Not built in a day

Rome was famously built on seven hills; everyone agrees what they are and there is a definitive list with ancient names, of which the Capitoline is possibly the best known. The Vatican hill is not on the list, brcause it wasn't part of the original city. The iconic, imperial, mythical status of Rome has been an inspiration to others

San Francisco makes similar claims, and there is a list that claims to be 'the' seven, but it's not really obvious why they take precedence over the 30+ other hills that underlie the city. I've been there once, and I remember the undulating city streets, with cable cars rising and falling - the spin-off from establishing a city on the subduction zone where two plates on the earth's crust are colliding. I guess a lot of the city's hills are former volcanoes

Sheffield is also referred to as the city of seven hills - a claim supported by George Orwell - but I read a wry article in a Yorkshire paper that says, without quite saying, that if you want to start a fight in a Sheffield pub, ask two or three people in the bar which they are! 

There is no argument that it's hilly, though. The picture looks as if I'm standing on a high point - and certainly I'm 30M higher than the river, a kilometre away, that lies below these houses - and the land in the distance lies on the other side. But we walked a couple of kilometres from here to our son & d-i-l's house and climbed another 50 metres. It's remarkable how strong our grandson's legs - not yet 12 weeks old - have grown. As if he knows

If you have to build walls up and down hills, you may as well put some craft into it. Workmanship like this makes me feel a connection with the artisan who has decided when to stay horizontal and when to drop down, and the angle of decent. They have individually shaped the end bricks by chipping at them with a hammer or chisel, probably wasting a few that broke in the wrong place. I think they have used tapered edging bricks to achieve the curves, and kept the mortar thickness even all along that capping row. It might not have occurred to them how a topping of snow would set it off perfectly - the icing on the cake