Leaving No Trace After a Night on the Fells

Why the last twenty minutes matter

You have slept up on the tops, watched the light go amber behind the ridge, and now the tent is heavy with dew and your fingers are numb. It is very tempting to cram everything into the rucksack and stride downhill. But the twenty minutes you spend before leaving are what separate a wild camp from a small, quiet act of vandalism. A flattened circle of grass, a scrap of loo roll behind a boulder, an orange peel on a cairn — none of it looks like much on its own, and all of it adds up. On a popular pitch above a busy valley, a dozen tents a week in a good summer is the reality. Ten minutes of care from each of them keeps the place exactly as you found it.

Know the ground rules before you go, too. Wild camping is a legal right in Scotland under access legislation, and on Dartmoor under its own byelaws and map. In England and Wales elsewhere, pitching on access land is not a right — you need the landowner's permission, and many national park authorities will point you towards a farmer or estate office happy to say yes for a night. Wherever you end up, the etiquette is identical: arrive late, leave early, and make it look as though nobody was ever there.

Carry it all out, including the things you forget

If you carried it up the hill, you carry it back down. That includes the items that feel harmless because they rot, because they mostly do not rot at 600 metres in a cold, wet, oxygen-poor upland soil. An apple core takes weeks. A banana skin takes months and looks like litter the whole time. Orange peel will still be identifiable next spring.

• Tea bags, coffee grounds and the crumpled foil from a packet of nuts
• Wet wipes and cotton pads, which do not break down and are the single most common eyesore on popular pitches
• Fruit peel, cores and half-eaten sandwiches, which draw in sheep, foxes, crows and gulls
• Bottle tops, cable ties, hair bands, plasters, tent peg loops and stray guy-line cord
• Microfibre cloths, lens wipes and the small plastic sleeve around a new pair of socks

Take a dedicated rubbish bag — a dry bag or a stuff sack works well — and keep it clipped to the outside of your pack overnight so nothing gets scattered by the wind. Give the pitch a visual once-over while you are still kneeling down; that is when your eye is level with the grass and you spot the small stuff.

Toilet waste: 30 metres from water, and deep enough

This is the part most people get slightly wrong. The rule of thumb is simple: at least 30 metres from any beck, tarn, ghyll or spring, and at least 50 metres from a path, crag base or another pitch. Walk further than feels necessary. Then, with a small trowel rather than a boot heel, lift a square of turf, set it aside, and dig a hole 15 to 20 centimetres deep — into the soil, not just the root layer. Do your business, put the paper in your rubbish bag rather than the hole, refill with soil, and replace the turf, pressing it down so it knits back in.

If the ground is thin, peaty, waterlogged, frozen or heavily used, do not dig at all. Carry it out in a sealed bag — a nappy bag or a doubled dog bag inside your rubbish sack is perfectly civilised and remarkably common on busy fells. Use plain paper or a dedicated trowel; wet wipes should never go in a hole. Take any sanitary waste out with you as well. There is no site on a British hillside that can compost it quickly enough to be invisible.

Putting the ground back as you found it

When you strike camp, do not simply walk away from a patch of pale, crushed grass. In the morning, the flattened blades will recover faster if you help them. Splash a little water on the patch from your bottle — this is genuinely worth the last mouthful — then gently ruffle the blades upright with your fingers rather than combing them flat. Brush away any indentations with the side of your boot, scatter a handful of loose leaves or dead grass over the area, and return any stones you moved to weigh down guy lines.

If you lifted rocks, replaced them. If you cleared twigs from under the tent, put them back. If you pitched on a well-used, already-bare patch of ground, leave it looking bare but tidy rather than aiming for full restoration — fighting nature there does more harm than good. Above all, plan your pitch so that restoration is easy: choose hard-packed gravel, sand, or an established pitch on durable ground rather than a pristine square of bilberry or moss, which will show your shape for a year.

Stoves, not fire rings

Open fires have no place on the fells in almost every circumstance, and the scars prove it. A ring of blackened stones on a Lakeland ledge can still be there a decade later, and the ground beneath it is sterilised. Collecting deadwood strips out beetle habitat and the small creatures that depend on it. A small gas or meths stove boils your water in three minutes and leaves nothing but a faint patch of warm grass. If you absolutely must have flame, use a stove with a windshield, keep it off tinder-dry heather and bracken in spring, and never leave it unattended.

The two-minute sweep before you go

Shoulder the pack, then stop. Turn around and look at the spot you have just left, standing up, from a few paces away. Walk back along the first fifty metres of your route and scan for pegs, cord, litter and misplaced stones. Check the outside pockets of your pack have nothing loose in them. Then go, quietly, and let the next walker arrive to nothing but grass and weather.