Hiking tips and tricks

Hiking tips and tricks

so we’ve been hiking for years um and by hiking I don’t mean the sort of little strolls in the local Woods like this um but you know actually going up reasonable peaks in national parks that sort of thing um and when we started there were it turns out there’s quite a lot of stuff we didn’t know and you know it caused us all sorts of problems because you think well hey it’s just a walk in the park it’s just a bit higher a bit longer um and then you discover that actually it’s not quite like that um and there’s certain things that if I’d have known them at the start it would have just made it’s a lot more pleasurable um and possibly less painful so I thought what I do is just put down some of these things that uh that I’ve learned over the years just so that uh anyone who maybe gets invited to their friends for the first time to go hiking up in the Lake District or someone like that um actually has more enjoyable experience and is a bit more prepared for it so first I’m going to talk about gear and mainly clothing so the first thing to think about is what are you going to wear when you’re going to go on your hike and when you go to a lot of these places for example in the Lake District in North Wales you can be in the village it’s a beautiful sunny day uh and people are in t-shirts and shorts and flipflops and um and the weather’s perfect for it but there’s two problems there is one in these sort of mountainous regions the weather rarely stays like that and when you’re going on a walk that could take you 6 hours you’re likely to end up in different types of weather just because you’re spending time out in it the second problem is Altitude and the weather you get down in the valley can be complet completely different to what you experience on the summit down in the valley you’ve got a lot of shelter uh there’s there’s hardly any wind you get out onto the summit and it can be blowing a gale and I’ve had it before where I’ve come off a mountain and I’ve got all the gear on I’m soaking wet and then you’re walking around you get down to the Village you’re walking around and people are undoubtedly looking at you as if you’re from from an alien planet because to them it’s a beautiful sunny day now another consideration apart from the weather changing and just being different at the top is that while you are actually moving you’re expending energy and when you’re climbing up a hill you are getting hot doing it so you need to ensure you’ve got um you’ve got clothing that can allow you to you’re not going to get too sweaty um you’re not going to dehydrate but also the opposite is true when you do stop uh you stop to to have a break you get to the summit and worst case scenario you stop because you’re injured um you could spend a load of time stationary and I can tell you from experience all that heat you’ve built up soon disappears and you soon soon start to to feel cold so you do need to ensure that with you you’ve got clothing that you can quickly add on in layers as you start to as as the temperature changes as you start to get cold or you can take out off in layers as you start to go back up hill and gets hot again now I guess one of the most important things people think about or should think about is what is going to be on their feet now my recommendation is to get some walk King boots they don’t need to be hugely expensive ones I would avoid the temptation to rush out and get ones with like a which are really tall they might look really cool but you could end up rubbing your leg and I’d avoid the temptation to say oh I’ve got these nice trainers I’ll I’ll wear them um probably not going to be waterproof they’re they’re just probably not going to be up to the job and at The Other Extreme I would not hike in wellingtons I don’t use wellingtons a lot but I know my wife has experienced using wellingtons as opposed to using walking boots and she says no I would never properly walk in wellingtons they’re just they’re just not good for your feet for that sort of thing um they’re not breathable like uh like proper boots are they’re just not designed for the job so certainly worth investing in some proper walking boots but again don’t spend an absolute Fortune oh yes and if you’re experienced and you know it’s not going to be muddy and or at least deep mud and a lot of water then yes you can go with a uh a hiking shoe rather than a boot so I tend to wear those a lot in the summer uh but not if I’m going up proper fails where there’s uh there’s always a lot of water also boots need to be they need to be worn in so don’t go uh if you’re going with your friends you’re going up to say the Lake District don’t say oh well I’ll just drop into this walking shop in kzk and I’ll buy set of brand new B Boots and then we’ll go up scarf El piking them uh they are going to kill your feet within the first mile so what you need to do is buy some some weeks in advance initially wear them around the house and most of the shoe shop selling these will exchange them if you’ve only worn them in the house and they’ll often tell you to try them in the house first and um you know then if they don’t really suit your feet you can take them back once you’ve worn them outside that’s it they’re yours once you’ve tried them out in the house you’ve worn them around in the house they’re starting to get a little bit comfortable then you can