PEAKS OF PERFECTION
James Forrest nominates his top fi ve best mountains in England and Wales
E
ver since I completed the ‘Nuttalls’ in a record-breaking
time, people have been asking me the same thing:
what were the best mountains; which peaks were your
favourite; if you could only climb one mountain again
which would it be? (The ‘Nuttalls’ are a list of 446 mountains
in England and Wales over 2000ft in height, named after
long-standing OWPG members John and Anne Nuttall, who
fi rst compiled the list.)
I fi nd it really diffi cult to pick out my favourites. So many
factors aff ected my enjoyment of each walk: the weather
(it’s diffi cult to fully appreciate a peak when you’re being
battered by dire conditions and the views are non-existent),
my mood (was I feeling tired, fatigued and miserably wet at
the time or inspired, motivated and happy?), and a myriad
of other features such as luck, wildlife, fellow hikers, the
proximity of roads, the weight of my bag, my wild camping
set-up, the presence or lack of mobile phone reception, the
quality of the paths, and the number of syrupy fl apjacks in
1
HOPEGILL HEAD
Lake District
770m
Prominent on the skyline near
my home, I always feel like
Hopegill Head is calling me to
the mountains. Don’t tick it off
via the Coledale Horseshoe like
so many do; climb it from High
Lorton and enjoy a glorious
scramble on slabs of bare rock
to the summit.
6 Outdoor focus | spring 2018
my rucksack. Then there are my personal preferences: I tend
to love dramatic mountains, favouring crags, cliff s, exposed
summits, and razor-sharp ridges to rounded, grassy hills; and
I’m drawn to wild, remote, rugged places rather than tourist
treadmills.
Consequently I’m sure I think negatively about some
mountains simply because it rained on the misty summit
when I was there. On another day I might have loved it.
Similarly, I perhaps have a rose-tinted, overly positive view
of other peaks simply because the sun shined, or I saw a
rainbow, or I had it all to myself, or I stumbled across an epic
wild camping spot. The conclusion? That any list of the ‘best’
mountains is inevitably subjective and biased. But, with that
proviso now in place, I’m not going to sit on the fence. So
here it goes...I climbed all 446 mountains in England and
Wales and these are (in my opinion) the best fi ve. What are
your favourites?