Kingston Upon Hull (1)

Walk Details:
Date: 4/12/2005
Total ascent: 1m/ 3ft
Total distance walked: 0.19 miles
Walk difficulty: 1/10
Enjoyment rating: 1.5/10
Best bits: Feeling of visiting a “secret” trig point
Worst bits: Dire traffic on the way there
Walkers: Anth, Jim
Car Parking: You can park freely on any of the roads in the nearby housing estate; the nearest access point to the trig point is on Western Gailes Way at TA 136 328.

Top details:
Name: East Mount
County top number: 108 of 205
Grid reference: TA 13578 32810 Map
Height above sea level: 11m/ 36ft
How nice was the top? 1/10
Views: 0/10
Description/Notes: East Mount vies with Bransholme for the title of highest point in the unitary authority of Kingston Upon Hull. The high point at East Mount is marked by a trig point.

The Walk:

Hull always seems to score rather well in polls to find the worst place in Britain. One of Jim’s friends used to live here, and he confirmed that on the whole it deserved its reputation. Personally, I’m sure that as with any large city, there are nice bits in Hull if you know where to look. One of these might well be the other thing the city is famed for – the Humber Bridge. It’s a nice enough bridge, but for Jim and I, who’d grown up near to the Severn Bridge, it was a bit small!

However, at least the traffic was moving on the bridge. Roadworks in central Hull seemed to have bought the city to a standstill; we were held up for a good 45 minutes. The roadworks looked fairly major – if it was this bad on a Sunday, rush hours in Hull must be hell! The delay meant that we were now unlikely to beat our record ten tops in a day, but we were still determined to get as many as we possibly could!

Hull is such a flat, low-lying unitary authority that the highest point is a matter of some dispute. The first option was a trig point in the middle of a modern housing estate on the east side of the city. The main road through the housing estate, Western Gailes Way, climbed quite significantly as we approached the spot. As we came to the place where the road ended on the maps obtained from www.streetmap.co.uk, we were surprised to see that those maps were already out of date. The housing estate now continued on for some distance. Fortunately they hadn’t built on the county top.

Just as the road reaches the crest of the hill and goes around a couple of bends, there are trees and a path off to either side. We took the path to the right and after a very short walk through woodland came to a trampled-down fence at the edge of a golf course. After a short search we found the trig point hidden behind trees at the