New Years Day 2009 and the Great Bagging Hunt begins

January 1, 2009 Ronan

What gives more pleasure than poring over maps, drawing up lists, slipping on one’s hiking boots, and ticking boxes over a warm hot chocolate?

“Peak bagging” is what we Brits call the activity in which hikers attempt to reach the top of a collection of peaks. There are popular lists such as the Munro’s (Scottish peaks over 3000ft) and the Wainwrights (Lake District mountains described by A. Wainwright, esq). Not wishing to be beholden to other men’s lists, I drew-up my own and am taking great pleasure in ticking them off.

More on these lists anon, but for now, here’s just one: the historic county tops of England and Wales. These are the highest points in each of the “historic” counties, by which I mean places such as Merionethshire and Caernarvonshire rather than, say, the “new” boundary of Gwynedd (Wales). Some of these tops are ridiculously low, like Boring (sic) Field in Huntingdonshire (80m!), but the pleasure is more in the project than in the actual hike. By my reckoning, there are 55, more do-able than the 3,142 county peaks in the US. I’ve done some of them before, but we’re going to do these as a family. We did the Worcestershire Beacon in October; today we “bagged” Bardon Hill in Leicestershire. At 278m, it is but a bump on the Midland wolds, but at -2C, the challenge was simply to keep warm.