England has many hills (which are simply smaller than mountains). Although most mountains are in the northwest, hills are everywhere from the South Downs in the southeast to the Chilterns in the East of England. Many hills also have chalk horses, carved hundreds of years ago, although nobody knows why (mostly found in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire, with some in Sussex like the Long Man of Wilmington).
Ring the Hill is a book by Tom Cox written around and about hills. It includes a northern hill, a hill that never ends and teh smallest hill in England. Whether it’s a knoll, cap, cliff, tor or mere bump, it’s a starting one for one of Tom’s explorations:
A hill is not a mountain. You climb it for you, then you put it quietly inside you, in a cupboard marked ‘Quite a Lot of Hills’, where it makes its mark on who you are.
Everest England is a book by former road-protesting vicar Peter Owen-Jones. Climbing 29,000 feet in 12 days, this is a unique guide to 20 of Britain’s peaks, adding up to the exact heigh of Mount Everest in the Himalayas As this takes years of preparation and a minimum £25,000, this book allows readers to embark on their own personal ‘Everest’ without leaving England’s green and pleasant land. Under Peter’s spiritual guidance, the journey takes in sacred places on coastal walks, ancient holy sites, tors ,peaks, mountains and the highest church in England.
Author Peter Owen-Jones dropped out of public school age 16 to move to Australia and work as a farmhand. After returning to England, he began a mobile disco and worked in PR then (already married with two children) he became an Anglican priest, known in the 90s for conducting a service for Newbury bypass protestors. He has presented a BBC program where he lived without money, to follow in the footsteps of St Francis of Assisi.
