Shropshire; my home county, which has taught me not to need a 'tick list' as a motivator, there are hills and lakes, streams and woods, dells and rivers which in their countless combinations spark of a curiosity to combine in yet another mix.
My home patch has taught that terrain is the motivator and a map is the key, not that Shropshire has kept me shackled within her borders, far from it. I will look at the map of another and see that combination of ways and features that triggers that itch.
Not far from here;
I met a walker following a guide book, little green jobby from Millets or others, I asked him what he would do when he had walked all the routes in it. He said buy another book, the book's editorial kids you that has been written by an expert, in what plagiarism, it has only been plagiarized from the OS map and converted into a less versatile set of instructions.
A decade has past since that photo was taken, yesterday I caught a glimpse of the Black Clee, where it was taken, I was on Beacon Hill in Radnorshire, not one of today's counties, a part of greater Powys. Moving clockwise from the Clee Hills, it was a bit hazy I think the Malvern hills were on the horizon, Brecon Beacons to our south and the broad undulations reaching out into the Pembroke Peninsular, Cader Idris, The Arran ridge, Berwyns, Corndon Hill, the Stiperstones and Longmynd, where I completed my panoramic view back to the Clee.
It is not that these hills are destination to be ticked off, it is the ground between them some known, some giving a hint of more to found and now a lot screaming in my mind to be re-visited.