start using just on them on normal day-to-day tasks going down the shops that sort of thing and eventually on on you know local walks of a few miles obious what you don’t want to do is just prior to your your walking holiday go mad and do some big walk in new boots and then end up with with blisters that are going to take a long time to heal so um work your way up to it but again don’t get too hung up with you know the latest most expensive walking boots the most important thing is go go into a shop try try load of them find what is most comfortable for you and take some some thick walking socks with you uh if you don’t have them the shoe shops can supply some they’ll often say oh would you like to try some walking socks with this so because you need sort of a bit of extra padding and you tend to buy um boots that are you maybe a half size to to a size larger than your your normal Footwear um just to allow for that also your feet can swell during a walk so so you know you need to allow some um make some allowance there so I would also say definitely go into a physical shop one that’s local to you so you can take them back if you don’t if you have a problem and try them on there and ideally one that is a you know a proper walking sharper or a shop that sells proper outdoor gear so and where they’ve got someone who’s an expert in this you can use their expertise just don’t go straight onto the internet and buy some on the internet now I always like uh leather walking boots um as long as you keep them waxed then the leather can last a long time and it remain it’s got to be waxed to remain supple um so there there’s a various models of wax that you can buy from from the the shops shoe shops that will do the trick you can get a lot of these that look slightly more fashionable they’ve got sort of synthetic M materials um they look great but I’ve just find that they soon clog up with mud and the mud can do damage to them it’s more difficult to clean them whereas the leather ones yeah they they maybe look a bit old-fashioned but uh they they do the trick so once you’ve considered what footwear to to purchase the next thing you need to think about is a coat again you you don’t need to get really fancy on this uh but you’ll definitely need one even when it’s sunny because if it might be as I said sunny and warm down in the valley once you get up to the top it can change very quickly and it’s a whole different thing uh and you need something that’s going to keep the wind off you so a fleece you know might help with insulation but it’s not really going to be proof and of course the moment it starts raining it’s no good at all I’d avoid the temptation to go for uh lined coats the sort of traditional winter coat with a nice fleecy lining because in many circumstances you’re going to be walking up a steep hill you’re going to get be getting really hot and it’s going to be raining at the same time so it’s just going to be too hot for you to wear an insulated coat um in order to keep the rain off you and to hike up a steel Deep Mountain so what I tend to buy is coats which don’t have any sort of insulation layer because you can always wear multiple fleeces or layers underneath and that’s the ideal thing to do is it’s I like layers that you can unzip completely so you can unzip them to get lots of air in you can zip them up as the wind changes Direction you you round a of a buttress of of rock and suddenly there’s cold wind blowing at you um and you know you can put a hood up um but if you’ve got multiple layers then you know and it’s you can really easily strip them off as well one thing I like on outdoor coats is Zips U I want plenty of zipped Pockets so always look for that because there’s always you always need somewhere to put stuff without having to take your backpack off and go in there and put it back on again um but make sure they’re zipped Pockets you don’t want ones with little poppers where Things fall out of uh because you might be quickly taking the coat off putting it back on and the last thing you want to do is get down a mountain and you can’t find your car keys you don’t want to retrace that looking for your car keys uh the other useful thing you’ll get on some sort of more serious coats is pit Zips so there a zip under here and because it’s it’s sort of sheltered under here you can when it’s raining and it’s warm but you and you’re you’re getting hot because you’re going up Mountain you can unzip them either side and you you get ventilation of air going through but without having to completely unzip the whole coat meaning that you would get wet from the rain so they’re quite useful a good outdoor coat should also have a hood on it and it should be a hood where you can adjust it I mean I’ve got a mountaineering sort of mountaineering jacket and actually it’s it’s quite a big Hood uh but you can then pull various toggles uh to pull it in so it closely fits around your face because again you’re often going to be walking into the wind so there’s no point having a a big hood that will blow off the reason the Hood’s big on that jacket is because it’s actually designed for climbing use to and to to be able to release everything fit it over a climbing helmet I tend to like to buy these uh breathable jackets or coats which have got a breathable membrane in them gortex is an example it’s probably the best known example of that but gortex coats can