1.
Summit
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A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. Mathematically, a summit is a maximum in elevation. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak, and zenith are synonymous, the UIAA definition is that a summit is independent if it has a prominence of 30 metres or more, it is a mountain if it has a prominence of at least 300 metres. This can be summarised as follows, A pyramidal peak is an exaggerated form produced by ice erosion of a mountain top, Summit may also refer to the highest point along a line, trail, or route. In many parts of the western United States, the term refers to the highest point along a road, highway. For example, the highest point along Interstate 80 in California is referred to as Donner Summit while the highest point on Interstate 5 is Siskiyou Mountain Summit, geoid Hill List of highest mountains Maxima and minima Nadir Summit accordance Peak finder
2.
Topographic prominence
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It is a measure of the independence of a summit. A peaks key col is a point on this contour line. By convention, the prominence of Mount Everest, the Earths highest mountain, is taken to equal the elevation of its summit above sea level, if the peaks prominence is P metres, to get from the summit to any higher terrain one must descend at least P metres. Together with the convention for Mount Everest, this implies that the prominence of any island or continental highpoint is equal to its elevation above sea level, for every ridge connecting the peak to higher terrain, find the lowest point on the ridge. The key col is defined as the highest of these cols, the prominence is the difference between the elevation of the peak and the elevation of the key col. The following mental exercise may illustrate the meaning of topographic prominence, imagine you are standing at the top of a peak and imagine that an imaginary sea level rises to your feet. Now slowly lower the sea level and an imaginary island appears beneath your feet. Your island will grow and will merge with other islands that emerge, the parent peak may be either close or far from the subject peak. The summit of Mount Everest is the parent peak of Aconcagua at a distance of 17,755 km, the key col may also be close or far from the subject peak. The key col for Aconcagua is the Bering Strait at a distance of 13,655 km, the key col for the South Summit of Mount Everest is about 100 m distant. Prominence is interesting to many mountaineers because it is a measurement that is strongly correlated with the subjective significance of a summit. Peaks with low prominences are either subsidiary tops of some higher summit or relatively insignificant independent summits, peaks with high prominences tend to be the highest points around and are likely to have extraordinary views. Only summits with a sufficient degree of prominence are regarded as independent mountains, for example, the worlds second-highest mountain is K2. While Mount Everests South Summit is taller than K2, it is not considered an independent mountain because it is a subsummit of the main summit, many lists of mountains take topographic prominence as a criterion for inclusion, or cutoff. John and Anne Nuttalls The Mountains of England and Wales uses a cutoff of 15 m, in the contiguous United States, the famous list of fourteeners uses a cutoff of 300 ft /91 m. Also in the U. S.2000 feet of prominence has become a threshold that signifies that a peak has major stature. This generates lists of peaks ranked by prominence, which are different from lists ranked by elevation. Such lists tend to emphasize isolated high peaks, such as range or island high points, one advantage of a prominence-ranked list is that it needs no cutoff, since a peak with high prominence is automatically an independent peak
3.
Snowdon
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Snowdon is the highest mountain in Wales, at an elevation of 1,085 metres above sea level, and the highest point in the British Isles south of the Scottish Highlands. It is located in Snowdonia National Park in Gwynedd, and has described as probably the busiest mountain in Britain. It is designated as a nature reserve for its rare flora. The cliff faces on Snowdon, including Clogwyn Dur Arddu, are significant for rock climbing, the summit also houses a cafe called Hafod Eryri, open only when the railway is operating and opened in 2009 to replace one built in the 1930s. The railway generally operates to the station from Whitsun to October. The daily running schedule depends on weather and customer demand, as well as other figures from Arthurian legend, the mountain is linked to a legendary afanc and the Tylwyth Teg. A1682 survey estimated that the summit of Snowdon was at a height of 3,720 feet, in 1773, Thomas Pennant quoted a later estimate of 3,568 ft above sea level at Caernarfon. Recent surveys give the height of the summit as 1,085 m, making Snowdon the highest mountain in Wales, Snowdon is one of three mountains climbed as part of the National Three Peaks Challenge. The unique environment of Snowdon, particularly its rare plants, has led to its designation as a nature reserve. In addition to plants that are widespread in Snowdonia, Snowdon is home to some plants rarely found elsewhere in Britain, Snowdon lies in the northern part of Snowdonia National Park, which has also provided some legal protection since the parks establishment in 1951. The rocks which make up Snowdon and its neighbouring mountains were formed in the Ordovician Period. At that time, most of modern-day Wales was near the edge of Avalonia, in the Soudleyan stage of the Caradoc age, a volcanic caldera formed, and produced ash flows of rhyolitic tuff, which formed deposits up to 500 metres thick. The current summit is near the edge of the ancient caldera, the calderas full extent is unclear. Snowdon and its surrounding peaks have been described as examples of Alpine topography. The summits of Snowdon and Garnedd Ugain are surrounded by cwms, erosion by glaciers in adjacent cwms caused the characteristic arêtes of Crib Goch, Crib y Ddysgl and Y Lliwedd, and the pyramidal peak of Snowdon itself. Other glacial landforms that can be seen around Snowdon include roches moutonnées, glacial erratics, the English name Snowdon comes from the Old English snaw dun, meaning snow hill, as Snowdon often has a covering of snow. Although the amount of snow on Snowdon in winter varies significantly, the slopes of Snowdon have one of the wettest climates in Great Britain, receiving an annual average of more than 200 inches of precipitation. A number of lakes are found in the various cwms of the Snowdon range, Llyn Llydaw –1,430 feet high,110 acres – lies in Cwm Dyli, Snowdons eastern cwm, and is one of Snowdonias deepest lakes, at up to 190 ft deep
4.
Marilyn (geography)
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A Marilyn is a mountain or hill in the United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland or Isle of Man with a prominence of at least 150 metres, regardless of absolute height or other merit. The name was coined as a punning contrast to the designation Munro, used of a Scottish mountain with a height of more than 3,000 feet, which is homophonous with Monroe. There are 2,010 Marilyns identified,1,218 in Scotland,454 in Ireland,175 in England,158 in Wales,5 on the Isle of Man. Black Mountain, in the Black Mountains, on the border between England and Wales, was counted in both countries but is now treated as being in Wales only. The list was extended into Ireland by Clem Clements in a booklet, The Hewitts, however, some lower hills such as Seatallan and Watch Hill on the edges of Lakeland and the Long Mynd in Shropshire do qualify because of their isolation from higher hills. At the other extreme are Stac Lee and Stac an Armin, nearly 80% of Marilyns in Great Britain are in Scotland. They logically extend earlier Scottish lists such as the Munros, Corbetts, Grahams, all Corbetts and Grahams,203 of the 282 Munros, and around half of the Donalds are also Marilyns. Some hillwalkers attempt to climb as many Marilyns as possible, some amateur radio operators attempt to operate from the summit of every Marilyn. Eddie Dealtry became the person to achieve Woodalls feat, later on the same day. By 28 September 2016, the Marilyns of Great Britain had been completed by 10 hillwalkers, while 320 had entered the Marilyn Hall of Fame by attaining a count of at least 600
5.
Lists of mountains and hills in the British Isles
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The mountains and hills of Great Britain, and to a lesser extent Ireland, are the subject of a considerable number of lists that categorise them by height, topographic prominence, or other criteria. They are commonly used as a basis for peak bagging, whereby hillwalkers attempt to reach all the summits on a given list. The oldest and best known of these lists is that of the Munros, mountains in Scotland over 3,000 feet, other well-known lists include the Corbetts, Wainwrights and Marilyns. There is no consensus on the definition of mountain, but in Great Britain. The UK government defines mountain as land over 600 metres for the purposes of freedom of access, in addition, some definitions also include a topographical prominence requirement, typically 100 or 500 feet. In practice, mountains in Scotland are frequently referred to as no matter what their height, as reflected in names such as the Cuillin Hills. In Wales, the distinction is more a term of land use, the Munros are mountains in Scotland over 3,000 ft. The list was compiled by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891. There are 282 Munros and 227 further tops, all of them in the Scottish Highlands, list of Munros The Murdos are an attempt to apply objective criteria to the Munros and their associated tops. They comprise all the summits in Scotland over 3,000 feet with a prominence of at least 30 metres, there are currently 442 Murdos, compared to 282 Munros or 509 Munros plus tops. The list was compiled by Alan Dawson, all Murdos are also Munro Tops, but many Munro Tops fail to qualify as Murdos because of insufficient relative height. Before 1997 there were seven Murdos that were not Munro Tops, all seven were included in the 1997 edition of Munros Tables, plus two non-Murdos, Little Pap on Lochnagar and Knights Peak on Sgurr nan Gillean or a UK top-tier administrative area. There are now 347 Hardys with the recent addition of 5 low lying English coastal estuary islands,61 hill ranges,96 islands and 190 administrative areas,183 are in England,31 in Wales,107 in Scotland and 26 in Northern Ireland. The list was first compiled in the 1990s by Ian Hardy, the Marilyns were supplemented in 2007 by the HuMPs which reduces the Prominence requirement to 100m. The list was compiled by Mark Jackson from a number of sources. There are almost 3,000 British HuMPs, including three in the Channel Islands, More recently, Mark Jackson compiled the TuMPs, a list of all hills in Britain having a prominence of 30 metres. By definition, all Murdos, Corbett Tops, Graham Tops, Hewitts, there are over 16,000 TuMPs, approximately half of that number that did not appear in previously researched lists were researched by Mark Jackson between 2006 and 2009. Since 2012 the list has been published and maintained by the editors of The Database of British and Irish Hills, a list of mountains, over 2, 000-foot-high, in England and Wales was published by Buxton & Lewis in 1986
6.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
7.
