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Goldenslack, Macclesfield (Google Maps).jpgSee all of the cols and passes of the British Isles (on a map)
Back in 2016, we reviewed Cols and Passes of the British Isles by Graham Robb. He’s now released the data, so you can go and take a look at ’em all on a map.
The first thing to note is that a col does not equate to a climb – it is actually the lowest crossing of a ridge.
The Col du Tourmalet is the saddle between two peaks, not the summit of a mountain, and the same principle applies (albeit on a smaller scale) here in the UK. According to Robb, a col 'provides the most efficient route from one valley to the next'.
Because there is a precise geographical definition, the catalogue is therefore not a personal selection of climbs but a complete list of such features.
It makes for an interesting alternative to categorised Strava segments and the like and gives you a different way of appreciating your local landscape (except maybe in the large parts of the country where there aren’t any cols).
To view the map, you’ll need to do a bit of copy-pasting.
First, head to colsandpasses.com and open the relevant Word doc midway down the page (cols and passes of England, Wales, Scotland or Ireland).
Next, head to GPS Visualizer and remove ‘desc’ from the ‘Or paste your data here’ box. After that, paste in the contents of the Word doc, click ‘Draw the map’ and you’re away.
The paperback version of Cols and Passes of the British Isles is due out in April.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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36 comments
Yes, look how clever and funny you all are BUT...has anyone tried to make the map?!
When I follow the instructions in this article I get the following error "No valid GPS data detected!" on the GPS Visualizer website.
@Alex Bowden Did you actually try this? Maybe thats why there was no screen shot of the map it creates?!
I can only get it to work if I put each coordinate in, one at a time.
If I cut and paste the whole lot in, say, for Pembrokshire, then I get the same error you did. If I delete the names, then I get a GPS trail joining them in some random way.
It needs a bit of work. You can't cut/paste straight from the file.
1. Download <country>.doc
2. Delete all the headings, the text at the top etc etc. and all the blank lines, so that you end up with something like this:
Col de Germanic/Saxon/Norse Hill,123.89, -456.23
Pas de la Gaelic Placename, 23.27, -12.98
3. Insert a line at the top with the following text: name, latitude, longitude
4. Select all, and paste into the relevant field on GPSVisualiser
5. Press "Go" or whatever the button is labelled.
If you only want a particular county, you can cut/paste the relevant points into the box and then just add the headings (name,latitude,longitude) in the box on the webpage
Thank you Sir!
Road.cc is free so we should not expect the journalistic standards to be high
[/quote]
It needs a bit of work. You can't cut/paste straight from the file.
1. Download <country>.doc
2. Delete all the headings, the text at the top etc etc. and all the blank lines, so that you end up with something like this:
Col de Germanic/Saxon/Norse Hill,123.89, -456.23
Pas de la Gaelic Placename, 23.27, -12.98
3. Insert a line at the top with the following text: name, latitude, longitude
4. Select all, and paste into the relevant field on GPSVisualiser
5. Press "Go" or whatever the button is labelled.
If you only want a particular county, you can cut/paste the relevant points into the box and then just add the headings (name,latitude,longitude) in the box on the webpage
[/quote]
On the other hand, this thread does contain some real linguistic history. Surely the first time that 'self-deprecating' and 'Yorkshire' have been used in the same sentence.
I'm not overly bothered with it. As above there are plenty of differing 'English' words for hill. Cyclists have called hills, roads, routes strange things for years. There's a small lump near Ashdown Forest that some riders call 'The Wall' ffs, and some mountain bikers assign all sorts of comedy names to bits of track that have been known by other names for decades.
The only pseudo-French bollocks to get bothered about is the abysmally-named 'Etape du Dales'. Not only pseudo-French, but incorrect pseudo-French.
And whilst I'm no fan of Verity, I'd just like to point out that pseudo-French bullshit hill names preceded the 2014 Tour and his 'spin machine' - in stage 1 of the 2007 Tour de France, the following 'categorised' climbs were featured:
Côte de Southborough (130m), Côte de Goudhurst (130m), Côte de Farthing Common (187m).
I'm quite partial to his brother, Billy:
"Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do. Go through his clothes and look for loose change."
Hill
col = bealach (if you are scottish). E.g. Bealach na ba in Applecross (pass of the cattle, or col du la vache, if you are a posseur)
And if you use that word, do ask someone with at least a passing knowledge of Gaelic who to pronounce it. For many Scots, that probably means finding the nearest Irish person.