be very expensive you don’t need to to go for that brand although it’s it’s very popular one um you’ll find that actually some of the cheaper brands of cats have their own brand of um of breathable membrane so it’s often a sort of white material that’s sewn in which is designed so that it it lets moisture EV evaporate out um and some air to breathe through but the holes in it are too small to allow rain through and that is behind the what they call the durable waterproof coating which is the that sort of you outer layer that we always see on coats but I I wouldn’t get too too worried about this because you can spend a lot of money on some of these coats and in my experience they’re not brilliant they just don’t work that well the the the the idea is your the expectation is that you’re you know you’re in a big rainstorm and you’re going to be able to zip this all up to prevent any water getting on you and you’re going to be able to climb up a mountain but what actually happens is that uh when the water is getting on the surface of these coats they won’t breathe anyway and you’ll just end up sweating into these coats and so you end up soaking wet anyway so you know there there’s some compromise to be made and so I wouldn’t spend an absolute fortune on one now I suggesting the backpack taking some sort of Woolen hat it’s one of those things I’m not really fussed about what it is they all seem to do the trick for me so I wouldn’t get too technical I think what of those I use I just bought from a petrol station uh also if it’s so that’s useful keep it in the backpack in summer it’s useful having just just like a peak cap baseball cap just keeps the sun off of your eyes and just gives you a little bit of shade there’s very little shade you can spend all day up on one of these Fells and uh get quite a lot of sun so take that into account I also always like to keep gloves in the pockets of of my coat uh because your hands get cold very quickly when you’re when you’re in the wind and when you’ve got cold hands you can’t manipulate things you struggle with zips you struggle with navigation AIDS uh and again gloves are one of these things I’m not particularly fussed about I won’t buy a really expensive brand um I want something that’s full fingered I don’t like fingerless gloves because uh you know the ends of my fingers get cold um and you know I can always take a glove off to do something and put it back on to warm my hand up uh ideally get something that’s that’s windproof and a bit waterproof um but again you can always put your hands in your pockets I wouldn’t buy sort of little Woolen gloves because they’re just going to get soaking wet straight away and wet gloves are just going to Wick heat away from your hand they’re actually going to be colder than wearing none at all I recommend getting a backpack if you don’t have one you don’t again have to spend a fortune on them uh you can get backpack which have uh straps that clip together here and at the waist that’s actually quite useful because if you have to clamber over something then it’s not falling off all the time you’re not having to keep adjusting it we tend to for most of our hiking just have quite a small 25 L backpack but uh you can have you know a much larger one like the orange one here which is not this is this is not sort of a big one for camping in but uh you know it’s sort of a bigger day pack um it’s obviously useful to have pockets on the outside where you can put things like compasses and mobile phones stuff like you need to get to it can be quite useful just to have one big pocket on the inside because you can then stuff all sorts of things down there you can stuff coats down there stuff fleeces down there as you get hot and then you can pull them all out as opposed to the type you might have for say school where you’ve got lots of different dividers also if it doesn’t come with a rain cover because generally backpacks are not waterproof you can buy these cheaply for what ever liter capacity of backpack you’ve got from the internet and they’re often sort of brightly colored things that just elastically go over the backpack they keep the uh keep the rain off the backpack but they also help you to be visible so in an emergency situation now remember there’s no there’s no toilets there’s no litter bins on the mountains if you do take tissue up um paper towels that sort of thing I suggest taking one of those those little plastic Ziploc bags cuz then you can put any waste in there and and pack it out so you know no one likes to see uh paper fluttering around places now when you’re walking you’ll often want to stop somewhere sit down uh have have a drink have a sandwich um now again down in The Valleys the grass might be nice and dry typically up on the mountains it’s soaking wet there’s rarely anything dry you can sit on so I carry something to sit on a bit of plastic something that can be folded up small I carry I’ve actually got an off cut of of membrane from it’s like sort of a a thin membrane that’s used in Ru thing projects um and I just sort of it folds up small open it up it’s something to sit on just to keep you from getting wet if you want to hike in the ice or the snow I strongly recommend some of these uh there are various Brands available these are catula ice spikes uh they stretch and they go over your walking boots and uh underneath they’ve got these sharp sturdy metal