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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The RHoB Saved My Life, 4 Sep 2002
Alan Dawson's book saved my sanity when I moved from Scotland to the English Midlands. I had assumed there was nothing to climb in England, and, having walked all the munros, I thought my walking career was over, but this was not the case - just entering a new phase. The Relative Hills of Britain gave me the spur I needed to go visit some nondescript lumps and Penine moorlands, as well as some beautiful places like the Lleyn Peninsula or the Lake District. I learned new skills of farmer dodging, back-road navigation, and rudimentary Welsh, and learned to appreciate the less wild and more rural charms of areas like Shropshire and Worcestershire. Sitting on the abrupt lump of The Wrekin with a golden sunset, looking out over a wide range of tilled and lived in countryside, the Malverns, Welsh borders, Wenlock Edge, Cotswolds, and even Chilterns in view, soaking in the lines of human history etched everywhere on the landscape, and breathing the air clean of smog, may not match a Highland peak, but it is better than sitting in Birmingham of a winter weekend and is a pleasure I would have missed out on if I didn't have Alan's book. It is my one regret that I moved back north without completing Section 42: South East England, but, thems the breaks. Now I am back I can concentrate on Corbetts, Grahams, and other interesting but lower hills and islands, all of them detailed in this book. As well as the meat of the book, which is a region-by-region guide to the British hills with an all round 500ft drop *despite their total height*, there are interesting discussions on Remotest Hill, Easiest, Most Spectacular View, Most Boring, etc. And as the hills sometimes change height as the Ordnance Survey update their maps, there are regular updates on the book's website... The only possible complaint is that the pictures are taken by Alan himself, and are of the hillwalking enthusiast rather than the coffee table variety - but this is not a book for looking at - it is a book for using up the hills. And in this it works very well indeed.
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