I cringe every time I hear it pronounced "Bee-lack".
Graham Robb is a superb writer. All his books are worth reading, and the fact that he's cycled every inch of France while researching them just makes them better. I go out of my way to visit some of the places he describes when I cycle in France.
It's hilarious how pervasive the influence of the spin machine around the grand depart in Yorkshire has been. We have plenty of British words for hills; edges, banks, pikes, fells, twms or twmps (the probable origin of the Tumble, the climb from Abergavenny up to Keepers Pond that featured on the ToB the other year) and more besides.
So why bother with this pseudo French bollocks? It's embarassing...
Most of those in Scotland have gaelic names.
I don't get too upset with Col as we have just proved the terms used in the UK vary greatly across the country. I actually like that difference. By choosing something that doesn't fit any area we are maybe just pissing us all off equally.
it's not 'a spin machine', it's self-deprecating Yorkshire humour; saying Cote de Buttertubs in a Yorkshire accent is a way of being anti-pretentious and taking the piss out of southerners who tend to get that way.
Sorry, not buying it. Cote de Buttertubs started with a press release from Gary Verity's well funded press team around the Grand Depart - it was an embarassing piece of fakery...
how about some psuedo germanic bollocks like Hill,Fell,bank,Edge..... oh hang on a minute.
you must mean ‘pseudo-Germanic couilles’
The Tumble isn’t the climb, or rather it never used to be, but it’s a area of the Blorange (which is the hills correct name) the climb it’s self used to be mostly called the Fiddlers Elbow or mostly just the Fiddlers, by locals.
since it’s in Wales I’m cyclical it would have its origin in Twmps, the land it is named does tumble away so quite possibly named by the people who lived/worked there namely the lost villages of Pwll Du and Garnddyrys.
Too right! Smells like one of the "Rules" to me. The kind of thing where you get laughed at for daring to say bib shorts are for victims.
Anyway, us southern softies have "bostals" which is a proper word...
Completely agree. I'll take that up a notch.someone shouted allez allez at me whist racing.... I am not french, he was not french, we were not in France. I can only assume he thought it was appropriate because I was on a bicycle.... I just thought it was plain weird.
As baffling as I'm sure it was, personally I'd be thankful I wasn't being directly insulted. I dare say the heckler was issuing what they believed to be support and encouragement
Well you might be right. But on the other hand, if I were cycling well and somebody shouted "chapeau" I would be much happier than being awarded "hat".
I'm more likely to shout venga! or vamos! apologies if that upsets anyone.
I like retitling local climbs. Le cote de la boite, le mur du blanc ... down.
Precise geographical definitions apart, I think in the world of cycling:-
Cote/Colle = over 500m
Col/Passo = over 1000m
Col originates from the Latin word collum meaning neck.
I'm not found of using the word Col in the uk with respect to climbs (i'd rather use 'hals) nor the horrendous preposing the name of a hill with 'Cote de' that has crept in over the last few years.
Our language is more Germanic than it is Latin based and instead of sickly titles like 'cote de jenkin road hill' or cote de wincobank hill just omit the massively superfluous 'cote de', it's just pathetic.
the grammar is largely Germanic, but 90% of the vocabulary is distributed approximately evenly between Germanic, Norman French (which is largely Latin-based) and Latin so there's nothing fundamentally wrong with using French words, or indeed any foreign word if it works. ‘Bizarre’ is Basque.
As for the repetition, it is common for geographical features to repeat the feature in different languages. Feature names survive for a very long time and are a palimpsest of population replacements. A classic example is River Avon. Avon is derived from a Gallic/Gaelic word for river, thus River River.
This means that if Brexit goes really badly and the French invade and conquer us, cote de Jenkin Road Hill could become the correct name, and the River Avon will become the River Avon fleuve.
Sorry but the English language vocab comes primarily from proto Germanic, there's a hefty dose of Latin based but it's still mostly a Germanic language in use.
Replacing words that have been used for centuries with a word/descriptor that isn't used commonly in our language at all to describe said feature just for the sake of some pseudo identity thing with continental cycle racing is just a forced thing for the sake of it and utterly ridiculous and sounds stupid to boot.
I'm afraid David Crystal disagrees with you, and I've been reading his work since I studied linguistics in the 1970s. So if you don't mind I'll go with his view on this rather than yours, unless you can show me that you are, or can cite, a greater authority.
http://www.davidcrystal.com/?fileid=-4042
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Crystal
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