Our regional summit correspondent Angus Young went in search of a peak and accidentally discovered a secret sect.
There’s a very good reason why you don’t find many shops in Hull selling mountaineering gear or skiing equipment. That’s because the city is generally as flat as the proverbial pancake. With most of Hull only two to four metres above sea level, we’re not exactly talking nosebleed territory here. Compare and contrast with Ben Nevis in Scotland. The UK’s highest mountain is an impressively lofty 1,345 metres.
So just how naturally high can you get on foot in Hull without cheating by taking a lift up to the top floor of Hull Royal Infirmary, the city’s tallest building at 57 metres? The answer lies close to the 16th tee at Sutton Golf Club.
Installed in 1946, an odd-looking small stone pillar stands in a patch of woodland. It has nothing to do with golf but everything to do with an effort started before the Second World War to improve the accuracy of maps across Great Britain. The project was designed by the Ordnance Survey to unify the mapping of the country by merging and updating old local county-based systems into an improved national one.
It involved the installation of permanent marker stones recording a range of measurements at each site, including latitude, longitude and the height above sea level. Information about each location was also included on the stone itself. Known as triangulation, the system created precise geographical coordinates to be used as fixed points in ground-based surveying work required for mapping.
The roll-out of marker stones – known as triangulation or trig points – was completed in 1962, creating the Ordnance Survey National Grid which continued to be used for the next two decades when satellite-based global positioning systems took over.
These days, the old trig points are the subject of fascination among a group of people who call themselves Trig Hunters. They might or might not wear anoraks. As you might expect, they gather together on an online forum to swap stories about their attempts to find and log remote and half-forgotten trig points. (There’s a link to this cult in the supplementals below – Ed.)
Officially known as East Mount, the Sutton Golf Club pillar has its own station number (TA12/T23) and the various trig hunters who have visited the site and ticked it off their bucket list rate it as being in good condition.
As for the all-important height measurement, it stands a towering 11.2 metres above sea level. I’m told staff at the gold club are quite proud of their trig point and happily direct people in its general direction should they wish to see it up close. If you’re planning a visit, don’t forget to pack your altitude sickness tablets.