spikes so they grip into the uh the ice they also grip into grass as well once you put these on you just feel Unstoppable so they are they’re really worth uh worth purchasing if you’re going to be on slippery in Slippery conditions the next thing to think about is Emergency Equipment I know that seems a bit of Overkill because you’re probably going to be hiking somewhere quite popular but it’s quite easy to find yourself you’ve gone off the uh the the sort of popular paths and you could be somewhere very quiet and then the fog comes in uh maybe you slip you have an accident no one comes past uh you you want some way of uh of maybe summoning help and you can’t guarantee that you’ve got a um a mobile phone signal now we do actually carry we’ve got a an eerb which I’m not going to suggest you purchase but you can it’s like an it’s an emergency personal radio Beacon um you can set it off it’s really for um it’s really for marine use but you can register your details you can set it off and then it it talks to satellites and says this is where you are and talks to the emergency services the other thing to consider let’s say you know obviously you want to make sure you’ve got a phone and you’ve got charging the phone um consider having some sort of bright light flashlight and one thing I thought of the other day which would be quite useful while we’re in the Lake District we had the mountain bikes with us and I had one of those bright flashing lights strobe lights that goes on the handlebars and actually that would be a very useful thing to take with you because it’s got It’s got a big battery it’s intensely powerful and it can go you can cycle it through different modes so you can use it as just a a torch to illuminate Maps or you can put it on strobe and if you put it on strobe people are going to see you for miles away so very useful summoning help also a whistle is a good option um some of the backpacks actually come with a whistle built in or you know built into or attached to it so that can be useful now I said before you know if you did get injured um if you end up sort of stuck someplace for any amount of time you’re going to get cold you can get these cheap thermal blankets so that can be a good thing to purchase and they they fold up very small just like an aluminum blanket thing so it’s just an extra layer you can wrap around yourself and also make sure you’ve got a compass and a map a proper map like uh here’s an Ordinance survey map this type which is the Explorer series and you know how to use them you don’t want to rely on your mobile phone for this it might not have signal it might not have battery power and the maps give you a bigger picture and give you very detailed information now if you’re doing the lake districts I recommend getting the Wayne guides as you see there’s a whole section of them Alfred Way Wayne Wright was a famous Walker um and he penned these guides in I guess it was the 1960s did them all by hand but they are absolutely stunning so they have details of all the best routes up and down every every Peak um recommendations illustrations of what they look like the views you’ll get when you’re up there and these still still hold good um so absolutely stunning and they they’re just a nice thing to have as well as being practically very useful there’s a whole series of them covering different areas of the Lakes now if you haven’t done say the big big fails big hills in the Lake District before uh there is a Temptation I guess to to rush to the the big popular ones hellin scarel Pike for example but I suggest if you’ve not done this before there are some really nice walks up some smaller Peaks beautiful views and you’ll get the feel for doing it without uh either scaring yourself or exhausting yourself straight off the bat and similarly some of these hikes can be quite Technical and actually they could be quite scary so you could have long drops you could have slippery surfaces you can have nowhere nothing to hold on to so a walk that starts off like a very easy gravel foot path that you could you could push a child’s push chair along can after a few miles end up with almost a a climb up a rock face so again it’s worth reading up this in say the way right books to decide whether this is a suitable first climb uh or first first Ascent for you and then sort of working your way up to more difficult stuff as you get a bit more experienced just so again you don’t scare yourself off and say that’s it I’m not doing that again now also do look at the weather forecast there are sort of mountain weather forecasts available and they will tell you the likelihood of cloud and weather is at the different altitudes uh it can be a bit depressing to get up to a peak and then find that there’s absolutely no view you’re just hiking in fog effectively but sometimes it’s worth if you can stay around there for a bit or drop down to have a cup of tea and some shelter and then come back up you might find that some of it clears and you get a view I’ve done this before Heights up somewhere as it oh this is terrible no view hike down get halfway down you look back and the summit’s in view so don’t rush to come down having said that don’t look to spend ages at the Summits they’re often cold and windy so you know you as you get cold you’re just losing energy uh it’s going to get more difficult for you to hike the other thing is about the weather