Dealing with Contours

Understanding the shape of the land by looking at a map is a very useful skill and can be essential if you're going to be walking in mountainous terrain. The height and shape of the land is shown on a map using contour lines. These lines appear as thin orange or brown lines with numbers on them. The number tells you the height above sea level of that line .

A contour line is drawn between points or the same height all the way along its length. The height difference between the contour line is usually 10 metres in mountainous areas . The map key will tell you the contour interval used.

An easy way to understand and visualise contour lines is to think of them as tide lines that would be left by the sea. As the water level drops it would leave a line every 10 metres on the landscape. These marks would be contour lines.

Being able to visualise the shape of the of the landscape by looking at the contour lines of the map is a very useful skill that can be developed with practice. It will allow you to choose the best route for your journey. When reading contour lines on a map its helpful to remember the numbering on them reads uphill. Its useful to imagine that to read contour line numbers you have to be stood at the bottom of the hill looking up it, otherwise the numbers would be upside down.

Other useful things to look at when reading contour lines are rivers, which usually flow into valleys or areas with very few contour lines which will indicate that the area will be flat.