Things change because someone repeats a measurement and finds the old one was wrong.
The UK uses the RHB list. That’s how it was designed from the start. Other associations use other lists where available. Or it’s done by the summits team and the AM and their team.
The RHB have some guys who like checking if things are accurate on OS maps. Mapping is an amazing approximation of reality and so they find errors and publish new lists of summits.
We change our summits to match.
EDIT: in this case, the RHB have decided an old manmade hill now looks sufficiently like a natural hill that they don’t consider it manmade and hence have moved the top.
“Once the spoil heap has settled and been deemed safe to use…”
You make it sound like I will need to strap a plank across my backside in case I fall in! I don’t really think that is likely. After all, ground within the OA land has received the same treatment and I can’t see that they would stabilise that area and not the remainder. However, I will make an assessment of the condition of the ground and take photographs.
In my opinion the arguments for /against changing from LD-055 to LD-059 and DC-004 to DC-008 are not the same. The two summits in the Lakes are both natural and separated by low point that is greater than the AZ figure. This is no different to changes made in G/NP some years ago and in many other places within and outside the UK.
Technically Hensbarrow Beacon as DC-004 should never have existed because since the inception of both SOTA and the RHB the spoil heap has always been higher. However, I can see that Hensbarrow Beacon served a useful purpose in that it was (is) the highest truly natural point and rightly or wrongly the RHB made the decision to use it as the summit of what is a Marilyn any way that you look at it.
The situation at Hensbarrow is possibly unique in England, if not in Great Britain where RHB data is used to determine the SOTA summits. It would have been better had the RHB cleared the new summit information with the Ordnance Survey before publically declaring the change. It would not have been open to debate had that been the case and we might have been fortunate enough to have OS data with contours on it.
I’ll pass on your comments to Alan at the RHB telling him how he should conduct RHB activities in future so as to ensure everything meets with your approval.
Do what want to do Andy, but as Ordnance Survey are THE people who determine the mapping for Great Britain, then they out rank RHB. No ifs, no buts. Get real.
When I was young there were many colliery waste tips in South Wales. On 21-10-66 there was a catastrophic failure of a tip above Aberfan, an avalanche of fluidised waste engulfed the village, there were 144 deaths, of which 116 were children. Since then the tips have been removed or stabilised and landscaped. The point is that it was realised that spoil heaps were not safe because they were not solid, just great mounds of unconsolidated waste, and they had to be made safe. Imagine them, if you like, as great pyramids of scree. Now if you look at the OS maps or Google maps, you will see that Hensbarrow is surrounded by several huge pits - and I mean HUGE! There was always the possibility that material from the tips could be used to fill the inactive pits so the area could be restored, so until the decision was made and the tip made safe and landscaped it had to be regarded as a temporary feature.
You see, it wasn’t enough that the tip should be higher than the Beacon, the tip could not be regarded as a summit until it was made safe and its permanence assured. Therefore I believe that the RHB made the right decision originally and I hope that they have made the right decision now.
Who of my age in Great Britain hasn’t heard of Aberfan? I remember the very day it happened. Thankfully Hensbarrow is not in the same category… had it been, there would never have been OA land within a couple of hundred metres of what is now the highest point and access to and indeed Hensbarrow Beacon itself might have been out of bounds. The principles behind your comments are fine, just don’t get this out of proportion.
Me, too, Gerald, my father came from Bargoed, not far from Aberfan, his father and brothers were miners, I grew up having that area as a holiday destination so you can imagine the impact. Several years later I was helping with a program to find ways of using colliery waste from the area as a building material - it was remarkably corrosive due to oxidising sulphides. Later I did some work on material from china clay tips, it was much more amenable being mostly silica with some micas and tourmaline. It could be used with snowcrete to make fine white concrete, but if all the tip was like the samples that I worked on then it was little more than a ruddy great pile of sand. After this long a time I cannot remember which tip it was, but I suspect they would all be similar. Frankly I would not set foot on any unstabilised tip unless I had a reassuring geotechnical survey report in my hand!
The RHB advises the OS of its survey results, and the OS accepts this information, using it in subsequent updates of its mapping. The RHB crowd is not a bunch of pirates making stuff up for its own amusement, it is a highly respected group of experts that is part of the process for updating our national mapping.
I think it is rather bad form to disrespect them just because one or two of their latest findings may cause a little inconvenience.
What baffles me is why people are getting uppity about what is a marvellous excuse for a little holiday to Cornwall, and another to Cumbria! Come on guys, this is a WIN - WIN situation
I agree, I love Cornwall and will be there the last week in April, Hensbarrow is on the itinary, I can’t imagine why I haven’t done it before! Now, of course, I have all the excuse I need for another visit to get the new summit! And another trip to one of the meaderies…
Well if the RHB are so well respected at the OS, why is this not reflected in Glyn’s report? My comments are not meant to be disrespectful. I just don’t think that the situation is clear as it should be… but then purely as end users of the RHB information, I suppose there is a reticence to question.
It’s perfectly clear. While the tip above Hensbarrow Beacon was being worked, it was not classified as natural terrain. Now the work has stopped, and Hensbarrow Down is considered to be part of the topography. That’s clear enough to me.
In fact it’s even clearer than that. G SOTA, like the OS, uses surveying results from RHB/DoBH to keep up to date. In the latest update, Hensbarrow Beacon is no longer a Marilyn summit, and has been superceded by Hensbarrow Down. How much clearer does it need to be?
While that may be true in general life, section 2.1 of the G ARM makes it pretty clear that the SOTA summit definitive guide for Britain is RHB. That decision was made by our Dear Leader G3WGV back in 2003, so it’s about as close to Moses-on-Sinai as SOTA gets
Well it is perfectly clear to me Tom. The assistant has released information before the boss has ratified it. By choice SOTA follows the assistant… if you are happy with that then so be it. I just find it strange that in this instance the boss does not appear to know what the assistant is doing.
Well I’m sure the AM will be happy to bow to your superior knowledge of what the “boss” (ridiculous term!) knows. I am equally sure that the good people at RHB will be suitably chastened by your authoritative criticism.