or the weather forecasts is I tend to look the day before and I’ll keep my plans flexible I might choose in advance the things I want to do but then I will choose when I do them based on what the weather’s going to be so if I look at the weather forecast tomorrow and it’s good I might do one of the big Hills if it’s poor I might say look I’m just going to stay around town I’m going to do a museum or do some shopping go to a cafe for example now rather than just starting on your hike and and just following the sign poost Etc obviously you need to what you should be doing is following your route on the map as you do it so if you lose visibility you know where you are at any point in time and similarly if you’re using something like a GPS or a phone um just keep following it on on the map so you know where you actually are because if those things fail then you’ll still know where you are and you’ll be able to navigate your way onwards or back now you can work out the length of the roots again from the way right books or if you look at here there’s little blue squares and these squares are 1 kilm so you can sort of roughly measure how many kilometers your walk’s going to take but do remember that uh a kilometer on the flat is a heck of a lot easier than a kilometer on one of these Hills or mountains where you know it’s often at an angle and and actually going downhill is often worse um and it’s rough surfaces you got to look at every single step um so don’t be over ambitious and say oh I can I can do 18 kmers easily at home you know walking on the flat and therefore that doesn’t translate to what you could do in the Hills as I say do buy these books they’re about 8 there are several of them that cover the whole Lake District um and depending on where you are you might have to take two of them on a hike if you’re near a border so I do recommend maybe watching a video or getting some training but at least watch a video on how to use these maps with a compass and Compasses are cheap small things but uh it would make all the difference if even if you’re using a GPS or using your phone um if you get a white out and you lose power on that device then you’ll know how to be able to use that Compass to orient the map and you’ll then be able to navigate yourself just with the map is a good skill to have now the maps do have a key to what all these symbols mean again you’ll find videos on that sort of thing or read the the key to find out what the the different symbols mean um but I will point out that the these little red contour lines represent differences in level and of course the closer the lines are together the steeper that is you can see where a path goes up a fairly steep slope for example or where it’s almost flat this will allow you to judge as well when you’re planning the uh your Ascent um because one of the things I tend to find is that it’s a lot easier to go up steep ascents because it’s in front of you you can use your hands if necessary it’s a lot more difficult going down them you can hurt your knees um especially if you’re getting a bit older like I am uh so what I tend to do if I’m working out a route in advance I’ll probably say well look I’m going to do the Steep route up which might have some scrambling or climbing get to the top and then work out the have the the gentle route back down that’s also important because when you’re doing the second half of of your your walk and you’re going down you might be a bit tired it’s a bit later in the day and you’re not concentrating and this is when accidents can happen so you sort of want it to be as easy as possible now I mentioned GPS before uh most people if they’re using that they’ve got a they’ve got it on their phone if you’re doing that I would Orient it if you got the option to to to be North always facing upwards not like your car GPS which spins round to show you which direction you should go in because that way if if North is up that’s how it is on these maps and it means that you will get an understanding of the terrain and its layout that will transfer to the map when you open the map it’s not all in different directions and look if you’re if you’re navigating and you want to try and work out hang on that that’s North uh but we’re going that way rotate the map don’t feel bad about doing that so rotate the map rotate the GPS so that it aligns up with the territory now I use a specialist Garmin uh handheld GPS units I use it for kaying rock climbing all sorts of things um you know it’s waterproof it’s IP67 rated I think yeah it’s a very strong unit it’s powerful only got a very small screen but one of the important features is it just takes regular AA batteries which means wherever you can have a pocket full of spare batteries and if you get short if you’re actually in a village or town anywhere in the world you can buy additional batteries with you you don’t actually need to find somewhere to charge it for several hours um if you’re relying on a phone uh maybe think of getting taking one of those sort of charger packs with you so you can charge it as you go because navigation GPS facilities can use quite a lot of power and especially if the backlss on on the phone all the time because you’re you’re navigating with it so just bear that in mind now if you do get a navigational issue if you get lost or anything and there are other hikers please ask them I mean everyone people up there