Start With the Place, Not the View

Wild camping is one of the great privileges of walking in the UK, but it is a privilege that rests on a simple bargain: you get a night in a wild place, and the place gets to carry on as though you were never there. Those of us who have been doing this for years know the hills feel a little smaller each season. Paths braid out, verges get poached into mud, and the prettiest pitches by a tarn or a lochan slowly lose the vegetation that made them worth walking to.

Before you pack, spend ten minutes on the practicalities. Check whether wild camping is permitted where you are heading — Scotland's access rights are generous but not unlimited, and camping management areas, bye-laws and seasonal restrictions apply in places such as the shores of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, parts of the Lake District, and Dartmoor. Read the local guidance, know the date of your trip, and be ready to change plans. The single most effective Leave No Trace measure is choosing a spot that can absorb you.

Choose Your Pitch With Care

A good pitch is a durable pitch. You are looking for ground that is already bare or tough enough to recover from a night under a tent by the time the next rain passes through.

• Best: flat gravel, scree, sand, or close-cropped grass that is clearly grazed or well-trodden.
• Acceptable: established, well-drained pitches already showing signs of previous use.
• Avoid: fragile arctic-alpine vegetation, moss, lichen, heather, bilberry, juniper, and anything that looks like it has taken years to grow.

Keep away from water margins — 50 metres from a tarn, stream or lochan is a sensible minimum. Vegetation there is thin, easily crushed, and often the only cover for nesting birds and invertebrates. Pitch late, leave early. Arriving at dusk and departing after breakfast means the landscape holds the memory of your visit for fewer hours, and you are far less likely to be noticed by anyone who would rather have the place to themselves.

Everything You Carry In Comes Out

There is no such thing as a bin in the hills, and burying rubbish does not make it disappear. Mountain hares, deer, foxes and gulls will dig it up, and foil, plastic and wet wipes survive for decades. Assume every gram you carried up the hill comes back down with you, including the unglamorous bits.

• Take a dedicated rubbish bag — a dry bag or a sturdy stuff sack works far better than a carrier bag.
• Pack out tea bags, orange peel, apple cores, eggshells, and any food scraps. They are litter, not fertiliser.
• Collect micro-litter: cable ties, torn tent peg loops, bits of duct tape, that one stray oatcake wrapper.
• Never leave a fire ring, a cairn, a tin can, or a pile of stones as a "marker".

If you find litter that is not yours, and it is safe and light enough to carry, take it out. It is a small act of tidying up after our own community.

Human Waste Needs a Plan

This is the part people skip over, and it is the part that matters most in busy upland areas. In high-traffic spots — the honeypot valleys of Eryri, the Borrowdale fells, the Cairngorm passes — the old advice to dig and bury no longer holds up. Too many people, too little soil, too much rain.

Where disposal is genuinely appropriate, dig a cathole 15–20 cm deep, well away from water, paths and pitches — 60 metres is the standard. Carry a trowel; a boot heel will not do. Use plain, unscented paper, use as little as possible, and pack the paper out in a sealed bag. In fragile or high-use areas, carry a proper waste bag system and take everything away with you. It is not a pleasant thought at the start of a trip, but it is far less unpleasant than the alternative on the path you walk in on.

Tread Lightly Around Water and Wildlife

The hours around dusk and dawn are when the uplands are busiest with life, even if they look empty. Ground-nesting birds, bats, otters, and deer are all active then, and a bright torch, a loud tent, or a badly placed pitch can disturb them.

• Wash and fetch water well away from the bank, and use only tiny amounts of biodegradable soap — or none at all.
• Keep food sealed and hung or stored away from your sleeping area to discourage scavengers.
• Use a red-light torch where you can, and keep voices low after dark.
• Give wildlife space. If an animal changes its behaviour because of you, you are too close.

Fire, Stoves and the Morning After

Campfires leave scars that last for years in thin upland soils, and in many UK areas they are banned outright. Unless you are in a place where fires are explicitly allowed, on established fire rings, with dead and downed wood, cook on a stove. A stove is lighter, faster, and leaves nothing behind.

Before you leave, do a slow circuit of your pitch with your eyes on the ground. Look for tent peg holes, spilt porridge, a forgotten guy line, a flattened patch of moss. Fluff the grass with your hand, nudge stones back into place, and scatter any flattened vegetation. The test is simple: if you walked back an hour later, would you know a tent had stood there? If the answer is no, you have done it right.