Welsh language
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Welsh is a member of the Brittonic branch of the Celtic languages. It is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, historically it has also been known in English as the British tongue, Cambrian, Cambric and Cymric. The United Kingdom Census 2011 counted 3.1 million residents of Wales, 27% of whom had been born outside Wales, and 73% of whom reported having no Welsh language skills. Of residents of Wales aged three and over, 19% reported being able to speak Welsh, and 77% of these were able to speak, read and this can be compared with the 2001 Census, in which 20. 8% of the population reported being able to speak Welsh. 787,854 of residents in Wales aged three and over had one or more skills in Welsh, in surveys carried out between 2004 and 2006, 57% of Welsh speakers described themselves as fluent in the written language. An estimated 110,000 to 150,000 people speak Welsh in England, Welsh emerged in the 6th century from Common Brittonic, the common ancestor of Welsh, Breton, Cornish and the extinct language known as Cumbric. The Middle Welsh period is considered to have lasted from then until the 14th century, when the Modern Welsh period began, the name Welsh originated as an exonym given to its speakers by the Anglo-Saxons, meaning foreign speech. The native term for the language is Cymraeg, and for the name of the country of Wales it is Cymru, Welsh evolved from Common Brittonic, the Celtic language spoken by the ancient Celtic Britons. Classified as Insular Celtic, the British language probably arrived in Britain during the Bronze Age or Iron Age and was spoken throughout the island south of the Firth of Forth. During the Early Middle Ages the British language began to fragment due to increased dialect differentiation, evolving into Welsh and it is not clear when Welsh became distinct. Kenneth H. Jackson suggested that the evolution in syllabic structure and sound pattern was complete by around 550, Jackson, however, believed that the two varieties were already distinct by that time. The earliest Welsh poetry – that attributed to the Cynfeirdd or Early Poets – is generally considered to date to the Primitive Welsh period. However, much of this poetry was composed in the Hen Ogledd, raising further questions about the dating of the material. An 8th century inscription in Tywyn shows the language already dropping inflections in the declension of nouns, the next main period, somewhat better attested, is Old Welsh, poetry from both Wales and Scotland has been preserved in this form of the language. Both the works of Aneirin and the Book of Taliesin were in this era, Middle Welsh is the label attached to the Welsh of the 12th to 14th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This is the language of all surviving early manuscripts of the Mabinogion. It is also the language of the existing Welsh law manuscripts, Middle Welsh is reasonably intelligible, albeit with some work, to a modern-day Welsh speaker. The famous cleric Gerald of Wales tells, in his Descriptio Cambriae, during one of the Kings many raids in the 12th century, Henry asked an old man of Pencader, Carmarthenshire whether the Welsh people could resist his army
8.
Brecon Beacons
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The Brecon Beacons is a mountain range in South Wales. In a narrow sense, the name refers to the range of Old Red Sandstone peaks which lie to the south of Brecon, sometimes referred to as the central Beacons they include South Wales highest mountain, Pen y Fan. The range forms the central section of the Brecon Beacons National Park and this much wider area is also commonly referred to as the Brecon Beacons, and it includes the Black Mountains to the east as well as the similarly named but quite distinct Black Mountain to the west. The highest peaks include Fan Brycheiniog to the west and Pen y Fan in the central part and they share the same basic geology as the central range, and so exhibit many similar features, such the north-facing escarpment and glacial features such as lakes and cwms below the escarpment. They all fall within the border of the national park. The Brecon Beacons range, in its narrower sense comprises six main peaks, from west to east these are, Corn Du, Pen y Fan, the highest peak, Cribyn, Fan y Big, Bwlch y Ddwyallt and Waun Rydd. These summits form a ridge, and the sections joining the first four form a horseshoe shape around the head of the Taf Fechan river. To the northeast of the ridge, interspersed with long spurs, are four round-headed valleys or cwms, from west to east these are Cwm Sere, Cwm Cynwyn. There are especially good examples of round barrows on Fan Foel, Pen y Fan, the former was excavated in 2002–4 and the ashes in the central cist dated to about 2000 BC using carbon dating. A wreath of Meadowsweet was likely placed in the burial, over twenty hill-forts were established in the area during the Iron Age. The largest, and indeed the largest in south Wales, were the pair of forts atop Y Garn Goch near Bethlehem – Y Gaer Fawr and Y Gaer Fach – literally the big fort, the forts are thought to have once been trading and political centres. When the Romans came to Wales in 43 AD, they stationed more than 600 soldiers in the area, Y Gaer, near the town of Brecon was their main base. During the Norman Conquest many castles were erected throughout the park, one of the most famous is Carreg Cennen Castle but there are many more. Brecon Castle is of Norman origin, there are many old tracks which were used over the centuries by drovers to take their cattle and geese to market in England. The drovers brought back gorse seed which they sowed to provide food for their sheep, the Brecon Beacons are one of four ranges of mountains and hills in South Wales which make up the Brecon Beacons National Park. The National Park was established in 1957, the third of the three Welsh parks after Snowdonia in 1951 and the Pembrokeshire Coast in 1952, Mountain rescue in south Wales is provided by five volunteer groups, with the police having overall command. In serious situations they are aided by RAF helicopters from RAF Chivenor or RAF Valley and their work is not restricted to mountain rescue – they frequently assist the police in their search for missing or vulnerable people in the community. The Brecon Beacons, are used for training members of the UK armed forces, the Army’s Infantry Battle School is located at Brecon, and the Special Air Service use the area to test the fitness of applicants
9.
Powys
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Powys is a principal area, local-government county and preserved county in Mid Wales. It is named after the successor Kingdom of Powys, which formed after the Romans withdrew from Britain, see the list of places in Powys for all towns and villages in Powys. Most of Powys is mountainous, with north-south transport being difficult, the majority of the Powys population lives in villages and small towns. The largest towns are Newtown, Ystradgynlais, Brecon, and Welshpool with populations of 12,783,9,004,7,901 and 6,269 respectively, Powys has the lowest population density of all the principal areas of Wales. Radnorshire was almost completely Anglicised by the end of the 18th century, the 2001 census records show 21% of the population of Powys were able to speak Welsh at that time, the same as for Wales as a whole. The uplands retain evidence of occupation from long before the Kingdom of Powys, and before the Romans, there are 1130 identified burial mounds within the county, of varying styles and ages, dating from 4000BC to 1000BC, most of them belonging to the Bronze Age. Of these,339 are Scheduled Monuments, standing stones, most again dating to the Bronze Age, also occur in large numbers,276 being found across the county, of which 92 are scheduled. From the Iron Age, the county has 90 scheduled Hill forts, the gold in the county coat of arms symbolises the wealth of the area. Black is for both mining and the Black Mountains, the fountain is a medieval heraldic charge displayed as a roundel barry wavy Argent and Azure. It represents water, and refers to both the water catchment area and the rivers and lakes, thus, the arms contain references to the hills and mountains, rivers and lakes, water supply and industry. The crest continues the colouring of the arms, a tower has been used in preference to a mural crown, which alludes to the countys military history and remains. From the tower rises a red kite, a bird almost extinct elsewhere in Britain, the bird is semy of black lozenges for the former coal mining industry while the golden fleece it carries is a reference to the importance of sheep rearing in Powys. The county motto is, Powys – the paradise of Wales, on 1 April 1996, the districts were abolished, and Powys was reconstituted as a unitary authority, with a minor border adjustment in the north-east. The first Lord Lieutenant of Powys was previously the Lord Lieutenant of Montgomeryshire, the Lord Lieutenant of Brecknockshire and Lord Lieutenant of Radnorshire were appointed as Lieutenants. The present Lord Lieutenant is The Hon. Mrs Elizabeth Shân Legge-Bourke LVO of Crickhowell, in December 2007 Powys was awarded Fairtrade County status by the Fairtrade Foundation. Recent research suggests that Powys is the happiest place in the UK, although the researchers noted that the numbers were not statistically significant
10.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
11.
Mountain range
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A mountain range is a geographic area containing numerous geologically related mountains. A mountain system or system of ranges, sometimes is used to combine several geological features that are geographically related. Mountain ranges are usually segmented by highlands or mountain passes and valleys, individual mountains within the same mountain range do not necessarily have the same geologic structure or petrology. They may be a mix of different orogenic expressions and terranes, for example thrust sheets, uplifted blocks, fold mountains, most geologically young mountain ranges on the Earths land surface are associated with either the Pacific Ring of Fire or the Alpide Belt. The Andes is 7,000 kilometres long and is considered the worlds longest mountain system. The Alpide belt includes Indonesia and southeast Asia, through the Himalaya, the belt also includes other European and Asian mountain ranges. The Himalayas contain the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, mountain ranges outside of these two systems include the Arctic Cordillera, the Urals, the Appalachians, the Scandinavian Mountains, the Altai Mountains and the Hijaz Mountains. If the definition of a range is stretched to include underwater mountains. The mountain systems of the earth are characterized by a tree structure, the sub-range relationship is often expressed as a parent-child relationship. For example, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Blue Ridge Mountains are sub-ranges of the Appalachian Mountains, equivalently, the Appalachians are the parent of the White Mountains and Blue Ridge Mountains, and the White Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains are children of the Appalachians. The position of mountains influences climate, such as rain or snow, when air masses move up and over mountains, the air cools producing orographic precipitation. As the air descends on the side, it warms again and is drier. Often, a shadow will affect the leeward side of a range. Mountain ranges are constantly subjected to forces which work to tear them down. Erosion is at work while the mountains are being uplifted and long after until the mountains are reduced to low hills, rivers are traditionally believed to be the principle erosive factor on mountain ranges, with their ability of bedrock incision and sediment transport. The rugged topography of a range is the product of erosion. The basins adjacent to a mountain range are filled with sediments which are buried and turned into sedimentary rock. The early Cenozoic uplift of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado provides an example and this mass of rock was removed as the range was actively undergoing uplift
12.
Ordnance Survey National Grid
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The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, different from using Latitude and Longitude. It is often called British National Grid, the Ordnance Survey devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in their survey data, and in maps based on those surveys. Grid references are commonly quoted in other publications and data sources. The Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system is used to provide references for worldwide locations. European-wide agencies also use UTM when mapping locations, or may use the Military Grid Reference System system, the grid is based on the OSGB36 datum, and was introduced after the retriangulation of 1936–1962. It replaced the previously used Cassini Grid which, up to the end of World War Two, had issued only to the military. The Airy ellipsoid is a regional best fit for Britain, more modern mapping tends to use the GRS80 ellipsoid used by the GPS, the British maps adopt a Transverse Mercator projection with an origin at 49° N, 2° W. Over the Airy ellipsoid a straight grid, the National Grid, is placed with a new false origin. This false origin is located south-west of the Isles of Scilly, the distortion created between the OS grid and the projection is countered by a scale factor in the longitude to create two lines of longitude with zero distortion rather than one. Grid north and true north are aligned on the 400 km easting of the grid which is 2° W. 2° 0′ 5″ W. OSGB36 was also used by Admiralty nautical charts until 2000 after which WGS84 has been used, a geodetic transformation between OSGB36 and other terrestrial reference systems can become quite tedious if attempted manually. The most common transformation is called the Helmert datum transformation, which results in a typical 7 m error from true, the definitive transformation from ETRS89 that is published by the OSGB is called the National Grid Transformation OSTN02. This models the detailed distortions in the 1936–1962 retriangulation, and achieves backwards compatibility in grid coordinates to sub-metre accuracy, the difference between the coordinates on different datums varies from place to place. The longitude and latitude positions on OSGB36 are the same as for WGS84 at a point in the Atlantic Ocean well to the west of Great Britain. In Cornwall, the WGS84 longitude lines are about 70 metres east of their OSGB36 equivalents, the smallest datum shift is on the west coast of Scotland and the greatest in Kent. But Great Britain has not shrunk by 100+ metres, a point near Lands End now computes to be 27.6 metres closer to a point near Duncansby Head than it did under OSGB36. For the first letter, the grid is divided into squares of size 500 km by 500 km, there are four of these which contain significant land area within Great Britain, S, T, N and H. The O square contains an area of North Yorkshire, almost all of which lies below mean high tide
13.
