Tag: Hills and mountains
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The trig pillar network: how Britain was measured
I mapped all 6,573 Ordnance Survey trig pillars and tested the rule they were built to: every station must see its neighbours. Using the surveyed station heights over a modern terrain model, 95% of neighbouring primary stations still can; random lines of the same length, 11%.
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Who’s on the mountains? The birthplaces of the people the world’s peaks are named after
I linked 2,228 mountains named after people to their namesakes’ birthplaces. 84% of the person-named peaks of Australia and New Zealand honour someone born on another continent.
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Britain’s sunless valleys
On the shortest day the sun barely clears the horizon, and hills hide it. I drew the winter sun across the skyline of every town and village in the UK: 64 get no direct sun at all on 21 December, and Kinlochleven goes 109 days without it.
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Giants in the landscape: did people explain big things with big people?
I gathered 331 giant places in Britain and Ireland, from Giant’s Graves to Gog Magog. Giants own graves, not mountains, and Ireland’s 212 Giant’s Graves are no bigger or more prominent than the tombs around them.
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Fire on the Hills: how fast could the Armada beacons carry the news?
I traced the lines of sight between 193 hills named for a beacon and lit a fire at the Lizard. On the names alone it never leaves Cornwall; fill the gaps and it reaches London in 9 hops.
