The world's great peaks and wildernesses are thousands of miles away. Just across the valley at the southern end of the Cotswolds is Little Solsbury Hill, a 500ft bulge whose most dramatic feature is an Iron Age fort. Which would you choose?
Stephen Venables often chooses the former, even after 20 years of mountaineering which include brushes with death and the loss of many friends. He's just crossed the glaciers of South Georgia and will climb the Matterhorn for a TV film in September.
But more often he chooses the latter, especially since his wife and two young sons can come with him. "You can feel intimidated by the harshness and sterility of the high mountains," he says. "This is the antithesis - a lush, green and gentle landscape, but with enough hills to make it interesting.
"I'm quite lazy about walking and impatient to get to the steep, exciting bits - walking is a means to an end, so I'm not a great walker with a capital W. Solsbury Hill is appealing because it's short and local, and it's a way of getting into the country very quickly."
He and his family leave their house in the Bath suburbs by bike or by car and head towards the flat-topped dome of Solsbury with its horizontal bands of fields, hedgerows and woodland. The walk starts beyond a new bypass at Bailbrook, where the river Avon is pushed westward by the barrier of hills.
They take a gap in the hedge, cross an ancient lane and slant across a steep field - sledging territory, if ever there's snow - to a stile: "It's magical once you cross it, because you suddenly enter a much wilder landscape and you can hardly hear the bypass," says Venables. "You feel very isolated in these thickets, even though you're just above Bath."
He likes it, especially in the autumn when the cold man's beard is tangled among the red and crimson of hips and haws, with sloes and blackberries adding a touch of brilliance. Next comes a low limestone escarpment and a final push to the summit and the concrete triangulation point: the two boys, aged seven and nine, usually want to stand on it.
"You emerge into clean air and the wind, and in the winter the clouds scud in from the Atlantic," says Venables. "The top is an extraordinary flat expanse, like a huge green table, and in the summer there are silvery thistles with magnificent purple flowerheads.
"It's great for flying kites and for running around, especially for children like ours who are growing up in a terraced house with a narrow garden. And you can see the complicated layout of Bath on its seven hills, with the Avon coming in from Bradford and making a sharp bend. "We normally run all the way down. Because there's a spring in a field where the cows graze, it's often like Passchendaele, so it involves slithering and falling over and getting completely coated with mud. So the way we do it, it's not a walk for people who want to stay clean."
The practicals For a free brochure and accomodation list for Bath, call 01225 477101. For mail order of leaflets on walking in and around the city, call 01225 477708. Also visit www.thisisbath.com. OS Landranger map (1 inch to 1 mile) 172, (Bristol, Bath), price £ 5.25. Explorer map (2 inches to 1 mile), 155 (Bristol, Bath) £5.50. Bath is the southern end of the Cotswald Way, the newest National Trail; guides include The Cotswald Way, by Mark Richards (Reardon Press, £3.95), and The Cotswald Way, by Anthony Burton (Aurum, £10.99).
