THREE hill-walking friends are 'thrilled' that they have helped reclassify a Yorkshire Dales hill as Britain's newest mountain.
By the tiny margin of just six millimetres, Calf Top, near Sedbergh, has nudged over the 2,000-feet threshold required for an official mountain.Back in 2010, when Myrddyn Phillips and his two fellow amateur surveyors measured the Cumbrian hill, it was declared to be 609.58 metres high - tantalisingly, a mere two centimetres below the 'magic' 609.6 metres/2,000 feet that is the benchmark height for mountains.
However, six years on, the Ordnance Survey has double-checked and verified the data with a new 'geoid' computer model and declared Calf Top to be 609.606 metres high - making the grade by six millimetres or less than a quarter of an inch.
"For this to happen six years later, there's a thrill involved and a little bit of excitement and a tremendous amount of satisfaction," said Myrddyn, 55, of Welshpool, Powys.
"Personally I quite like reclassification. I like change but that change needs to be based on fact. In 2010 when the OS processed our data and it was literally two centimetres below, I was resigned to the fact that was the height of the hill. At that stage you can't argue against that."read more
