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| The new cartographers: making mountains out of hills | The new cartographers: making mountains out of hills |
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| When hillwalkers Graham Jackson and John Barnard had climbed every hill over 2,000ft in England and Wales – the traditional demarcation of a mountain – they wondered what could spice up their weekend walks. So the former ICI colleagues set about measuring them instead. | When hillwalkers Graham Jackson and John Barnard had climbed every hill over 2,000ft in England and Wales – the traditional demarcation of a mountain – they wondered what could spice up their weekend walks. So the former ICI colleagues set about measuring them instead. |
| The amateur cartographers clubbed together to buy surveyor-grade GPS equipment for £10,000 and began targeting hills just below – or above – the magic 2,000ft mark. With mountaineering friend Myrddyn Phillips, this spring they climbed Thack Moor, a summit on the Pennines in Cumbria put at 609m (1,998ft) on the official Ordnance Survey maps, and discovered it was actually 609.62m – sneaking into mountain territory by 2cm. | The amateur cartographers clubbed together to buy surveyor-grade GPS equipment for £10,000 and began targeting hills just below – or above – the magic 2,000ft mark. With mountaineering friend Myrddyn Phillips, this spring they climbed Thack Moor, a summit on the Pennines in Cumbria put at 609m (1,998ft) on the official Ordnance Survey maps, and discovered it was actually 609.62m – sneaking into mountain territory by 2cm. |
| With the rise of OpenStreetMap, the brilliant and constantly improving Wikipedia of maps, we are all cartographers now. Created by University College London graduate Steve Coast, who gathered the first data by cycling around Regent's Park with a GPS in 2004, OpenStreetMap has been drawn up by millions of map geeks around the world. | With the rise of OpenStreetMap, the brilliant and constantly improving Wikipedia of maps, we are all cartographers now. Created by University College London graduate Steve Coast, who gathered the first data by cycling around Regent's Park with a GPS in 2004, OpenStreetMap has been drawn up by millions of map geeks around the world. |
| With this amateur army of cartographers and dedicated walkers such as Jackson, Barnard and Phillips, do we need the Ordnance Survey any more? Even though Jackson is busy correcting the heights of mountains given by our OS maps – turning Mynydd Graig Goch in Snowdonia into a mountain five years ago – he insists that the government's mapping agency cannot be replaced by amateurs. "We're certainly not replacing the Ordnance Survey," says Jackson. "We provide three or four changes to maps in a year, whereas the OS upgrades and updates its maps with hundreds of thousands of changes every year." | With this amateur army of cartographers and dedicated walkers such as Jackson, Barnard and Phillips, do we need the Ordnance Survey any more? Even though Jackson is busy correcting the heights of mountains given by our OS maps – turning Mynydd Graig Goch in Snowdonia into a mountain five years ago – he insists that the government's mapping agency cannot be replaced by amateurs. "We're certainly not replacing the Ordnance Survey," says Jackson. "We provide three or four changes to maps in a year, whereas the OS upgrades and updates its maps with hundreds of thousands of changes every year." |
| Ordnance Survey remaps every part of Britain at least once every five years. Given this Herculean task, it measures ordinary hills via aeroplanes and aerial photography, which only give an accuracy of +/- 3 metres on heights. (Ordnance Survey does use more accurate measuring where required, such as on flood plains for example.) Ordinary hand-held GPS can pinpoint a location within a similar level of accuracy but surveyor grade-GPS can get to within 5cm. And surveyor-grade GPS still relies on the Ordnance Survey – and its 120 base stations around the country, which are a modern version of the old concrete trig points you still see on high points in the landscape. | Ordnance Survey remaps every part of Britain at least once every five years. Given this Herculean task, it measures ordinary hills via aeroplanes and aerial photography, which only give an accuracy of +/- 3 metres on heights. (Ordnance Survey does use more accurate measuring where required, such as on flood plains for example.) Ordinary hand-held GPS can pinpoint a location within a similar level of accuracy but surveyor grade-GPS can get to within 5cm. And surveyor-grade GPS still relies on the Ordnance Survey – and its 120 base stations around the country, which are a modern version of the old concrete trig points you still see on high points in the landscape. |
| When Jackson, Barnard and Phillips measured Thack Moor, they subsequently needed to consult the Ordnance Survey, which used its superior software to refine their readings to within 2cm. With this expertise, the OS confirmed that Jackson and Barnard had discovered Britain's newest mountain. | When Jackson, Barnard and Phillips measured Thack Moor, they subsequently needed to consult the Ordnance Survey, which used its superior software to refine their readings to within 2cm. With this expertise, the OS confirmed that Jackson and Barnard had discovered Britain's newest mountain. |
| The mountain-makers' next target is Illgill Head, another 1,998ft fell at Wastwater in the Lake District. By targeting summits either side of the 2,000ft mark, there is always the risk they will downgrade a mountain to a hill. Jackson admits that it is much more fun to add, rather than subtract height. "We get a particular pleasure from seeing things promoted rather than relegated to a lower division," he says. | The mountain-makers' next target is Illgill Head, another 1,998ft fell at Wastwater in the Lake District. By targeting summits either side of the 2,000ft mark, there is always the risk they will downgrade a mountain to a hill. Jackson admits that it is much more fun to add, rather than subtract height. "We get a particular pleasure from seeing things promoted rather than relegated to a lower division," he says. |
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