One of the students in the IAEA inspector school I taught for the last two weeks, Tom, was from England and was a fellow highpointer. On their weekend off, between the two weeks of classwork, most of the students went to places like the Grand Canyon or Las Vegas. Tom went to climb Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico (and his first 4,000m summit). Britain has some great mountains, particularly in Scotland, but the highest point is only 1,344m (4,409') tall. It's a bit like climbing in New England; the mountains are wonderful, but low. So getting the chance to climb a really tall mountain was great for him.

We got to talking about hiking in Britain, which I have never done, and a truly nerdy highpointing endeavor presented itself: climbing Ben Nevis (1,344m), the highest point in Scotland, Snowdon (1,085m), the highest point in Wales, and Scafell Pike (978m), the highest point in England—all in 24 hours time. Tom's done it three times and says that the hard part isn't the climbing (only Ben Nevis has a significant amount of vertical gain to overcome), it's the driving logistics. Apparently Wikipedia has a page describing this endeavor, which is known as the Three Peaks Challenge.

I'm going to have to find some business reason to go to Britain sometime soon, take a few days of vacation afterwards, and give this a try. Of course I'll have to find some local to go with me because I don't trust myself driving on those weird backwards roads. I'm not sure what's so appealing about climbing 3 national highpoints in a day... maybe it's just because my list of successfully ascended national highpoints is currently a little lackluster (it consists of exactly one country, Barbados, who's massive 340m highpoint is a driveup).