are enthusiasts they’re really Keen to to to give you advice and tell you uh you know say where are you going uh oh yes you know if you go down there so so please feel free to ask don’t feel you know like you’re being an idiot asking it’s the right thing to do another thing is when you get to the top of the peak uh they’re often windy they’re often cold you might find it’s actually better to step down a bit and find somewhere to sit to have your cup of tea or your sandwiches rather than sitting there on some wind swept Peak um so you can take a quick picture then drop down a bit get some refreshments also when you’re on the peak because just take a note of which direction you came from to get there and which direction you have to go to to come off because you could find yourself dropping off because you go up there you you look at various markers you take pictures in different directions you have a chat you have a cup of tea and then he like oh which way do we go to get down maybe you’re doing a circular walk maybe you’re going back down the same way but it’s easy to get disoriented especially if the clouds have come in and then you don’t know which way you’re supposed to go and you could actually end up dropping off the wrong side of the mountain and having a real navigational disaster and uh that could be absolutely miles from where you started and parked your car now one thing that can be quite tempting when you’re when you’re on when you’re on a hike you’re coming down somewhere you might say oh actually I’m not going to take that there’s a shortcut here I can cut this corner um so be very careful about that uh one you can find yourself on the wrong side of a fence and then you got to climb over a fence uh secondly you can find there’s big areas of Boggy ground and there’s a lot of bogy ground even on the top of of these these Peaks it’s very squelchy and you don’t want to find yourself waste deep in bog you apart from being embarrassing and and wet you’re going to stay cold for the rest of your uh W rest of your heart a good thing to do would be to carry a spare set of dry socks with you just in case that sort of thing happens the other more critical issue is if you go off off the path is you you try to find this shortcut is that you’ll see a lot of these Hills will just roll off roll off you can’t see where they’re going they get steeper and steeper and the grass can do this and then you can get a vertical Cliff you can get like an overhang so it can be very dangerous you’re thinking oh it’s a nice gentle grass SL we just walk there that goes where we want and then you find yourself at the top of a cliff and the Temptation then is to try and walk work your way around and get down this dangerous Cliff because no one wants to walk all the way back up that hill again so try and avoid that sort of shortcut if you can so Logistics I suggest if it’s somewhere like the Lake District and this also applies to North Wales get out early so get out early in the morning uh get yourself parking space because people tend to assume oh there’ll be loads of parking there’ll be proper car Parks there’s not there’s often a few pullings by the side of the road and you know by sort of 9:30 10:00 a.m. they might all be completely full uh so we often find found a situation where we’ll get somewhere at sort of you know 7:30 8 in the morning Park up there’s maybe one other car when we come down it might be late morning and the limited parking is full you got to bear in mind the the weather often starts out nice very early in the morning and then gets a bit worse later so you want to be using that nice weather so I do see a lot of people sort of wait until they’ve you know they’ve had a late breakfast and then they because they’re on they’re on holiday so you know take their time and then they get there and it’s a nightmare finally parking and also the best weather’s gone so you know at 8:00 a.m. it’s blue skies at 9:30 there’s the OD Cloud appearing by 11:00 it’s it’s fully clouded over and then it might be in the early afternoon it starts raining so you can miss the the best of the day also more worryingly I do see people I’m I might be coming down off a big hike at sort of 3:30 4: in the afternoon and I see people coming up they maybe come from the local town and thinking oh it’s nice nice afternoon we’ll just just start this and just go higher and higher and higher often in inappropriate clothing and not realizing quite um how far they’re going to have to go to to actually get anywhere and you’re just starting at the wrong time of the day often the hottest time of the day now I said about parking you know pullings at the side of the road but bear in mind many of the roads are single track so they’re only one car wide or slightly more than one car wide and they have these passing places that you can pull into but this is for people to pull in temporarily to let traffic Park so do not park in those passing spaces where there are official car parks and they’re often some at low level of around the Lakes they are getting expensive um so you know you can easily pay9 a day for these uh I tend to keep a lot of one pound coins in a bag in the car just for this because you can’t guarantee that they’re going to have contactless payment maybe they have an app maybe that app doesn’t work you find it requires an app you don’t don’t have and you’re trying to download