According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, to ‘Get The Hump’ means:

to get upset and annoyed with someone because you think they have done something bad to you

OK, so who has annoyed me enough to write a blog about them? Well, no one, in fact this blog is about a totally different Hump!

Humps (or HuMPs) are hills of any height with a drop of 100 metres or more on all sides The name HuMP stands for HUndred Metre Prominence and was originally proposed by Mark Jackson. So why is that relevant?

For many getting outside for a walk is all that they need. However, there are a group of people, and think I am one of them, that love to tick lists. Whether it is a ‘Bucket List’ or the Wainwrights/Munros. Whilst the act of ticking lists may, to some, seem pointless, it does constitute a form of motivation and something to strive for.

Over the years I have ticked off Wainwrights, Munros, Marilyns and County Highs. In fact, it goes back to my childhood days when I collected Cub/Scout badges, stamps and anything else that constituted a collection. Whether it was the collecting of physical objects or the ticking off of hills and trig Pillars, each act was one of setting a challenge and using it to motivate myself to succeed.

For those interested in the different designations for the hills and mountains of the UK, then a great place to start is the ‘Hill Bagging’ website – the online version of the Database of British and Irish Hills’. This site is a great resource allowing you to define a type of hill and an area. If you register, you can also log the hills as you climb them.

Having exhausted all of the Marilyns and given up looking for any Munros or Wainwrights in the South Downs!! The next challenge was to tackle the Humps. There 2982 in the UK and 440 in England, of which there are 37 in the Southeast. In fact, the only place you will not find a HuMP is East Anglia!

For those of us who do not wish to, or are unable to, get to the ‘big’ hills of the Peaks, Dales and Lakes the HuMPs give us the opportunity to have a ‘tick list’ that we can steadily work through. A large majority of these are accessible with public transport which makes them more inclusive than many of the Marilyns, Wainwrights or Munros.

For the even more adventurous, or those with too much time on their hands, why not try bagging all the Tumps. Tumps are hills of any height with a drop of 30 metres or more on all sides The name Tump stands for Thirty & Upward Metre Prominence. The Tumps comprise over 17.000 in the UK with 281 in my region, the Southeast!

So whether you have run out of Trig Pillars to tick off, or there are too few Marilyns near you (only 14 near me). Then why not consider ‘ticking off’ the Humps and Tumps in your locality. I my humble opinion, it beats the hell out of collecting stamps and it gets you out of the house and exploring your own neighbourhood.