Topographic map
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Traditional definitions require a topographic map to show both natural and man-made features. A topographic map is published as a map series, made up of two or more map sheets that combine to form the whole map. A contour line is a line connecting places of equal elevation, however, in the vernacular and day to day world, the representation of relief is popularly held to define the genre, such that even small-scale maps showing relief are commonly called topographic. The study or discipline of topography is a broader field of study. Topographic maps are based on topographical surveys, performed at large scales, these surveys are called topographical in the old sense of topography, showing a variety of elevations and landforms. This is in contrast to older cadastral surveys, which primarily show property, the first multi-sheet topographic map series of an entire country, the Carte géométrique de la France, was completed in 1789. Topographic surveys were prepared by the military to assist in planning for battle, as such, elevation information was of vital importance. As they evolved, topographic map series became a resource in modern nations in planning infrastructure. Excluding borders, each sheet was 44 cm high and up to 66 cm wide, although the project eventually foundered, it left an indexing system that remains in use. TIGER was developed in the 1980s and used in the 1990, digital elevation models were also compiled, initially from topographic maps and stereographic interpretation of aerial photographs and then from satellite photography and radar data. Since all these were government projects funded with taxes and not classified for security reasons. Initial applications were mostly professionalized forms such as innovative surveying instruments, by the mid-1990s, increasingly user-friendly resources such as online mapping in two and three dimensions, integration of GPS with mobile phones and automotive navigation systems appeared. As of 2011, the future of standardized, centrally printed topographical maps is left somewhat in doubt, the various features shown on the map are represented by conventional signs or symbols. For example, colors can be used to indicate a classification of roads and these signs are usually explained in the margin of the map, or on a separately published characteristic sheet. Topographic maps are commonly called contour maps or topo maps. In the United States, where the national series is organized by a strict 7. 5-minute grid. Topographic maps conventionally show topography, or land contours, by means of contour lines, contour lines are curves that connect contiguous points of the same altitude. In other words, every point on the line of 100 m elevation is 100 m above mean sea level
14.
Ordnance Survey
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Ordnance Survey is a non-ministerial government department which acts as the national mapping agency for Great Britain and is one of the worlds largest producers of maps. Since 1 April 2015 it has operated as Ordnance Survey Ltd, the Ordnance Survey Board remain accountable to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It is also a member of the Public Data Group, the agencys name indicates its original military purpose, mapping Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rebellion in 1745. There was also a general and nationwide need in light of the potential threat of invasion during the Napoleonic Wars. Ordnance Survey mapping is usually classified as either large-scale or small-scale, the Surveys large-scale mapping comprises maps at six inches to the mile or more and was available as sheets until the 1980s, when it was digitised. Small-scale mapping comprises maps at less than six inches to the mile, such as the one inch to the mile leisure maps. These are still available in sheet form. Ordnance Survey maps remain in copyright for fifty years after their publication, some of the Copyright Libraries hold complete or near-complete collections of pre-digital OS mapping. The origins of the Ordnance Survey lie in the aftermath of the last Jacobite rising which was defeated by forces loyal to the government at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In 1747, Lieutenant-colonel David Watson proposed the compilation of a map of the Highlands to facilitate the subjugation of clans, in response, King George II charged Watson with making a military survey of the Highlands under the command of the Duke of Cumberland. Among Watsons assistants were William Roy, Paul Sandby and John Manson, the survey was produced at a scale of 1 inch to 1000 yards and included the Duke of Cumberlands Map now held in the British Library. This work was the point of the Principal Triangulation of Great Britain. Roys technical skills and leadership set the standard for which Ordnance Survey became known. Work was begun in earnest in 1790 under Roys supervision, when the Board of Ordnance began a military survey starting with the south coast of England. A set of stamps, featuring maps of the Kentish village of Hamstreet, was issued in 1991 to mark the bicentenary. In 1801, the first one-inch-to-the-mile map was published, detailing the county of Kent, during the next twenty years, roughly a third of England and Wales was mapped at the same scale under the direction of William Mudge, as other military matters took precedence. It took until 1823 to re-establish a relationship with the French survey made by Roy in 1787, by 1810, one inch to the mile maps of most of the south of England were completed, but were withdrawn from sale between 1811 and 1816 because of security fears. It was gruelling work, major Thomas Colby, later the longest serving director general of Ordnance Survey, in 1824, Colby and most of his staff moved to Ireland to work on a six-inches-to-the-mile valuation survey
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South Wales
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South Wales is the region of Wales bordered by England and the Bristol Channel to the east and south, and Mid Wales and West Wales to the north and west. The most densely populated region in the southwest of the United Kingdom, the Brecon Beacons national park covers about a third of South Wales, containing Pen y Fan, the highest mountain south of Snowdonia. Areas to the north of the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains are generally considered part of Mid Wales, the expression south Wales is not officially defined, and its meaning has changed over time. Between the Statute of Rhuddlan of 1284 and the Laws in Wales Act 1535 and this was divided into a Principality of South Wales and a Principality of North Wales. The southern principality was made up of the counties of Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, the legal responsibility for this area lay in the hands of the Justiciar of South Wales based at Carmarthen. Other parts of southern Wales were in the hands of various Marcher Lords, the Laws in Wales Acts 1542 created the Court of Great Sessions in Wales based on four legal circuits. The Brecon circuit served the counties of Brecknockshire, Radnorshire and Glamorgan while the Carmarthen circuit served Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, Monmouthshire was attached to the Oxford circuit for judicial purposes. These seven southern counties were thus differentiated from the six counties of north Wales, the Court of the Great Sessions came to an end in 1830, but the counties survived until the Local Government Act 1972 which came into operation in 1974. The creation of the county of Powys merged one northern county with two southern ones, there are thus different concepts of south Wales. Glamorgan and Monmouthshire are generally accepted by all as being in south Wales, but the status of Breconshire or Carmarthenshire, for instance, is more debatable. In the western extent, from Swansea westwards, local people might feel that they live in both south Wales and west Wales, areas to the north of the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains are generally considered to be in Mid Wales. A further point of uncertainty is whether the first element of the name should be capitalized, as the name is a geographical expression rather than a specific area with well-defined borders, style guides such as those of the BBC and The Guardian use the form south Wales. The most densely populated region in the southwest of the United Kingdom, the Brecon Beacons national park covers about a third of South Wales, containing Pen y Fan, the highest mountain south of Snowdonia. This natural beauty changed to an extent during the early Industrial Revolution when the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire valley areas were exploited for coal. By the 1830s, hundreds of tons of coal were being transported by barge to ports in Cardiff, lord Bute then charged fees per ton of coal that was transported out using his railways. Whilst some of the left, many settled and established in the South Wales Valleys between Swansea and Abergavenny as English-speaking communities with a unique identity. Industrial workers were housed in cottages and terraced houses close to the mines and foundries in which they worked. The large influx over the years caused overcrowding which led to outbreaks of Cholera, and on the social and cultural side and this number is now very low, following the UK miners strike, and the last traditional deep-shaft mine, Tower Colliery, closed in January 2008
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National park
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A national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns, although individual nations designate their own national parks differently, there is a common idea, the conservation of wild nature for posterity and as a symbol of national pride. An international organization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, although Yellowstone was not officially termed a national park in its establishing law, it was always termed such in practice and is widely held to be the first and oldest national park in the world. The first area to use national park in its legislation was the USs Mackinac Island. Australias Royal National Park, established in 1879, was the third official national park. In 1895 ownership of Mackinac Island was transferred to the State of Michigan as a state park, as a result, Australias Royal National Park is by some considerations the second oldest national park now in existence. The largest national park in the meeting the IUCN definition is the Northeast Greenland National Park. According to the IUCN,6,555 national parks worldwide met its criteria in 2006, IUCN is still discussing the parameters of defining a national park. National parks are almost always open to visitors, in 1971, these criteria were further expanded upon leading to more clear and defined benchmarks to evaluate a national park. In 1810, the English poet William Wordsworth described the Lake District as a sort of property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive. It was known as Hot Springs Reservation, but no authority was established. Federal control of the area was not clearly established until 1877, John Muir is today referred to as the Father of the National Parks due to his work in Yosemite. He published two articles in The Century Magazine, which formed the base for the subsequent legislation. President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress on July 1,1864, ceding the Yosemite Valley, according to this bill, private ownership of the land in this area was no longer possible. The state of California was designated to manage the park for use, resort. Leases were permitted for up to ten years and the proceeds were to be used for conservation, a public discussion followed this first legislation of its kind and there was a heated debate over whether the government had the right to create parks. The perceived mismanagement of Yosemite by the Californian state was the reason why Yellowstone at its establishment six years later was put under national control, in 1872, Yellowstone National Park was established as the United States first national park, being also the worlds first national park. In some European countries, however, national protection and nature reserves already existed, such as Drachenfels, Yellowstone was part of a federally governed territory
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Cadair Idris
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Cadair Idris or Cader Idris is a mountain in Gwynedd, Wales, which lies at the southern end of the Snowdonia National Park near the town of Dolgellau. Idris is usually taken to be the name of a giant or, alternatively, it may refer to Idris ap Gwyddno, Idris ap Gwyddno was in fact referred to as Idris Gawr in some mediaeval genealogies of Meirionydd. The basic meaning of the word cadair is seat, chair, in place names cadair can mean stronghold, fort, fortress or mountain or hill shaped like a chair. The spelling cader represents a variant of the standard form cadair. It appears that Cadair/Cadeir Idris is the used in the earliest Welsh-language sources. In a poem in his own hand in the half of the fifteenth century. Around 1600, John Jones of Gellilyfdy referred to y mynydh neu bhan neu bhoel a elwir Cadeir Idris (the mountain, in his Dictionarum Duplex published in 1632, John Davies of Mallwyd differentiated between the two words cadair and cader, referring to Cader Idris and Cader Ddinmael. That interpretation was followed by some later lexicographers, including Thomas Charles and it is now accepted, however, that cader is a spelling of a spoken form of cadair, and that there is no evidence that cadair and cader are separate words. But as it represents the pronunciation in the dialect, the spelling Cader Idris is often seen in Welsh and English. In June 2016 Snowdonia National Park decided to adopt that spelling on its signage, the local dialect form is also seen in the name of the local secondary school, Ysgol y Gader. The name of the mountain is typically spelt Cadair Idris on current maps, the summit of the mountain is known as Penygader. There are three trails that lead to the top of Cadair Idris. The summit, which is covered in scree, is marked by a trig point, there is also a low-standing stone shelter with a roof. The Pony Path, which begins in the north from either Dolgellau or the Mawddach estuary, is the easiest and its length from the mountains base is 5 kilometres with a 600 metres climb. The Foxs Path, This is the most direct way to the summit as the trail leads straight up the northern face, the 3.8 kilometres ascent involves a climb up a 310 metres cliff-scree face. However, this part of the Foxs Path has been eroded in recent years making the descent dangerous. The Minffordd Path starts on the side of the mountain near the glacial Tal-y-llyn Lake. Hikers using this ascent climb past Llyn Cau and along the rim of Craig Cau to Penygadair and its length is 4.4 kilometres and involves two climbs of over 300 metres
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Snowdonia
