A hill is not a mountain.
You climb it for you, then you put it quietly inside you, in a cupboard marked
‘Quite A Lot Of Hills’ where it makes its infinitesimal mark on who you are.
Ring the Hill is a book written around, and about, hills: it includes a northern hill, a hill that never ends and the smallest hill in England. Each
chapter takes a type of hill — whether it’s a knoll, cap, cliff, tor or even a mere bump — as a starting point for one of Tom’s characteristically
unpredictable and wide-ranging explorations.
Tom’s lyrical, candid prose roams from an intimate relationship with a particular
cove on the south coast, to meditations on his great-grandmother and a lesson on what goes into the mapping of hills themselves. Because a good walk in the
hills is never just about the hills: you never know where it might lead.
