Talk:Great Dodd

Is Calfhow Pike a tor?

The reference to Calfhow Pike as a tor is incorrect, and so I have replaced it with the term "rocky pinnacle".

As a technical term, tor is found in geological works always with reference to granite tors, a landform that has been created through the un-roofing of granite rock that had previously been intruded into rocks beneath the surface. For example, see Arthur Holmes, Principles of Physical Geology, London: Thomas Nelson, 1965 (1944), p 615; Peter Toghill, Geology of Britain, Airlife Publishing, 2000, p 178, and Graham Park, Introducing Tectonics, Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2012, p 42.

As a non-technical term, the word tor is sometimes applied to rocky outcrops on the summits of hills, but this usage seems to be confined to south west England, where the granite tors of Dartmoor are well known. Glastonbury Tor is one example.

Calfhow Pike is not a granite tor. It is actually an outcrop of dacite, an extrusive igneous rock. And the word tor is not used in Cumbria, in spite of its possible Celtic origin. Calfhow Pike (peak on Calf Hill) is not a tor in Cumbria but a pike, from Old English pīc, a peak. To use a 'foreign' term from the other end of England adds nothing to the information being given, and may mislead the reader because of the more technical use of the term. Silence-is-infinite (talk) 15:13, 2 June 2014 (UTC)