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Snowdonia is a mountainous region in north Wales and a national park of 823 square miles in area. It was the first to be designated of the three parks in Wales, in 1951. The English name for the area derives from Snowdon, which is the highest mountain in Wales at 3,560 ft, in Welsh, the area is named Eryri. The term ‘Eryri’ first appeared in a manuscript in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, in the Middle Ages the title Prince of Wales and Lord of Snowdonia was used by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, his grandfather Llywelyn Fawr used the title Prince of north Wales and Lord of Snowdonia. This is apparent in books published prior to 1951, such as the classic travelogue Wild Wales by George Borrow, F. J. North, as editor of the book Snowdonia, states When the Committee delineated provisional boundaries, they included areas some distance beyond Snowdonia proper. The traditional Snowdonia thus includes the ranges of Snowdon and its satellites, the Glyderau, the Carneddau and it does not include the hills to the south of Maentwrog. As Eryri, this area has a place in Welsh history, tradition. Snowdonia National Park was established in 1951 as the national park in Britain, following the Peak District. It covers 827 square miles, and has 37 miles of coastline, the park is governed by the Snowdonia National Park Authority, which is made up of local government and Welsh representatives, and its main offices are at Penrhyndeudraeth. Unlike national parks in countries, Snowdonia are made up of both public and private lands under central planning authority. The makeup of land ownership at Snowdonia is as follows, More than 26,000 people live within the park,58. 6% of the population could speak Welsh in 2011. While most of the land is open or mountainous land. Since the local government re-organisation of 1998, the park partly in the county of Gwynedd. Unusually, Snowdonia National Park has a hole in the middle, around the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog and this was deliberately excluded from the park when it was set up to allow the development of new light industry to replace the reduced slate industry. The Snowdonia Society is a charity formed in 1967. It is a group of people with an interest in the area. Amory Lovins led the successful 1970s opposition to stop Rio Tinto digging up the area for a massive mine. Research indicates that there were 3.67 million visitors to Snowdonia National Park in 2013, total tourist expenditure was £433.6 million in 2013
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Corn Du
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Corn Du is a mountain immediately to the southwest of Pen y Fan and the second highest peak in South Wales at 873 m, situated in the Brecon Beacons National Park. The summit itself is marked by a well structured Bronze Age cairn with a burial cist like that on nearby Pen y Fan. The two summits are visible from great distances owing to their height above the moorland, and are famous landmarks. The views from the peaks are also panoramic and very extensive, mynydd Epynt is visible to the north behind the county town of Brecon, and other parts of the escarpment to the east. The summit is crossed on the way to Pen y Fan. It offers good views down into Cwm Llwch and across the Usk valley to Brecon as well as east towards the Sugar Loaf, tommy Jones Obelisk is found on its western flanks, in between the summit and Y Gyrn. All of the moorland is open to access, but crossing the many peat bogs is difficult. The summit is very similar to that of Pen y Fan, flat and it is similarly formed from the relatively erosion-resistant Devonian age sandstones from the Upper Old Red Sandstone known as the Plateau Beds. The rock strata are visible at the edge of the escarpment. The same strata are all along the escarpment facing north, as well as the rearward edge facing south-east. The same Plateau beds recur in the Black Mountain to the west, nearby is one of the few natural lakes in the park, the small Llyn Cwm Llwch. Photos of Pen y Fan and surrounding area
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Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)
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The Ministry of Defence is the British government department responsible for implementing the defence policy set by Her Majestys Government and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces. The MoD states that its objectives are to defend the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and its interests and to strengthen international peace. The MoD also manages day-to-day running of the forces, contingency planning. As rearmament became a concern during the 1930s, Stanley Baldwin created the position of Minister for Coordination of Defence. Winston Churchill, on forming his government in 1940, created the office of Minister of Defence to exercise control over the Chiefs of Staff Committee. The post was held by the Prime Minister of the day until Clement Attlees government introduced the Ministry of Defence Act of 1946, the new ministry was headed by a Minister of Defence who possessed a seat in the Cabinet. These departments merged in 1964, the functions of the Ministry of Aviation Supply merged into the Ministry of Defence in 1971. The Ministers in the Ministry of Defence are as follows, The Ministers and Chiefs of the Defence Staff are supported by a number of civilian, scientific, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Defence is the senior civil servant at the MoD. His or her role is to ensure the MoD operates effectively as a department of the government, Permanent Under-Secretary of State, Stephen Lovegrove—commencing April 2016 Defence Equipment & Support CEO - Tony Douglas — commencing 2016 Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Vernon C. He is supported by the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Gordon Messenger, Royal Marines. First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Philip Jones, Royal Navy Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, the Surgeon General, represents the Defence Medical Services on the Defence Staff, and is the clinical head of that service. These forces must be capable of representing Britain as lead nation in any coalition operations, the ability, at longer notice, to deploy forces in a large-scale operation while running a concurrent small-scale operation. The MoD has since been regarded as a leader in elaborating the post-Cold War organising concept of defence diplomacy, the UK is establishing air and naval bases in the Persian Gulf, located in the UAE and Bahrain. A presence in Oman is also being considered, the Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015 included £178 billion investment in new equipment and capabilities. The review set a policy with four primary missions for the Armed Forces, Defend and contribute to the security and resilience of the UK. Contribute to improved understanding of the world through strategic intelligence and the defence network. Reinforce international security and the capacity of our allies, partners. Conduct operations to restore peace and stability, conduct major combat operations if required, including under NATO Article 5
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Fan dance (exercise)
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The Fan Dance is a 15 miles load bearing march that typically takes place at the end of the first week of the selection course. It is used as the first major indicator of whether a candidate has the physical and mental aptitude to complete the selection course, the candidates are divided into two groups and each starts from opposite sides of Pen y Fan, a 2,907 foot high peak. One group starts at Torpantau railway station in Taf Fechan Forest, each student carries a 45 pounds Bergen backpack, a rifle, food and 4 one-litre water bottles. The candidates climb Pen y Fans west slope and then descend on the far side, the rest of the route follows the old Roman road before going back on itself for the return leg. Candidates are allowed 4 hours to complete the march in summer, the Fan Dance is a DS led group march but is essentially down to the individuals own best effort. The Special Forces Selection Fan Dance takes place bi-annually, with a winter and summer edition, the mainstream media reported that candidates died attempting the Fan Dance in summer 2013 but this is an inaccuracy as the Selection phase was already well into the Test Week phase. The Fan Dance, BBC Radio 4
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Special Air Service
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The Special Air Service is a special forces unit of the British Army. The SAS was founded in 1941 as a regiment, and later reconstituted as a corps in 1950, the unit undertakes a number of roles including covert reconnaissance, counter-terrorism, direct action and hostage rescue. The Special Air Service traces its origins to 1941 and the Second World War and it was reformed as part of the Territorial Army in 1947, named the 21st Special Air Service Regiment. It was conceived as a force to operate behind enemy lines in the North African Campaign. Its first mission, in November 1941, was a drop in support of the Operation Crusader offensive. Due to German resistance and adverse conditions, the mission was a disaster,22 men. Its second mission was a major success, transported by the Long Range Desert Group, it attacked three airfields in Libya, destroying 60 aircraft with the loss of 2 men and 3 Willys MB. In September 1942, it was renamed 1st SAS, consisting at that time of four British squadrons, one Free French, one Greek, in January 1943, Colonel Stirling was captured in Tunisia and Paddy Mayne replaced him as commander. In April 1943, the 1st SAS was reorganised into the Special Raiding Squadron under Maynes command and the Special Boat Squadron was placed under the command of George Jellicoe. The Special Raiding Squadron fought in Sicily and Italy along with the 2nd SAS, the Special Boat Squadron fought in the Aegean Islands and Dodecanese until the end of the war. In 1944 the SAS Brigade was formed from the British 1st and 2nd SAS, the French 3rd and 4th SAS and the Belgian 5th SAS. It was tasked with parachute operations behind the German lines in France and carried out supporting the Allied advance through Belgium, the Netherlands. As a result of Hitlers issuing of the Commando Order on 18 October 1942, in July 1944, following Operation Bulbasket,34 captured SAS commandos were summarily executed by the Germans. In October 1944, in the aftermath of Operation Loyton another 31 captured SAS commandos were summarily executed by the Germans, at the end of the war the British Government saw no further need for the force and disbanded it on 8 October 1945. The following year it was decided there was a need for a long-term deep-penetration commando unit, ultimately, the Artists Rifles, raised in 1860 and headquartered at Dukes Road, Euston, took on the SAS mantle as 21st SAS Regiment on 1 January 1947. In 1950, a 21 SAS squadron was raised to fight in the Korean War, after three months of training in Britain, it was informed that the squadron would no longer be required in Korea and so it instead volunteered to fight in the Malayan Emergency. Upon arrival in Malaya, it came under the command of Mike Calvert who was forming a new unit called the Malayan Scouts, the Rhodesians returned home after three years service and were replaced by a New Zealand squadron. By this time the need for a regular army SAS regiment had been recognised, in 1959 the third regiment, the 23rd SAS Regiment, was formed by renaming the Reserve Reconnaissance Unit, which had succeeded MI9 and whose members were experts in escape and evasion
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Beacons Way
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The Beacons Way is a waymarked long distance footpath in the Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales. It is a route which runs for 152 km /95 miles east to west through the National Park. It also includes many of the towns in the park as well as attractions such as Carreg Cennen Castle near Llandeilo at the western end of the path. The Beacons Way as originally conceived started in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, at the end of the National Park. Beyond Ysgyryd Fawr the route drops down to Llanfihangel Crucorney, passing The Skirrid Mountain Inn before joining the Offas Dyke Path to climb Hatterrall Hill and it then runs along the Welsh–English border for a few miles before descending into the Vale of Ewyas at Llanthony beside Llanthony Priory. It climbs again to the spectacular Iron Age hillfort of Crug Hywel, the Way crosses the River Usk to enter Llangynidr and heads up around Tor y Foel making for the head of Glyn Collwn above Talybont Reservoir. The route then crosses the highest peaks in the central Beacons, Pen y Fan, in good weather, the peaks are usually crowded with visitors. The route then follows a section of the Roman road known as Sarn Helen before cutting off west through the Ogof Ffynnon Ddu national nature reserve to Penwyllt. It traverses the three summits of the Carmarthen Fans, these being Fan Foel, Picws Du and Waun Lefrith. A low level alternative runs beneath the Black Mountain escarpment, east of Llyn y Fan Fawr, in the west, the route climbs to Carreg Cennen Castle and Garn Goch. The route originally finished at the station at Llangadog but was later modified to stop at the village of Bethlehem. The original finish has since been reinstated and it is a strenuous walk with plenty of ascents and descents. Parts of the route across open moorland can be difficult to navigate in poor weather - this, the Beacons Way can be walked in its entirety in about 8 days but could easily take twice as long as there is so much to explore and enjoy en route. There are numerous camping sites along the route, and accommodation is available in the towns, the alignment has been modified on several occasions, the most recent being put in place in spring 2016. The path crosses peat bogs, where stone pavements have been laid to protect the vegetation
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Cribyn (mountain)
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Cribyn is a mountain in the Brecon Beacons with an elevation of 2608 feet about 300 feet lower than the neighbouring peaks of Pen y Fan and Corn Du. It is a prominent peak in the long and impressive escarpment facing north, the summit lies on a ridge stretching from Talybont Reservoir in the east, to the A470 road. The ridge line to the west connects Cribyn with the peak of Pen y Fan. To the east, the line descends to Bwlch ar y Fan. In common with other peaks of the Brecon Beacons, the slopes of Cribyn are formed from sandstones of the Brownstones Formation of the Old Red Sandstone laid down during the Devonian period. The lower slopes of the hill are formed from sandstones and mudstones of the underlying Senni Beds Formation, the rock strata tilt gently southward like the rest of the peaks in the range. The heads of Cwm Sere and Cwm Cynwyn, to the northwest and east of Cribyn respectively, nurtured small glaciers during the last ice age, the glacial erosion resulted in the very steep northern and eastern faces which the hill possesses. The Brecon Beacons are of open access, so the visitor can walk anywhere in the highland zone, trails and footpaths are well marked, and owing to frequent use, are also well trodden. The National Trust owns much of the land and the paths are maintained and reinforced where wear and tear is heavy. The paths are used by a wide cross section of society, such as the British Army for troop training. The peak is adjacent to Pen y Fan so is often chosen for circular walks along the main escarpment, when the weather is clear, the views to the north are especially impressive towards Mynydd Epynt, Brecon and the Cambrian mountains beyond. Care is needed in mist or fog when walking near the edge of the escarpment, especially in snow, because the rainfall is high in this elevated mountain zone, care is also needed owing to the high levels of surface water. Thunderstorms can be especially hazardous owing to lightning strikes, many mountain birds are present, such as birds of prey like peregrine falcons, common buzzards and the red kite. Ravens can also be seen occasionally, and more often heard by their deep croak and they use thermals in the valleys around the peaks to soar and search for food such as mice and voles. The lower parts of the adjacent to the peaks is used for nesting by skylarks as well as some game birds like red grouse. The skylark can frequently be seen soaring and heard singing above its nest, www. geograph. co. uk, photos of Cribyn and surrounding area
25.
