The Ethels are 95 hills in the Peak District of England, mostly over 400m above sea level but including various prominent lower hills. The Ethels are a tribute to Ethel Haythornthwaite who pioneered the establishment of the Peak District as Britain's first national park in 1951.
The Peak District and South Yorkshire branch of the CPRE countryside charity announced The Ethels in May 2021. The Ethels were devised in early 2021 by CPRE volunteer Doug Colton.
Most of the Ethels lie within the Peak District National Park, but others lie outside its borders. The list is sorted by height above sea level.
Peak bagging or hill bagging is an activity in which hikers, climbers, and mountaineers attempt to reach a collection of summits, published in the form of a list.
The lists are usually published by a hillwalking or mountaineering club, and are often named after the club. The lists are usually published in the form of a list of summits, with the highest summits at the top of the list.
There are numerous lists that a peakbagger may choose to follow. A list usually contains a set of peaks confined to a geographical area, with the peaks having some sort of subjective popularity or objective significance, such as being among the highest or most prominent of the area.
Ethels.uk has chosen to of course follow the Ethels list.
ethels.uk was created by myself Daniel Pomfret, a developer from Manchester, UK. The idea behind it was driven by a passion for walking, climbing and running.
After reading a news report about (CPRE) The Countryside Charity announcing the Ethels back in May 2021, I thought it would be a good idea to make some sort of way to find and track the Ethels an individual has visited.
I’ve done a lot of walking and climbing of the Peak District over the years, and I couldn’t fully remember the hills (Ethels) I have walked up. But I did know that I always track my walks/climbs/runs with Strava and GPS Tracking. So, I knew I could crawl through my Strava data and eventually find out if I had visited an Ethel! So the idea came to life… I started coding ethels.uk in June 2022!
Originally it just started as a list of the 95 Ethels, along with some basic information (location, county etc). But over time I’ve begun adding more features. There’s still lots of features I want to add, but after recently becoming a new dad! I’ll be attempting to code them in the remaining “spare” time I have.
