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On maps for walking, you can tell the height you are walking at, and where hills and slopes are. These are represented by contour lines. The contour lines are numbered to tell you your altitude above sea level.
Contour lines are lines of constant height, which means that each one represents a slice through the earth at a certain height. Stacking each of these slices up in your head builds a picture of how hilly an area is.
This is a difficult thing to do but gets easier with practise. One of the best things to remember is that the closer the contour lines are to one another, the steeper the slope.
The animation below shows one way of visualising contours in your head:
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