Mist
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Mist is a phenomenon caused by small droplets of water suspended in air. Physically, it is an example of a dispersion and it is most commonly seen where warm, moist air meets sudden cooling, such as in exhaled air in the winter, or when throwing water onto the hot stove of a sauna. It can be created artificially with aerosol canisters if the humidity and it can also occur as part of natural weather, when humid air cools rapidly, for example when the air comes into contact with surfaces that are much cooler than the air. The formation of mist, as of other suspensions, is aided by the presence of nucleation sites on which the suspended water phase can congeal. The only difference between mist and fog is visibility, the phenomenon is called fog if the visibility is one kilometre or less. In the UK the definition of fog is visibility less than 100 metres, otherwise it is known as mist. Mist makes a beam of light visible from the side via refraction and reflection on the water droplets. Scotch mist is a steady drizzle. Mist usually occurs near the shores, and is associated with fog. Mist can be as high as mountain tops when extreme temperatures are low, freezing mist is similar to freezing fog, only the density is less and the visibility greater. Aerosol Aeroponics Brocken spectre Drizzle Haze Spray
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Rain
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Rain is liquid water in the form of droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor and then precipitated—that is, become heavy enough to fall under gravity. Rain is a component of the water cycle and is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the Earth. It provides suitable conditions for many types of ecosystems, as well as water for power plants. The major cause of production is moisture moving along three-dimensional zones of temperature and moisture contrasts known as weather fronts. If enough moisture and upward motion is present, precipitation falls from convective clouds such as cumulonimbus which can organize into narrow rainbands. On the leeward side of mountains, desert climates can exist due to the dry air caused by downslope flow which causes heating and drying of the air mass, the movement of the monsoon trough, or intertropical convergence zone, brings rainy seasons to savannah climes. The urban heat island effect leads to increased rainfall, both in amounts and intensity, downwind of cities, global warming is also causing changes in the precipitation pattern globally, including wetter conditions across eastern North America and drier conditions in the tropics. The globally averaged annual precipitation over land is 715 mm, climate classification systems such as the Köppen climate classification system use average annual rainfall to help differentiate between differing climate regimes. Rainfall is measured using rain gauges, rainfall amounts can be estimated by weather radar. Rain is also known or suspected on other planets, where it may be composed of methane, neon, sulfuric acid, or even iron rather than water. Air contains water vapor, and the amount of water in a mass of dry air. The amount of moisture in air is commonly reported as relative humidity. How much water vapor a parcel of air can contain before it becomes saturated, warmer air can contain more water vapor than cooler air before becoming saturated. Therefore, one way to saturate a parcel of air is to cool it, the dew point is the temperature to which a parcel must be cooled in order to become saturated. There are four mechanisms for cooling the air to its dew point, adiabatic cooling, conductive cooling, radiational cooling. Adiabatic cooling occurs when air rises and expands, the air can rise due to convection, large-scale atmospheric motions, or a physical barrier such as a mountain. Conductive cooling occurs when the air comes into contact with a surface, usually by being blown from one surface to another. Radiational cooling occurs due to the emission of infrared radiation, either by the air or by the surface underneath, evaporative cooling occurs when moisture is added to the air through evaporation, which forces the air temperature to cool to its wet-bulb temperature, or until it reaches saturation
27.
Snow
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Snowstorms organize and develop by feeding on sources of atmospheric moisture and cold air. Snowflakes nucleate around particles in the atmosphere by attracting supercooled water droplets, snowflakes take on a variety of shapes, basic among these are platelets, needles, columns and rime. As snow accumulates into a snowpack, it may blow into drifts, over time, accumulated snow metamorphoses, by sintering, sublimation and freeze-thaw. Where the climate is cold enough for year-to-year accumulation, a glacier may form, otherwise, snow typically melts seasonally, causing runoff into streams and rivers and recharging groundwater. Major snow-prone areas include the regions, the upper half of the Northern Hemisphere and mountainous regions worldwide with sufficient moisture. In the Southern Hemisphere, snow is confined primarily to mountainous areas, Snow affects ecosystems, as well, by providing an insulating layer during winter under which plants and animals are able to survive the cold. Snow develops in clouds that themselves are part of a weather system. The physics of snow crystal development in clouds results from a set of variables that include moisture content. The resulting shapes of the falling and fallen crystals can be classified into a number of shapes and combinations. Occasionally, some plate-like, dendritic and stellar-shaped snowflakes can form under clear sky with a cold temperature inversion present. Two additional and locally productive sources of snow are lake-effect storms and elevation effects, miid-latitude cyclones are low pressure areas which are capable of producing anything from cloudiness and mild snow storms to heavy blizzards. During a hemispheres fall, winter, and spring, the atmosphere over continents can be cold enough through the depth of the troposphere to cause snowfall, in the Northern Hemisphere, the northern side of the low pressure area produces the most snow. For the southern mid-latitudes, the side of a cyclone that produces the most snow is the southern side, a cold front, the leading edge of a cooler mass of air, can produce frontal snowsqualls—an intense frontal convective line, when temperature is near freezing at the surface. The strong convection that develops has enough moisture to produce whiteout conditions at places which line passes over as the wind causes intense blowing snow. This type of snowsquall generally lasts less than 30 minutes at any point along its path, in cases where there is a large amount of vertical growth and mixing the squall may develop embedded cumulonimbus clouds resulting in lightning and thunder which is dubbed thundersnow. A warm front can produce snow for a period, as warm, moist air overrides below-freezing air, often, snow transitions to rain in the warm sector behind the front. The same effect occurs over bodies of salt water, when it is termed ocean-effect or bay-effect snow. The effect is enhanced when the air mass is uplifted by the orographic influence of higher elevations on the downwind shores
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Ice
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Ice is water frozen into a solid state. Depending on the presence of such as particles of soil or bubbles of air. In the Solar System, ice is abundant and occurs naturally from as close to the Sun as Mercury to as far as away the Oort cloud objects, beyond the Solar System, it occurs as interstellar ice. It falls as snowflakes and hail or occurs as frost, icicles or ice spikes, Ice molecules can exhibit up to sixteen different phases that depend on temperature and pressure. When water is cooled rapidly, up to three different types of ice can form depending on the history of its pressure and temperature. When cooled slowly correlated proton tunneling occurs below 20 K giving rise to macroscopic quantum phenomena, virtually all the ice on Earths surface and in its atmosphere is of a hexagonal crystalline structure denoted as ice Ih with minute traces of cubic ice denoted as ice Ic. The most common phase transition to ice Ih occurs when water is cooled below 0°C at standard atmospheric pressure. It may also be deposited directly by water vapor, as happens in the formation of frost, the transition from ice to water is melting and from ice directly to water vapor is sublimation. Ice is used in a variety of ways, including cooling, winter sports, as a naturally occurring crystalline inorganic solid with an ordered structure, ice is considered a mineral. It possesses a regular crystalline structure based on the molecule of water, an unusual property of ice frozen at atmospheric pressure is that the solid is approximately 8. 3% less dense than liquid water. The density of ice is 0.9167 g/cm3 at 0 °C, liquid water is densest, essentially 1.00 g/cm³, at 4 °C and becomes less dense as the water molecules begin to form the hexagonal crystals of ice as the freezing point is reached. This is due to hydrogen bonding dominating the intermolecular forces, which results in a packing of molecules less compact in the solid, density of ice increases slightly with decreasing temperature and has a value of 0.9340 g/cm³ at −180 °C. When water freezes, it increases in volume and it is also a common cause of the flooding of houses when water pipes burst due to the pressure of expanding water when it freezes. The result of this process is that ice floats on liquid water, sufficiently thin ice sheets allow light to pass through while protecting the underside from short-term weather extremes such as wind chill. This creates an environment for bacterial and algal colonies. When ice melts, it absorbs as much energy as it would take to heat an equivalent mass of water by 80 °C, during the melting process, the temperature remains constant at 0 °C. While melting, any energy added breaks the bonds between ice molecules. Energy becomes available to increase the thermal energy only after enough hydrogen bonds are broken that the ice can be considered liquid water, the amount of energy consumed in breaking hydrogen bonds in the transition from ice to water is known as the heat of fusion
29.