and sign up to some app and give it your credit card details it’s a real pain so actually having some cash just in case is quite useful now I mentioned I mentioned the single track Lanes with passing places and what this does mean is that well firstly you you need to drive slowly because you can have oncoming traffic coming towards you you may need to stop at any point and and reverse backwards so if the oncoming traffic is a queue of cars they’re not going to be able to stop and reverse back or they might be a farm vehicle with a trailer so you need to be a someone who can reverse your car back and get it into a tight space so something worth thinking about if you’re if you’ve never driven uh single track Lanes before you’re also likely to come across a lot of cattle grids because the cattle can roam free in a lot of areas in the national parks cattle grids are fine to drive over so they’re not going to damage your car they’re not an indication that you’re not allowed to go there it’s just to keep keep the cattle one side of the cattle grid so they won’t step through the gaps with their Hooves but you can drive through it perfectly well in your car um probably best not to go flying through at high speed but don’t worry it’s it’s safe it’s not going to damage your car Refreshments you’ll need to carry some water because you’re likely to be hiking up hills you’re going to be sweating you’re going to be going through that water quickly um you know I’d carry a good liter of water if it’s colder weather think about maybe a thermos of tea if you do that cuz it it really does make a difference if you have to stop somewhere it’s really bad weather you’re getting really cold it really does help to warm you up make sure though it’s one of those metal thermos flasks it’s not the old style ones with glass on the inside cu no one wants to have knocked their backpack against some rock faces no one wants to get it out and shake it and it’s all rattly with full of broken glass so I mentioned before um the way that a foot path can change from being something that you know you could push a push chair along to something that ends up being a scramble up a rock face I also mentioned the Fantastic way right guides but you do have to remember Wayne Wright Walks Like every inch of the Lake District so he was an expert and that does mean that his idea of what might be an easy walk and your idea might not be quite the same so just take it with a pinch of salt if he says oh this is this might be a little bit tricky think that it’s actually probably quite difficult on that topic you do often have to scramble up rocks we’re not talking about proper rock climbing involving you know ropes and axes and stuff like that we’re just talking about using your hands to to to get up there um one trick that my climbing instructor told me which is very useful was one firstly take small steps if you can because if you take a small step you’ll often suddenly see a handhold or another step become available to you uh that wasn’t visible just a a few inches below also means you’re not putting too much strain on on your joint when doing that and you can actually move faster in smaller increments than if you’re taking great big steps the other one is he he also said was look around so The Logical Next Step might be behind you over here or over there or you might have to shuffle around a bit and just find an easier step and again these things may not be obvious from a bit further down but when you get to that point you can suddenly see oh actually rather than trying to go up this Gully in front of me if I turn around there and go up that way I’ve got an easier route so do look around also don’t rush this is not a competition you want to take in the views you want to enjoy it and actually you will probably get there quicker if you don’t rush because people who Rush are more likely to slip and have an accident I’ve seen this um I’ve I’ve seen this on Table Mountain in Cape Town um and also you just tie yourself out and you have to keep stopping more frequently again I I’ve seen this sort of in the uh um TI Nevada mountains in California people go rushing off oh look like an over take this person and then you come across them and they’re there you know out of breath struggling sweating and you just gently carry on past them now it sounds obvious but look where you’re stepping you’re not on tarmac or concrete it’s uneven surfaces often the Rocks even if they look firm they they might wobble um they can be slippery surfaces so it is tempting you’re in beautiful places to keep sort of looking around while you’re walking uh probably best so you don’t break or twist an ankle is to you know focus on where you’re walking and then every few steps stop and then look around take a picture rather than trying to walk as you as you film or take a picture and I mentioned it before take even more cake going downhill it is so much easier to slip and inj yourself going downhill the last thing you want is finding that you you’ve badly Twisted an ankle 1,000 M up and you know 8 km or 5 km from from the car it’s going to be a real struggle getting back down I almost never find any risk of injuring myself going up something it’s always coming down something this is especially true because a lot of these even paths that look quite good I’ve got Pebbles on them that are like ball bearing they can be very slippery