Twenty Six - Cardiff - Garth Hill (307m)

View down to Taff's Well

This is a lovely spot so close to the city, though incredibly windy on the day we were up there. It’s quite a pronounced “lump” so you can see why it was the inspiration for the book (and later film) “The Englishman who went up a hill but came down a mountain”.

Trig pillar at the top.

Visibility wasn’t great but on a clear day you can see Weston-Super-Mare and Devon across the Bristol Channel.

Cardiff city, the Bristol Channel, & the
Somerset coast just visible in the distance.

Twenty Five - Vale of Glamorgan - Pantylladron (137m)

Catching some rays! Sheep grazing
 under "solar farm" panels

We did get this a bit wrong – don’t follow the low walled stile with the yellow footpath sign (in the second photo), as the path you need for the “peak” is slightly to the right across the neighbouring field through a gate.

Gentle farmland rather
than rugged terrain!

A path took us alongside some solar panels and some obligingly photogenic sheep up to the highest point which is in the middle of the field. Not exciting, but quite easily done.

Trig pillar with St Hillary
TV mast in distance

Twenty Four - Newport - Wentwood (309m)

Trig pillar visible amongst
the felled conifer plantation

We parked at Cadira Beeches car park with lovely beech woods taking the place of scruffy pine plantations up here. There also seem to be lots of white van men here today – including a posse from Western Power tending to the comms mast and getting their 4x4 stuck in the mud in the process. But regardless, this is a nice walk and if it hadn’t have been getting dark we would have spent a bit more time wondering around these pretty woods.


J checking her bearings!

At the trig point there’s a great view across the Severn estuary, although today the visibility wasn’t great. No pub today – we have some shopping to do and work in the morning so promise ourselves a pint next weekend instead.

Bristol Channel & the Second Severn Crossing
just visible in the late afternoon mist

Twenty Three - Leicestershire - Bardon Hill (278m)

First sneak peak of what
lies ahead on the climb up

“Well I can safely say we would never have come here…”says W, as, in the East Midlands, far from home, we park the car on an out of the way housing estate. But actually this is quite impressive; we’re walking through woods and then up the side of what used to be a volcano.

Trig pillar at the highest point
of what remains of Bardon Hill

At the top, just beyond the trig pillar, peering into its crater, the dust is now emanating from a quarry. Apparently volcanic rock is just the thing for tarmacking roads.

The view beyond the trig point

Looking right down into the
quarry workings

Quite an impressive "hole"!

The sun came out as we watched the trucks and diggers charging about like a humungous toy set. I look at the nearby houses and wonder if this might be a good place for a window cleaning business.

Enormous Caterpillar trucks look like
kid's Tonka toys from this height!

Twenty Two - Swansea - Mynydd y Betws (373m)

Betws Wind Farm

Turbines in low autumn sun

This one was monumentally boggy – it started off on a tidy little track but eventually you have no choice but to strike out across the tussocks - though it is quite impressive to be quite so up close to the bottom of the turbines up here. We also got to scramble around the ruins of the medieval castle of Penlle'r Castell.

Walking directly below a turbine

View from highest point

Twenty One - Essex - Chrishall Common (147m)

Footpath marker

Highest point is a clearing the
other side of the woodland

Corner of field a few metres ahead
is approximate highest point

Church at the start and finish of walk

Twenty - Cambridgeshire - Great Chishill (146m)

Village sign -
highest in the county

Locked gates - highest point is just
inside - water board covered reservoir

View from in front of locked gates -
flat farmland not exactly  a summit!

Nineteen - Cheshire - Shining Tor (559m)

Cast iron footpath sign - with the main "Cat &
Fiddle" trans-Pennine road behind.

Errwood Reservoir

Looking back towards Pym Chair. Stone wall
marks boundary between Cheshire (LHS)
 and Derbyshire (RHS)

Looking back to Cat Tor. Flagstones make
going across the peaty bog much easier.