A470 road
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The A470, also known as the Cardiff to Glan Conwy Trunk Road, is the major long-distance road in Wales, from Cardiff on the south coast to Llandudno on the north coast. It is 186 miles long, and has undergone considerable road improvement in the last two decades, while previously one had to navigate the narrow roads of Llanidloes and Dolgellau, both these market towns are now bypassed due to extensive road modernisation. The road travels through two of Waless national parks, the Brecon Beacons in the south and Snowdonia National Park, the southernmost point of the route is at The Flourish, Cardiff Bay, outside the Wales Millennium Centre. It runs up Lloyd George Avenue, and continues along St. Mary Street in central Cardiff, the road then becomes North Road, and after a tidal flow system running to Maindy and then goes over the flyover at the Gabalfa interchange of the A48 and the A469. It becomes an urban dual-carriageway along Manor Way, with a 40 mph speed limit and it passes without interruption under the M4 at the giant Coryton roundabout. For the next 15 miles it is a modern high-speed dual carriageway by-passing Tongwynlais and Castell Coch, Taffs Well and this marks the northernmost point of the traditional A470. The remainder of the north of Brecon consists of older routes now renamed A470. This artificiality is apparent as a following the entire route north to south must diverge from the main line of respective stretches of road no fewer than five times. A short three lane stretch heads north east before a left turn is required to stay on the road. From this point on the road narrow and twisting and overtaking is problematic except at a few straight sections. Another sharp left turn at a sign in Llyswen takes the road alongside the River Wye into Builth Wells. The road continues to follow the Wye to the crossroads where it meets the A44 in the centre of Rhayader. On reaching Llangurig, a right turn outside the village takes the road past Llanidloes and through Llandinam, another anomalous left turn at a level crossing sets the path for Caersws, Carno and Llanbrynmair. Just beyond the village of Talerddig the road descends and crosses under the Shrewsbury–Aberystwyth railway line, the river bridge at Commins Coch is so narrow and set at such an angle that only one vehicle at a time can pass. At Cemmaes Road the road joins the A487 at a roundabout, a right turn at the roundabout takes the road on to Mallwyd where the A458 joins at yet another roundabout. The country becomes more forested and the road climbs up through Dinas Mawddwy, a right turn beyond the power station takes the road on to Ffestiniog and Blaenau Ffestiniog before heading over the Crimea Pass to Dolwyddelan. A sharp left turn interrupts the A470 as it becomes the A5 for a short distance towards Betws-y-Coed before turning right again back onto the A470 just before Waterloo Bridge. The northernmost point of the route is in Llandudno itself at the sea front, where it meets the North Shore Parade, the route from Cardiff to Brecon was the original A470
30.
Libanus, Powys
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Libanus is a village in the Brecon Beacons National Park, in the county of Powys, Wales, United Kingdom. Presumably, the name of the village derives from Mount Lebanon, also known as the Lebanon Mountains, the ancient name for which was Libanus, a common name for chapels in Wales. It lies on the A470 road approximately 1 mile north-east of its junction with the A4215 road, the village used to have a primary school which was also used as a town hall but it has since been closed down due to lack of government funding and students to attend. The village has a pub, the Tair Bull, the National Park Visitor Centre is run by the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority. It is consistently the most popular attraction in the National Park. There is an Iron Age hill fort, Twyn y Gaer, in the Mynydd Illtud area just outside Libanus
31.
City of Cardiff Council
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The County Council of the City and County of Cardiff is the governing body for Cardiff, one of the Principal Areas of Wales. The council consists of 75 councillors, representing 29 electoral wards, the authority is properly styled as The County Council of the City and County of Cardiff or in common use Cardiff Council. No other style is sanctioned for use on Council Documents although it does occasionally appear wrongly as Cardiff County Council on documents, the City & County itself is usually simply referred to as Cardiff. After the 2004 election, which changed the control of the Council from Labour to No Overall Control, the Liberal Democrats remained the largest party following the 2008 local election, and formed an administration with Plaid Cymru. In 2012, the Labour Party took overall control of Cardiff council, elections to Cardiff Council take place every four years. The last election was 3 May 2012, the council was run by a Labour majority administration between 1995 and 2004. The Liberal Democrats ran a minority administration from 2004-2008, in 2012 Labour regained control of the council. Following the 2008 local elections in Cardiff there was no party with an overall majority. The Lib Dems increased their number of councillors to 35, forming an administration with Plaid Cymru. The Conservatives replaced Labour as the official opposition, Labour suffered badly, losing 14 councillors. Three independent councillors were elected, two former Conservatives who had left the group in 2006 being joined by an additional member, municipal life in Cardiff dates back to the 12th century, when Cardiff was granted borough status by the Earls of Gloucester. The offices of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Councillors developed during the Middle Ages, in 1905, Cardiff became a City, and the Borough Council became a City Council. The City of Cardiff is the county town of Glamorgan, however, prior to 1974, Cardiff was a County Borough in its own right and not subject to Glamorgan County Council. Council reorganisation in 1974 paired Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan together as district councils subject to the new county of South Glamorgan, further local government restructuring in 1996 resulted in Cardiff Citys district council becoming once again a unitary authority - the present Cardiff Council. The first Mayor of Cardiff is listed by the County Borough Records as Ralph Prepositus de Kardi who took up office in 1126, in 1835, Thomas Revel Guest became the first elected Mayor of Cardiff when the first council elections were held. When Cardiff was granted city status in 1905 Cardiffs First Citizen became Lord Mayor, robert Hughes, the Mayor in 1904, was re-elected to become Cardiffs first Lord Mayor in the following year. The Lord Mayor was granted the right to the style The Right Honourable, the Lord Mayor now bears the style The Right Honourable the Lord Mayor of Cardiff. In 1999 a new system was introduced whereby the Leader of the Council could also serve as mayor for the duration of the Council without re-election and this led to Russell Goodway serving as both council leader and mayor from 1999 to 2003
32.
Fan Fawr
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Fan Fawr is a mountain in the Fforest Fawr section of the Brecon Beacons National Park, in Powys, Wales and over 734 m high. The summit overlooks the eastern face and is marked by a cairn. Unusually, the point on this hill does not sit at the summit but 600 m to the south-west on a subsidiary spur. The hill is drained to the west by streams flowing into the Afon Dringarth, the Dringarth is dammed to the west to form Ystradfellte Reservoir as is the Taf Fawr east of the hill to form Beacons Reservoir. The hill is formed from sandstones of the Brownstones Formation of the Old Red Sandstone which were laid down during the Devonian period. On the southern slopes of the hill, sandstones of the overlying Plateau Beds Formation occur, in common with other hills in the Brecon Beacons National Park Fan Fawr was subject to glacial action in the ice ages. The western cwm contains a fine late-glacial moraine known as Cefn Bach, the hill is within the Fforest Fawr Geopark designated in 2005 in recognition of the areas geological heritage
33.
Welsh Government
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The Welsh Government is the executive of the devolved National Assembly for Wales. The government consists of cabinet secretaries, who attend meetings, and ministers who do not. It is led by the first minister, usually the leader of the largest party in the National Assembly, the government is responsible for tabling policy in devolved areas for consideration by the assembly and implementing policy that has been approved by it. As initially established, the Welsh Government had no independent executive powers in law, following separation, the Welsh ministers exercise functions in their own right. Further transfers of functions from the British government can be made directly to the Welsh ministers by an Order in Council approved by the British parliament. Separation was designed to clarify the roles of the assembly. The result mirrored much more closely the relationship between the British government and British parliament and that between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament. This separation between the two bodies took effect on the appointment of the First Minister by Queen Elizabeth II following the election on 3 May 2007. Separation was meant to clarify the roles of the assembly. The role of the government is to make decisions, develop and implement policy, exercise executive functions, Assembly measures can now go further than the subordinate legislation which the assembly had the power to make prior to 2007. The assemblys functions, including that of making subordinate legislation, in the main, a third body was also established under the 2006 Act from May 2007, called the National Assembly for Wales Commission. It employs the staff supporting the new National Assembly for Wales, the 2006 Act made new provision for the appointment of Welsh ministers. The First Minister is nominated by the Assembly and then appointed by Her Majesty the Queen, the First Minister then appoints the Welsh Ministers and the Deputy Welsh Ministers, with the approval of Her Majesty. The Act created a new post of Counsel General for Wales, the Counsel General is appointed by the Queen, on the nomination of the First Minister, whose recommendation must be agreed by the National Assembly. The Counsel General may be, but does not have to be, the Act permits a maximum of 12 Welsh Ministers, which includes Deputy Welsh Ministers, but excludes the First Minister and the Counsel General. Accordingly, the size of the Welsh Government is 14. Subject to limitations prescribed by the Government of Wales Act 2006, the government is composed of cabinet secretaries and ministers. The counsel general attends cabinet meetings, the current government is formed by Welsh Labour and also the sole Liberal Democrats Assembly Member, Kirsty Williams
34.
Talybont-on-Usk
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Talybont-on-Usk is a village and community in Powys, Wales. It lies on both the River Usk and the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal and it had a population in 2001 of 743, reducing to 719 at the 2011 Census. An electoral ward in the name exists. The population of this ward at the 2011 Census was 1,923, Allt yr Esgair is a steep-sided hill to the north east of Talybont, and has an Iron Age settlement on the summit. There are other Iron Age and Bronze Age sites in the vicinity, a small castle was built at Pencelli during the Norman invasion and this was later replaced by the sixteenth century Pencelli House. The canal was built around 1800 to transport lime, coal, there are some lime kilns to the east of the village and a tramroad was built to transport limestone from the crags above. The village is located on the B4558 road about six miles southeast of Brecon and it is beside the River Usk and the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal and is connected to the A40 trunk road on the other side of the river by a short section of unclassified road. The village has a shop and several pubs, the valley one mile south of the village is dammed to form the Talybont Reservoir. This has a 380 metres dam and there are forest trails in its vicinity, Talybont-on-Usk is a popular place for walkers and offers the Henry Vaughan walk through the nearby countryside where the 18th century poet once lived. Fred Miller, Welsh international rugby player, born in Talybont-on-Usk, david Lewis, 1st Baron Brecon, PC, a Welsh businessman and Conservative politician Roland Mathias, poet and short story writer. BBC page Visit our Beacons website Walking in the area www. geograph. co. uk, photos of Talybont-on-Usk and surrounding area Map sources for Talybont-on-Usk Talybont-on-Usk Friends of Talybont Reservoir
35.
Y Gyrn
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Y Gyrn is a top of Pen y Fan in South Wales, situated in the Brecon Beacons National Park. Tommy Jones Obelisk is found in between the summit and Corn Du, the summit is a boggy mound overlooking the A470 and the Storey Arms. It is marked by a pile of stones, www. geograph. co. uk, photos of Pen y Fan and surrounding area
36.
