hiking & trekking
12 best hikes in the Peak District National Park
The best hikes in the Peak District National Park showcase some of England’s finest and most accessible hillwalking countryside When we made our move to the country, we very nearly ended up in the Peak District. It was a toss-up between there and the Yorkshire Dales, but in the end, the pull of the Dales was just a touch too strong. The Peak District, however, came a very close second. Wedged between the northern cities of Manchester and Sheffield, the Peak District National Park may well be England’s most accessible wilderness. Britain’s first national park is an idyllic landscape with a vast range of natural beauty. The occasionally bleak but eternally beautiful Pennine countryside boasts dramatic waterfalls, deep dales, rocky crags, quaint market towns and cosy villages seemingly untouc...
12 best hikes in Northumberland National Park
The best hikes in Northumberland National Park reveal an underappreciated but utterly delightful expanse of English countryside Amid the ancient rolling hills between the Scottish border and England’s industrial northeast, you will find Northumberland National Park. England’s most northerly national park is also the least visited in Britain and the least populated in England and Wales with just over 2,000 residents. Covering an area of 1,049km2, this rugged, isolated landscape is best known for the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hadrian’s Wall that slices across England’s countryside from coast to coast. But there is more to Northumberland than ancient milecastles and crumbling forts. This timeless landscape is home to the rolling Cheviot Hills straddling the Anglo-Scottish border; the UK’s...
12 best hikes in the Yorkshire Dales National Park
The best hikes in the Yorkshire Dales National Park criss-cross one of England’s finest beauty spots In the 18 months since our move to the market town of Richmond in North Yorkshire, we’ve spent much of our free time exploring the national park that sits on our doorstep. Whether discovering the best views or climbing the highest mountains, we’ve fallen utterly in love with the landscape of the Dales. Covering 2,179km2 of countryside, the Yorkshire Dales National Park is home to one of England’s quintessential outdoor landscapes. The park’s glacial valleys are defined by a unique terrain of high heather moorland, rolling hills and dramatic waterfalls, intersected with miles of dry stone walls and delightful villages. With miles of well-established trails, the Dales are best ...
Climbing the seven summits: a route to the top
Climbing the seven summits – the highest mountain on every continent – is an improbable dream of mine… but that’s the beauty of dreams I have always loved trekking and climbing. I usually spend several weeks of any given year on the grades of the Scottish Highlands or Welsh Snowdonia or ideally further afield such as the Arctic Circle Trail in Greenland or the K2 base camp trek in Pakistan. It was one of these trekking trips – to Tanzania in 2010 – that ignited something new inside me. It was while climbing Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, that an idea, an ambition, began to formulate. My hobby deepened into passion and I realised that I wanted to achieve something great: to climb the seven summits, the highest mountain on every continent. Mountain Continent Altitude Tech....
How much does it cost to climb the seven summits?
Our resident mountaineer and would-be seven summiteer crunches the numbers on how much it will cost to climb the seven summits How much does it cost to climb the seven summits? About $180,000 USD give or take $10k. Climbers could significantly reduce costs by foregoing luxuries, cutting corners and taking (even more) risks to get that figure below $100,000, but I do not recommend this and certainly won’t be taking such unnecessary risks. I arrived at the above figure by looking at five established international mountain guiding companies based in the USA, UK and New Zealand. I compiled their prices for climbing all the seven summits (using the same routes where possible) and calculated the average: $162,139. There are then the costs of airfares and equipment to factor in. Flights, of cours...
