Trig Points: On the Track of the Permanent Fell-Walk

Completing the Points trilogy, Trig Points sees Mick Harney's further exploration of the fells, revealing more of their physical character and the nature of his personal interactions with them.

It is easy to take place names as given and timeless. Here, they become tools for opening up the deep history and detailed landscape of fells and their locations. Trig Points shows how each derivation creates a unique Namescape.

Mick pursues and completes his second round of Alfred Wainwright's list of the fells. In doing so, he devises Signature Walks where the purpose of a day's expedition is to link together several fells, creating a harder challenge that draws out new relationships between the tops across a wider area. Described in detail, the routes are offered for anyone to share.

Closing the history of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Keswick, this account tells of his growth as a fell-walker and mountaineer, uncovering his pioneering walks on Helvellyn and Scafell. It is overlain with his fraught descent into drug addiction, struggling with the binaries of success and perceived failure.

We may think we know the height of a mountain and the distance to the summit, but Trig Points examines the intriguing surprises about how we calculate those values. Likewise, it looks afresh at the interactions we have on the fells…and not just with people.

In the end, the book shows how all fuse into a flow; into the rolling continuity of the permanent fell-walk.