so again do not rush CU you can end up slipping and and injuring yourself as well as using a stick when descending those steep gravityy paths to prevent yourself slipping another tip that I found is to look out for little or slightly larger irregular shaped stones in the path and try and step on those because they’ll dig into the path and will stop you rather than you stepping on the sort of very rounded shingly Stones which will just slide down the path so that that helps you avoid having an accident when descending buy yourself a trekking pole they’re Dirt Cheap don’t need anything fancy but they mean that you’ve got an extra pair of hands on a slippery surface you know you can reach out somewhere and just just keep yourself balanced especially if you’re on some sort of like knife edge thing and really you you you need to use hands as well as feet um also a big reason for having them is if you start going downhill um you can extend it a bit you can sort of almost reach in front to help break you so all that breaking effort isn’t going on your knees uh because you know that that can get really hard on the knees so they telescope so one you can adjust the length for your height and for whether you’re going uphill which means shorter or going downhill you want to reach more ahead um and also they’ll they’ll shorten down to maybe that so they’ll fit in your backpack so you know they they’re good for storage um a lot of the cheaper ones come with like a shock absorber system so you can click it and it’s got Springs and unclick it and it’s solid I don’t bother with any of that I find that useless um you just want something that’s solid and I like one which is quite heavily built I can use it just in the countryside in general bash backs and stinging nettles it’s just really handy to have a stick they typically all have like a sharpened metal tip for for p going into the ground I mean it’s good in on many surfaces is and but they also come usually with a like a rubber foot that you can put on the end I guess that’s for pavement I never use that I think there’s some up here they’re probably yeah still in their original bag they also come with a screw on piece which which distributes the uh pressure and prevents it going in too deep so it’s just like a sort of a flatter piece maybe that size um and that’s useful because in deeper mud otherwise it’ll just go all the way down um and obviously it’s useful in snow in fact looking at this one this is’s an optional large one there for I guess use in snow now one place where a checking pole is also very useful is in scree scree slopes are horrible uh you’ll see them marked on a map there’s a specific there like lots of little round circles clustered together to represent the fact that they are a series of small to large Boulders it’s like a Boulder Field often at sort of like 45° it’s at the whatever the maximum angle you can stack Boulders is and it’s pretty horrible um all these Boulder Fields there’s no obvious path often in scre it just sort of disappears and because the um the boulders move all the time and you’re sort of trying not to trying to balance and not slip over so uh and coming down scre is really awkward and that’s where you got to be careful cuz you can just it’s like bull be ings you can just end up in sort of like an avalanche of scree and come down so you got to be so careful coming down so that’s probably all I can think of for now um one last thing you talk about is livestock bear in mind that on the lower Fields there may be cattle on the higher Fields there’s undoubtedly sheep gates are will be probably left closed to ensure sheep don’t escape so make sure you reclose them properly afterwards and you latch them properly the latching on Gates can be all over the place you know sometimes it’s piece of string or rope tied which you have to loop back over um often they don’t you know you you have to sometimes put a bit of attention in to make sure they latch properly you don’t want a farmer’s sheep escaping uh from where they should be um if you’ve got a dog keep it under control your your dog might be absolutely fine normally at home but amongst livestock unless it’s very used to it you don’t know and generally the rule is keep a dog on on the lead the last thing you want is a dog getting out and uh um and worrying some sheep causing them to miscarry or or even worse attacking attacking um some sheep and they can leave appalling injuries and I we’ve worked with sheep before and uh we know the sort of injuries you can get from dogs um so so yeah so having said all that hopefully it didn’t frighten you off any of this it’s really just to give you some some thoughts as to how to prepare yourself and make sure you’ve got uh the stuff you need to make sure it’s an enjoyable experience whatever the weather um and then you’re not having to to find yourself oh I’ve got the wrong stuff I’m I’ve hurt myself I’ve got lost I’ve uh um I you know I’ve got blisters I’m uncomfortable you can actually do what you’re supposed to do up in the hills and that’s just really enjoy the day out take some nice photographs spend some time with friends and just enjoy the beautiful scenery okay well hope that gets you out into the countryside right enjoy your time out there see you e e

Going hiking in the Lake District, Wales, Scotland or similar for the first time? Here are the things I wish I’d know in advance