Comversations with sports nuts: "So what do you do?" "Sprint triathlons" "Oh my you're so hard core. I want you" "What do you do?" "Mountaineering" "Oh that's cute." Meh. Public perceptions...

Hill walking is basically what most people in the US would call hiking. Sometimes it is strenuous, but most of the time it is just a walk in the woods (or on a "mountain"). Scrambling involves using your hands and depending on the difficulty of the "scramble" it may involve some 4th and easy 5th class moves. There are different grades of scrambles and some are serious. I think it's more popular in the UK because the terrain lends itself very well to this type of thing. It's actually a lot of fun if it's raining too much to climb and you don't have enough money to drink ale all day. Then we have this thing called "fell running" where people who are tired of doing triathlons and whatnot decide to go and run up and down muddy hills in the mountains in the worst weather they can tolerate. That is not so much fun.