Step through the gate from Derbyshire and into
Cheshire. Trig point at Shining Tor adjacent
to the highest point in Cheshire.

Yikes! - Fine sentiment, but hardly rolls of the tongue! 

Stone plaque on the wall of the (unfortunately
closed) Cat & Fiddle Inn.

Eighteen - Staffordshire - Cheeks Hill (Axe Edge) (520m)

First of two highest points reached today. A fairly short uninspiring slog across boggy marshland (wet feet within three minutes of setting off) - but at least its another county-high crossed off! Misty and grey, but dry. For the first time ever, Taffy our Border Terrier wasn't with us, which as it happens was lucky - as dogs aren't allowed across the heathland due to ground-nesting birds.

Start of footpath across the bog -
("No dogs allowed").

The high point for Staffordshire is against the county border with Derbyshire at the north-western edge of the Peak District. Featureless with exception of dry-stone walls, the intersection of which forms a sheep fold at the highest point in Staffs.

Highest point - a sheep fold - where the
county boundary walls intersect.

Seventeen - Gloucestershire - Cleeve Hill (330m)

Pringle sweater in waiting! Slightly
 surreal golf course with grazing sheep.

Well this was a slightly weird one. Called in on the way back from visiting family in Norfolk, and Cleeve Common is a lovely spot, with views down into Cheltenham with its racecourse, and across to the Malvern Hills. We parked next to the golf club and as we ascended we negotiated a golf course, sheep, park benches and mushrooms. The hill is also known as Cleeve Cloud.



Lifting heavy rain clouds. The view across
the Vale of Evesham to the Malverns

However, to get to the summit (330m), you bear south west, away from the views and across a somewhat scrubby looking plateau, past a car park and some transmitters and then to the rather hollow prize of a nondescript looking trig point. Having done this, we cut straight back in the direction of the golf club (lots more scenery and sunshine now), and back to the car.

Transmitters near the summit

Trig pillar by barb wire fence. Bit of an anti-
climax after such good views on the climb up

Sixteen - Somerset - Dunkery Beacon - Exmoor (519m)

National trust sign -
Start of climb up to the beacon

This was a pretty easy walk – not really “on our way” home from our trip to Devon, but we decided to fit it in anyway. At 519m, the views from the top are amazing, and the walk up there doesn’t prepare you for the fact that the Beacon overlooks the Bristol Channel and that most of the south coast of Wales can be seen sparkling (or smouldering , in the case of Port Talbot) in the distance.

Well defined path to the large
stone mound at the top

Plaque at the beacon

At the summit is a large and sturdy cairn, perfect for climbing, with a memorial plaque commemorating the donation of the Beacon to the National Trust in 1932.

View from the top across the Bristol
 Channel to the South Wales Coast

Fifteen - Cornwall - Brown Willy (420m)

Showery Tor

The day before had been tumultuous rain and we’d had to resort to skulking in coffee shops and pubs in between dragging the dog (who seemed to have soaked up his entire body weight in water) around a variety of quaint Cornish villages. This was okay as far as it went, but one day was plenty, and we were pleased to get out in the sunshine and climb up to Rough (pronounced “Row”) Tor, via the sculptural Showery Tor and Little Rough Tor.

Little Rough Tor

It’s an excellent walk, dipping down from there and then up and onwards to glorious Brown Willy (420m), which is privately owned with permitted access. The farm and land have just been sold, and the Daily Mail in April were speculating that its new owner could be Prince Charles (so it must be true...)

Rough Tor

WWII memorial on Rough Tor



Trig pillar on Brown Willy
(although not highest point)

Large precarious cairn marks
highest point

We cut straight back to the car park via Showery Tor again and various groups of wild ponies. We got a bit sunburned on the way down, not having expected quite so much sunshine.

Wild ponies on Bodmin Moor

(In the afternoon we also walked from Tintagel to Trebarwith Strand for a pint at the Port William, and then back along the coast path, (making about 11 miles in total for the day),followed by a barbeque on the top decking at “our” cottage. Perfect.)