Mountain pass
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A mountain pass is a route through a mountain range or over a ridge. At lower elevations it may be called a hill pass, the highest vehicle-accessible pass in the world appears to be Mana Pass, located in the Himalayas on the border between India and China. Mountain passes make use of a gap, saddle or col, a topographic saddle is analogous to the mathematical concept of a saddle surface, with a saddle point marking the highest point between two valleys and the lowest point along a ridge. On a topographic map, passes are characterized by lines with an hourglass shape. Passes are often found just above the source of a river, a pass may be very short, consisting of steep slopes to the top of the pass, or may be a valley many kilometres long, whose highest point might only be identifiable by surveying. Roads have long been built – and more recently railways – through passes, some high and rugged passes may have tunnels bored underneath to allow faster traffic flow throughout the year. The top of a pass is frequently the only ground in the area. If a national border follows a mountain range, a pass over the mountains is typically on the border, and there may be a control or customs station. For instance Argentina and Chile share the worlds third-longest international border,5,300 kilometres long, the border runs north-south along the Andes mountains, with a total of 42 mountain passes. On a road over a pass, it is customary to have a roadside sign giving the name of the pass. As well as offering relatively easy travel between valleys, passes also provide a route between two mountain tops with a minimum of descent. As a result, it is common for tracks to meet at a pass, passes traditionally were places for trade routes, communications, cultural exchange, military expeditions etc. A typical example is the Brenner pass in the Alps, some mountain passes above the tree line have problems with snow drift in the winter. This might be alleviated by building the road a few meters above the ground, there are many words for pass in the English-speaking world. In the United States, pass is very common in the West, the gap is common in the southern Appalachians, notch in parts of New England. Scotland has the Gaelic term bealach, while Wales has the similar bwlch, the roads at Mana Pass at 5,610 metres and Marsimik La at 5,582 metres, on and near the China-India border respectively, appear to be worlds two highest motorable passes. Media related to Mountain passes at Wikimedia Commons
37.
Merthyr Tydfil
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Merthyr Tydfil is a town in Wales, with a population of about 63,546, situated approximately 23 miles north of Cardiff. At one time the largest town in Wales, Merthyr Tydfil is today the fourth largest urban area by population. Situated in the county of Glamorgan, it is the main town in Merthyr Tydfil County Borough and is administered by Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council. Both the town and the county borough are often referred to as simply Merthyr, according to legend, the town is named after Saint Tydfil, a daughter of King Brychan of Brycheiniog. According to her legend, she was slain at Merthyr by pagans around 480, although merthyr generally means martyr in modern Welsh, the meaning here is closer to the Latin martyrium, the mausoleum or church built over the relics of a martyr. Similar examples, all from south Wales, include Merthyr Cynog, Merthyr Dyfan, the Cornish and Breton language equivalents, in place names, are merther and merzher. Peoples migrating north from Europe had lived in the area for thousands of years. The archaeological record starts from about 1000 BC with the Celts, from their language, the Welsh language developed. Hillforts were built during the Iron Age and the tribe that inhabited them in the south of Wales were called the Silures, according to Tacitus, the Romans arrived in Roman Wales by about 47–53 AD and established a network of forts, with roads to link them. They had to fight hard to consolidate their conquests, and in 74 AD they built a fortress at Penydarren. It covered an area of three hectares, and formed part of the network of roads and fortifications, remains were found underneath the football ground where Merthyr Tydfil FC play. A road ran north–south through the area, linking the southern coast with Mid Wales, parts of this and other roads, including Sarn Helen, can be traced and walked. The Silures resisted this invasion fiercely from their strongholds. In time, relative peace was established and the Penydarren fortress was abandoned by about 120 AD and this had an unfortunate effect upon the local economy, which had come to rely upon supplying the fortress with beef and grain, and imported items such as oysters from the coast. Intermarriage with local women had occurred and many auxiliary veterans had settled locally on farms, with the Decline of the Roman Empire, Roman legions were withdrawn around 380 AD. By 402 AD, the army in Britain comprised mostly Germanic troops and local recruits, sometime during this period, Irish Dalriadan and Picts attacked and breached Hadrians Wall. By about 490 AD hordes of Saxons invaded and settled in the east or lowland Britain, the Latin language and some Roman customs and culture became established before the withdrawal of the Roman army. The girl was considered a martyr after her death in around 480, Merthyr translates to Martyr in English, and tradition holds that, when the town was founded, the name was chosen in her honour
38.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
39.
Cairn
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A cairn is a human-made pile of stones. The word cairn comes from the Scottish Gaelic, càrn, cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes, from prehistoric times to the present. In modern times, cairns are often erected as landmarks, a use they have had since ancient times. Cairns are used as markers in many parts of the world, in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, near waterways and on sea cliffs, as well as in barren deserts. They vary in size from small stone markers to entire artificial hills, cairns may be painted or otherwise decorated, whether for increased visibility or for religious reasons. An ancient example is the inuksuk, used by the Inuit, Inupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, inuksuit are found from Alaska to Greenland. This region, above the Arctic Circle, is dominated by the tundra biome and has areas with few natural landmarks, different types of cairns exist from rough piles of stones to interlocking dry stone round cylinders. The most important cairns commonly used around the world are interlocking stone survey cairns constructed around a central survey mark about every 30 km on the tallest peaks across a nation. These physical survey mark cairn systems by surveyors as the basis for national survey grids to interconnect individual land survey measurements for entire nations, on occasion these permanent interlocking stone cairns were taken down then reconstructed for survey mark for measurements to increase the accuracy of the national survey grid. They can also be used in unpopulated country as emergency location points, for example, the extensive trail network maintained by the DNT, the Norwegian Trekking Association, extensively uses cairns in conjunction with T-painted rock faces to mark trails. Other examples of these can be seen in the fields of Volcanoes National Park to mark several hikes. Placed at regular intervals, a series of cairns can be used to indicate a path across stony or barren terrain, such cairns are often placed at junctions or in places where the trail direction is not obvious. They may also be used to indicate an obscured danger such as a sudden drop, most trail cairns are small, usually being a foot or less in height. However, they may be built taller so as to protrude through a layer of snow, hikers passing by often add a stone, as a small bit of maintenance to counteract the erosive effects of severe weather. North American trail marks are sometimes called ducks or duckies, because they sometimes have a beak pointing in the direction of the route. The expression two rocks do not make a duck reminds hikers that just one rock resting upon another could be the result of accident or nature rather than intentional trail marking. The building of cairns for recreational purposes along trails, to ones personal passage through the area. This distracts from cairns used as navigational guides, and also conflicts with the Leave No Trace ethic
40.
Cist
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A cist is a small stone-built coffin-like box or ossuary used to hold the bodies of the dead. Examples can be found across Europe and in the Middle East, a cist may have been associated with other monuments, perhaps under a cairn or long barrow. Several cists are sometimes found close together within the cairn or barrow. Often ornaments have been found within an excavated cist, indicating the wealth or prominence of the interred individual
41.
Curb
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A curb, or kerb, is the edge where a raised sidewalk or road median/central reservation meets a street or other roadway. Previously, small wooden bollards had been put up to demarcate the area of the reserved for pedestrian use. The Corporation was also responsible for the regular upkeep of the roads, including their cleaning and repair. With the introduction of macadam roads in the early 19th-century, curbs became ubiquitous in the streets of London, curbs may fulfill any or several of a number of functions. They separate the road from the roadside, and discourage drivers from parking or driving on sidewalks and they also provide structural support to the pavement edge. Curbs can be used to channel water from rain or melted snow. There is also an aspect, in that curbs look formal. Since curbs add to the cost of a road, they are limited to urban and suburban areas. Curbs are not universally used, however, even in urban settings, in low-speed environments, curbs are effective at channeling motor vehicle traffic. On higher speed roads, curbs should not be used because they can destabilize vehicles that strike them, a high-speed vehicle that hits a curb may actually turn towards the sidewalk, rather than be directed away from it. A vehicle that strikes a curb can be tripped into a crash or vaulted into the air. The vehicle could be vaulted over a barrier into the object the barrier is intended to shield. This is a reason why they are used on rural or high speed roads. Where curb is used with a barrier, the barrier should either be close to or well behind the curb. Depending on the area and the distance between the travel lane and the edge of pavement, a line can be used to indicate the outside edge of the road. Retroreflective road marking material can also be applied to the curb itself to make it more conspicuous, there are a number of types of curb, categorized by shape, material, height, and whether the curb is combined with a gutter. Most curb is constructed separately from the pavement, and the gutter is formed at the joint between the roadway and the curb, combined curb and gutter has a concrete curb and gutter cast together in one piece. Integral curb is curbing constructed integrally as a part of a concrete pavement, curbs often have a vertical or nearly-vertical face, also called barrier, non-mountable, or insurmountable curb
42.
Bronze Age Britain
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Bronze Age Britain is an era of British history that spanned from c.2500 until c.800 BC. Lasting for approximately 1,700 years, it was preceded by the era of Neolithic Britain and was in turn followed by the period of Iron Age Britain. Being categorised as the Bronze Age, it was marked by the use of copper and then bronze by the prehistoric Britons, Great Britain in the Bronze Age also saw the widespread adoption of agriculture. This has been described as a time when elaborate ceremonial practices emerged among some communities of subsistence agriculturalists of western Europe, there is no clear consensus on the date for the beginning of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland. Some sources give a date as late as 2000 BC, while others set 2200 BC as the demarcation between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. The period from 2500 BC to 2000 BC has been called the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age, 2500–2000 BC, Mount Pleasant Phase, Early Beaker culture, Britain, copper+tin. 2100–1900 BC, Late Beaker, knives, tanged spearheads, 1500–1300 BC, Acton Park Phase, palstaves, socketed spearheads, copper+tin, also lead. 1300–1200 BC, Knighton Heath Period, rapiers, 1200–1000 BC, Early Urnfield, Wilburton-Wallington Phase. 1000–900 BC, Late Urnfield, socketed axes, palstaves, 800–700 BC, Ewart Park Phase, Llyn Fawr Phase, leaf-shaped swords. In Ireland the final Dowris phase of the Late Bronze Age appears to decline in about 600 BC, in around 2700 BC, a new pottery style arrived in Great Britain, the Beaker culture. Beaker pottery appears in the Mount Pleasant Phase, along with flat axes, people of this period were also largely responsible for building many famous prehistoric sites, such as the later phases of Stonehenge along with Seahenge. Movement of Europeans brought new people to the islands from the continent, recent tooth enamel isotope research on bodies found in early Bronze Age graves around Stonehenge indicates that at least some of the new arrivals came from the area of modern Switzerland. The Beaker culture displayed different behaviours from the earlier Neolithic people, integration is thought to have been peaceful, as many of the early henge sites were seemingly adopted by the newcomers. Also, the burial of dead became more individual, for example, in the Neolithic era, a large chambered cairn or long barrow was used to house the dead. The Early Bronze Age saw people buried in barrows, or sometimes in cists covered with cairns. They were often buried with a beaker alongside the body, modern thinking tends towards the latter view. Alternatively, a Beaker elite may have made the migration and come to influence the population at some level. Believed to be of Iberian origin, part of the Beaker culture brought to Great Britain the skill of refining metal, at first they made items from copper, but from around 2150 BC smiths had discovered how to make bronze by mixing copper with a small amount of tin
43.
