain, not France, not Italy, not Australia, not Canada, etc - has their country broken up into sections.

The United Kingdom exists as a unit and Wikipaedia ought to acknowledge that fact more often than it currently does. At present it's treated differently than other countries, for no good reason at all, and to a considerable detriment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.240.91.189 (talk) 16:42, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Both units should surely be used. Imperial units are still legal tender as it were, and Munros for example are all mountain tops over 3000 feet. Conversion to strange numbers in metric just add confusion to the topic. I also think that Imperial should be quoted first followed by metric equivalents.Peterlewis (talk) 19:35, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, both units should appear in the article but otherwise I diasagree that the old system of imperial units should prevail. The UK government hasn't used the imperial system for any official length/height since the 1970s, with the rather odd exception of road distances on signposts (even though the official plans are drawn up in metric). Metrication in the United Kingdom is a long term and still onngoing project. Astronaut (talk) 14:03, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

This project seems to have run out of steam after the EC dropped its opposition to pints, yards and miles. The EU have other problems at the moment, I'm afraid and most UK citizens are more attuned to Imperial measure than the unfriendly metric system imposed by our friends in France (mainly). Imperial units are closer to human dimensions (inch = width of thumb, foot = length of foot etc), and mountains are much better measured in feet, as has long been established. Peterlewis (talk) 17:04, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Unfriendly? How are the units of ten of the metric system unfriendly when you have 10 fingers to count them on. To count the inches in a foot, you would need to use some of your foot as well, and only Jake the peg had the necessary three feet to measure a yard. The only reason "...most UK citizens are more attuned to Imperial measure..." is due to the slow pace of change and some daft die-hards clinging on to units that make no sense in the modern world (except in the USA where they can't even spell metre correctly). Astronaut (talk) 04:32, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

And I thought we had calculators in the modern world...feet for mountains is long established by the Munro system of classification of heights. Whatever happened to metric time (proposed by the French revolutionaries)? Presumably counting in 60s is also illogical amd thus must be abolished by the modern state. Peterlewis (talk) 07:22, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Tables

Is there a good reason why the tables are constructed using HTML rather then Wiki-markup? Astronaut (talk) 13:49, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

British Mountains

I just had to add a header for the Marilyns under the British Mountains section.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mountains_and_hills_of_the_United_Kingdom#Highest_mountains_in_England

I'm not sure why that was missing. Also, is there a particular reason relative height for Scafell Pike under this same section is blank?

Kaos-Industries (talk) 04:01, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

Poorer duplication of Lists of mountains and hills in the British Isles

This article is a poorer version of Lists of mountains and hills in the British Isles. The other article is more detailed, covers almost all mountain definitions and known lists, and serves as a gateway to the bigger lists for each definition. This article only has some definitions, smaller lists, and is not needed in my view. Also, when heights of mountains are updated, they will probably not be adjusted on this page, only on the main pages with the full lists. Britishfinance (talk) 23:22, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

I have created a new article List of British Isles mountains by height which gives a list of 2,700 British Isles mountains properly sourced and referenced which I think should now replace this article. Because of this article's uncertain sourcing and prominence criteria, it is not useable. Also, these databases of British Isles mountains get updated every year or so (prominence is a very difficult metric to measure accurately, and is constantly being revised), so having a highly formatted table with "flags" and links for each mountain is not a good idea for a stable long-term article. I suggest we delete or redirect this article to the new one. Britishfinance (talk) 15:56, 8 October 2018 (UTC)