Enjoying a Pint After a Long Fell Day

Water First, Celebration Second

You have been out for seven or eight hours, your legs are shot, your shoulders ache from the pack, and the pub sign is swinging gently in the evening breeze. The instinct is to march straight to the bar and order the biggest, coldest pint they have. Resist it for ten minutes. A long fell day can cost you a litre or more of fluid, and alcohol on a dehydrated body hits far harder than it should. It will also give you a headache that ruins the next morning's plans.

Get a large glass of water first — most pubs will bring it without fuss if you ask at the bar — and drink it before you touch anything stronger. Order a packet of crisps or a handful of nuts while you are at it. Salt and fluid together do far more for you than fluid alone. Then, and only then, turn your attention to the pumps.

Reading the Bar

Half the pleasure of a post-fell pint is drinking something that belongs to the place you have just walked through. In the Yorkshire Dales that usually means a pale ale or a bitter from a brewery a few valleys over; in the Lakes you will often find something amber and hoppy; in Eryri and the Welsh borders, look for darker ales. Ask whoever is pulling pints what they would drink after a day on the hill. Publicans in walking country know their trade, and a two-line answer will usually point you at something better than the guest tap with the showy pump clip.

• Session strength first. Something around 3.5–4.2% is your friend if you plan to eat, rehydrate and still read a map later.
• Try the local. A beer brewed twenty miles away tastes different after a day on those particular hills. That is not romantic nonsense; it is the whole point of the exercise.
• Ask for a taste. Most bars in walking areas will happily give you a mouthful before you commit to a pint.
• Pace yourself. If you have a bothy or tent waiting, one good pint beats three indifferent ones.

Food, Salt and the Order of Things

A pint on an empty stomach after a big day is a mistake, and you will feel it at about the halfway mark. If the pub does food, order it early — walking country kitchens often stop serving at 8pm or 8.30pm, even in summer, and a walker arriving at 8.40pm gets crisps and regret. If you have missed the kitchen, ask whether they can do a sandwich or a bowl of chips, which most places can manage.

What you actually need is salt, carbohydrate and protein, roughly in that order. A pie, a plate of chips, a ploughman's, a bowl of soup with bread — all fine. Something with a bit of fat in it will settle the beer and top up what the day took out of you. If you are planning to wild camp and cook later, eat something now anyway; a pint and a long walk back to the tent is not a combination to attempt on a single bag of peanuts.

Boots, Kit and Pub Manners

Walking pubs are relaxed places, but a little thought goes a long way. Muddy boots come off at the door if there is a rack or a boot tray, and if there is not, at least knock the worst of the peat off outside. Wet waterproofs do not belong on the back of a chair someone else will use. A damp rucksack on the floor near the door is fine; on the bench seat, less so.

If you have a dog with you, check before you go in — plenty of rural pubs welcome them, some only in the bar, and a few not at all. Carry a lead and be ready to sit near the door. Tired dogs and crowded rooms are a poor mix.

Planning Tomorrow on the Map

This is the best part of the whole ritual. Once the water is in you and the first pint is going down properly, get the map out. Not a phone screen — the paper map, folded to the right square, with your route traced in pencil. There is something about doing this at a pub table that makes the next day's walk feel real in a way a screen never quite manages.

• Mark the bothy, shelter or campsite you are aiming for, and note the grid reference on paper. Batteries die; ink does not.
• Check the water sources along the way — streams marked on the map, a tap at a village hall, a pub you could stop at for lunch.
• Work out your escape routes. If the weather turns, which valley road or bridleway gets you down fastest?
• Note the sunset time and give yourself an hour of margin before it. Dusk arrives quickly under cloud on a fellside.

If you are wild camping, remember the rules that apply where you are walking — not everywhere in the UK permits it, and in England and Wales it is generally by landowner permission outside designated areas such as Dartmoor's permitted zones. Pitch late, leave early, take everything out with you, and keep the group small and quiet. A pint in the village pub beforehand is part of the pleasure of it, but keep your voice down and your plans to yourself if the landlord asks where you are sleeping.

The Walk Back and the Morning After

Leave the pub while you still want one more. The walk back to the tent or the car is always longer than you think, especially in the dark with a headtorch and a belly full of ale. Take a torch you can actually find, keep the map in a pocket rather than buried in the pack, and take it slowly.

Before you sleep, drink another half litre of water and put your boots somewhere dry. In the morning, the pint will be a warm memory and the route you pencilled on the map will be waiting. That is the rhythm of a good fell day: walk hard, drink water, drink one good local beer, eat properly, plan the next one. Repeat until the knees complain.