Archive - About Mountains

The World as Turnip

Happy 300th birthday to James Hutton, Scotland’s genius geologist. [1500 words, 6 mins

Jun 3 • Ronald Turnbull

May 2026

Lakeland vs Yorkshire Dales

Which of the two is more excellent? 1400 words 5 mins

May 27 • Ronald Turnbull

The Gentle Art of Getting Lost

If a hill’s worth going up, then it’s worth getting lost on… [1500 words 6 mins

May 20 • Ronald Turnbull

Chamber of Clouds

Ben Nevis, the only mountain ever to have earned a Nobel Prize. [1800 words 7 mins

May 13 • Ronald Turnbull

Lake District : happy 75th!

A birthday card traditionally has a picture on the front and an emotive little poem on the inside. So here’s a greeting to England’s best loved hill…

May 6 • Ronald Turnbull

April 2026

Photographic Developments

Taking pictures in the hills: impossible, of course, in the days of heavy glass-plate cameras. Except it wasn’t…

Apr 29 • Ronald Turnbull

Great Hell’s Gate and stairways to Heaven

Exploring the Infinite on the screes of Great Gable (899m) in the English Lake District [1100 words, 5 mins

Apr 22 • Ronald Turnbull

Rannoch Moor: the unsettling space right in the middle of Scotland

"Liminal" spaces: the in-between, the nowhere, you didn’t ought to be here in the first place. Except, how else are you going to get to Fort William…

Apr 15 • Ronald Turnbull

How pinky-brown was my valley

“Home is where one starts from,” says TS Eliot. Home in my case being the Permian-age New Red Sandstone of the valleys of southwest Scotland. [1800…

Apr 8 • Ronald Turnbull

No it isn’t Scafell Pike!

For almost 90 years, surveyors have been concealing the true high-point of England “for safety reasons”. [1200 words 5 mins

Apr 1 • Ronald Turnbull

March 2026

The King Charles Coast Path, which opened last Thursday, goes around the entire edge of Wales and England. [pictures and 1800 words, 7 mins

Mar 25 • Ronald Turnbull

The map of places

A poem by Laura Riding. One that’s altogether about long distance bivvy bagging in the rain. [900 words 3 1/2 min

Mar 18 • Ronald Turnbull

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