East Riding of Yorkshire

EAST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE: Bishop Wilton Wold (807 feet/246 metres)

54° 0′ 6″ N, 0° 45′ 2″ W

Typical for a Yorkshireman we grumbling about summit (forgive the awfully niche pun, specific to county tops in Yorkshire). Actually, I have two things to grumble about…

Historical Yorkshire had stood for nearly a thousand years, and because it was so bloody big, we divided it up into the North, West and East Ridings. In 1974, the government decided to shuffle things about and created the counties of North, West and South Yorkshire. Why? Just why? To create as much confusion as they could, they moulded much of the East Riding into a new county called Humberside. Thankfully in 1996, someone saw sense and the county known as “The East Riding of Yorkshire” was restored. So actually, while I had 22 years to grumble about this, everything’s now all right with the world, so moving quickly on…

The county top of the East Riding of Yorkshire is known as Bishop Wilton Wold or Garrowby Hill. It is a mere 246 metres above sea level, high above many counties, but over half a kilometre lower than Yorkshire’s very highest hill. Still, it is a nice hill with nice views. Indeed, the great Yorkshire artist David Hockney painted the view and “Garrowby Hill” now resides in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. I digress. At the top of this hill lives an Ordnance Survey trig point marked OSBM6296. Around that trig sits a great big bloody fence erected by Yorkshire Water. So if you go to the top of East Yorkshire, you’ll have to make do with the tumulus 30 metres to the East, and like I do, claim it’s higher, despite what the Ordnance Survey tells us.