Grave goods
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Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body. They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a type of votive deposit, most grave goods recovered by archaeologists consist of inorganic objects such as pottery and stone and metal tools but organic objects that have since decayed were also placed in ancient tombs. Funerary art is a term but generally means artworks made specifically to decorate a burial place. Where grave goods appear, grave robbery is a potential problem, etruscans would scratch the word śuθina, Etruscan for from a tomb, on grave goods buried with the dead to discourage their reuse by the living. The tomb of pharaoh Tutankhamun is famous because it was one of the few Egyptian tombs that was not thoroughly looted in ancient times, Grave goods can be regarded as a sacrifice intended for the benefit of the deceased in the afterlife. Closely related are customs of worship and offerings to the dead, in modern western culture related to All Souls Day, in East Asia the hell bank note. Also closely related is the custom of retainer sacrifice, where servants or wives of a deceased chieftain are interred with the body, evidence for intentional burial is found in Neanderthal sites from 130,000 years ago or earlier. In Homo sapiens burials beginning about 100,000 years ago, the body of the deceased was sprinkled with red ochre, and offerings of food, tools, and fresh flowers may have been deposited in the grave. Beads made of basalt deposited in graves in the Fertile Crescent date to the end of the Upper Paleolithic, the distribution of grave goods are a potential indicator of the social stratification of a society. It is also possible that burial goods indicate a level of concern and consciousness in regard to an afterlife, the expression of social status in rich graves is taken to extremes in the royal graves of the Bronze Age. In the Theban Necropolis in Ancient Egypt, the pyramids and the graves in the Valley of the Kings are among the most elaborate burials in human history. This trend is continued into the Iron Age, an example of an extremely rich royal grave of the Iron Age is the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang. In the sphere of the Roman Empire, early Christian graves lack grave goods, in the Christian Middle Ages, high-status graves are marked on the exterior, with tomb effigies or expensive tomb stones rather than by the presence of grave goods. The importance of goods, from the simple behavioural and technical to the metaphysical. However, care must be taken to avoid naive interpretation of grave goods as a sample of artefacts in use in a culture. Because of their context, grave goods may represent a special class of artifacts. Burial Grave field Necropolis Mingqi, the traditional Chinese burial goods The Earliest Beads, Treasures From the Ancient World, Museum of Ancient and Modern Art, at muma. org
44.
Stone tool
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A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric, archaeologists often study such prehistoric societies, and refer to the study of stone tools as lithic analysis. Ethnoarchaeology has been a research field in order to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use. Stone has been used to make a variety of different tools throughout history, including arrow heads, spearpoints. Stone tools may be made of ground stone or chipped stone. Chipped stone tools are made from materials such as chert or flint, radiolarite, chalcedony, obsidian, basalt. One simple form of reduction is to strike stone flakes from a nucleus of material using a hammerstone or similar hard hammer fabricator, if the goal of the reduction strategy is to produce flakes, the remnant lithic core may be discarded once it has become too small to use. In some strategies, however, a flintknapper reduces the core to a rough unifacial or bifacial preform, more complex forms of reduction include the production of highly standardized blades, which can then be fashioned into a variety of tools such as scrapers, knives, sickles and microliths. Archaeologists classify stone tools into industries that share distinctive technological or morphological characteristics and he assigned to them relative dates, Modes 1 and 2 to the Lower Palaeolithic,3 to the Middle Palaeolithic,4 to the Advanced and 5 to the Mesolithic. They were not to be conceived, however, as either universal—that is, they did not account for all lithic technology, Mode 1, for example, was in use in Europe long after it had been replaced by Mode 2 in Africa. Clarkes scheme was adopted enthusiastically by the archaeological community, one of its advantages was the simplicity of terminology, for example, the Mode 1 / Mode 2 Transition. The transitions are currently of greatest interest, Kenya Stone tools found from 2011 to 2014 at Lake Turkana in Kenya, are dated to be 3.3 million years old, and predate the genus Homo by half million years. The oldest known Homo fossil is 2.8 million years old compared to the 3.3 million year old stone tools. Dating of the tools was by dating volcanic ash layers in which the tools were found, Oldowan tools were characterised by their simple construction, predominantly using core forms. The blunt end is the surface, the sharp, the distal. Grasping the proximal surface, the hominid brought the surface down hard on an object he wished to detach or shatter. The earliest known Oldowan tools yet found date from 2.6 million years ago, during the Lower Palaeolithic period, and have been uncovered at Gona in Ethiopia. Homo habilis was the hominin who used the tools for most of the Oldowan in Africa, eventually, more complex, Mode 2 tools began to be developed through the Acheulean Industry, named after the site of Saint-Acheul in France
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Urn
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An urn is a vase, often with a cover, that usually has a somehat narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footed pedestal. Describing a vessel as an urn, as opposed to a vase or other terms, large sculpted vases are often called urns, whether placed outdoors, in gardens or as architectural ornaments on buildings, or kept inside. Funerary urns have been used by many civilizations, after a person died, survivors cremated the body and collected the ashes in an urn. Pottery urns, dating from about 7000 BC, have found in an early Jiahu site in China, where a total of 32 burial urns are found. There are about 700 burial urns unearthed over the Yangshao areas and consisting more than 50 varieties of form, the burial urns were used mainly for children, but also sporadically for adults. The Urnfield culture, a late Bronze Age culture of central Europe, the discovery of a Bronze Age urn burial in Norfolk, England, prompted Sir Thomas Browne to describe the antiquities found. He expanded his study to survey burial and funerary customs, ancient and current, in ancient Greece, cremation was usual, and the ashes typically placed in a painted Greek vase. In particular the lekythos, a shape of vase, was used for holding oil in funerary rituals, romans placed the urns in a niche in a collective tomb called a columbarium. The interior of a dovecote usually has niches to house doves, cremation urns were also commonly used in early Anglo Saxon England, and in many Pre-Columbian cultures. Biodegradable urns are sometimes used for human and animal burial. Besides the traditional funeral or cremation ashes urns, it is possible to keep a part of the ashes of the loved one or beloved pet in keepsake urns or ash jewelry. It is even possible to place the ashes of two people in so-called companion urns, cremation or funeral urns are made from a variety of materials such as wood, nature stone, ceramic, glass, or steel. Scattering of ashes has become popular over recent decades, as a result, urns designed to scatter the ashes from have been developed. Some are biodegradable, and some recyclable after being used, a Figural urn is a style of vase or larger container where the basic urn shape, of either a classic amphora or a crucible style, is ornamented with figures. These may be attached to the body, forming handles or simply extraneous decorations. The Ashes, the prize in the biennial Test cricket competition between England and Australia, are contained in a miniature urn, urns are a common form of architectural detail and garden ornament. Well-known ornamental urns include the Waterloo Vase, in mathematics, an urn problem is a thought experiment in probability theory. A tea urn is a metal container traditionally used to brew tea or boil water in large quantities in factories
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Round barrow
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A round barrow is a type of tumulus and is one of the most common types of archaeological monuments. Although concentrated in Europe, they are found in parts of the world, probably because of their simple construction. At its simplest, a barrow is a hemispherical mound of earth and/or stone raised over a burial placed in the middle. Beyond this there are variations which may employ surrounding ditches. The central burial may be placed a chamber or cist or in a cut grave. Both intact inhumations and cremations placed in vessels can be found, many round barrows attract surrounding satellite burials or later ones inserted into the mound itself. In some cases these occur hundreds or even thousands of years after the original barrow was built and were placed by different cultures. Numerous subtypes include the bell barrow, bowl barrow, saucer barrow, denmark has many tumuli, including round barrows. Tumulis were protected by law in 1937, in Britain round barrows generally date to the Early Bronze Age although Neolithic examples are also known. Later round barrows were also used by Roman, Viking. Examples include Rillaton barrow and Round Loaf, where several contemporary round barrows are grouped together, the area is referred to as a barrow cemetery. Chart of Neolithic, Bronze Age and Celtic structures from Pretanic World
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Fan Brycheiniog
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Fan Brycheiniog is the highest peak at 2633 feet in the Black Mountain region of the Brecon Beacons National Park in southern Wales. There is a point at the peak and on the edge of the escarpment, and nearby. It is just inside the county of Powys, formerly Brecknockshire and it is also within the Fforest Fawr Geopark designated in 2005 in recognition of the areas geological heritage. The path crosses peat bogs, but there are stone pavements in many places to protect the walker from the wet conditions. There is a staircase of regular downward gradient across the escarpment to the lake below. It is easily followed, and is dry underfoot when the weather is clear, the path leads on to Picws Du and Waun Lefrith above the smaller glacial lake of Llyn y Fan Fach. Fan Foel and these two form the so-called Carmarthen Van, since they fall within Carmarthenshire, which has its border with Powys at Fan Foel. Fan Brycheiniog is formed from the sandstones and mudstones of the Brownstones Formation of the Old Red Sandstone laid down during the Devonian period and its summit and southern slopes are formed from the hard-wearing sandstones of the overlying Plateau Beds Formation which are of upper/late Devonian age. The cwm below the summit drains into the River Usk to the north, the southern slopes drain into the Afon Twrch and the slopes to the east drain into the River Tawe. The local soils are thin and acidic owing to the areas of peat bog on the mountain. Vegetation includes tussock grass, cotton grass, bilberry, heather, the dip slope eventually merges with the Carboniferous limestone which outcrops in the karst landscape to the south. North-west of the summit is a prominent peak called Fan Foel. It occurs on a promontory which juts out from the escarpment to form the northernmost part of the cliffs in the range, there is a clear footpath which drops down from the peak to the moorland below. There are two associated peaks to the west along the ridge, Waun Lefrith and Picws Du, there is a Bronze Age burial cairn at the summit of Fan Foel, and it was excavated in 2002-4 with the results published in 2014 in Archaeologia Cambrensis. The round barrow was about 16 metres wide and was eroded with stones from the structure removed to build a central cairn by passing walkers. Excavation of the barrow showed that it contained two separate burials, the one in a stone cist contained the burnt bones of an adult woman. The ground surface beneath the barrow was carbon dated to about 2300 BC, the cist also contained a broken pottery food vessel decorated in the style of the Beaker people as well as a chert knife. The second burial was later and contained a broken collared urn with a rare belt hook
