There is a stretch of path on almost every popular hill where the ground has quietly given up. The turf has gone, the peat is rutted, and a muddy braid runs beside the original line. It is not a dramatic disaster — it is just wear. And wear is something we can manage, if enough of us do the small things well.

Why the Busiest Routes Need the Most Care

An upland path is not a pavement. On most of our hills it was made by hand: stone pitched into a hillside, one barrow at a time, often by volunteer crews working weekends in horizontal rain. A single hundred-metre section can take days of graft and several tonnes of stone. That work holds up well — until hundreds of pairs of boots a week start cutting the corners.

The busiest paths are the most fragile precisely because they are busy. Wet ground plus foot traffic equals mud; mud plus a shortcut equals a widening scar; a widening scar becomes a gully; a gully drains the peat and carries silt into the streams below. None of this is irreparable, but repairing it costs far more than avoiding it. So the honeypot routes — the ones with a car park and a café and a summit everyone wants — deserve our best manners, not our most casual ones.

Take Everything Home, Even the "Natural" Stuff

The old rule still stands, and it still works: if you carried it up, carry it down. That includes the things people convince themselves are fine to drop.

• Fruit peel and cores. An orange peel can sit on a hillside for months looking like litter, because it is litter. Banana skins take even longer. Apple cores belong at home, not on a summit where they pull wildlife towards the path.
• Tissues and wet wipes. Tissues blow into rock crevices. Wet wipes do not rot in any useful timescale and are one of the most common finds behind summit cairns.
• Dog bags. A bag left at a gate or hung in a branch is litter with a promise attached. Carry it to a bin. Every time.
• Micro-litter. Gel wrapper corners, strip of gaffer tape, hair bands, plasters, cable ties, chewing gum. These are the bits that never get picked up. Give your pockets a pat before you set off home.

If you spot something on the way down and it is safe to reach, take it with you. Every hillwalker has carried a flattened can off a ridge at some point, and the ridge has been better for it.

The Real Cost of a Shortcut

Cutting a zigzag feels harmless. In practice it is the single fastest way to damage a busy path. The vegetation that holds the soil together dies with a few dozen footfalls, water then funnels down the new line, and within a season or two you have a raw channel three or four times wider than the original tread. The same applies to walking round the edge of a puddle rather than through it. Boots dry; the path does not.

Practical habits that help:

• Walk through the puddle, not around it, when the ground either side is soft.
• Stay single file on narrow sections, even when chatting.
• Overtake deliberately. Step onto rock, gravel or durable ground rather than into heather or bog.
• Plant poles in soil, not in vegetation or on rock ledges, where tips scrape and polish the surface.
• Take the long way round. A well-built zigzag is easier on knees, calves and lungs than the direct line, and it is doing a job.

Pitch Late, Leave Early, and Use Established Ground

Overnight adventures on the hills are one of the great pleasures of British walking, but the ground rules differ across the nations. In Scotland, responsible wild camping is part of your access rights; in England and Wales, you generally need the landowner's permission, and many popular upland areas have specific restrictions. Know which applies before you go.

Wherever you bivvy or pitch, choose ground that is already bare and level rather than a pristine patch of moss or bilberry. A used spot that stays used is far kinder than a dozen new ones. Pitch late, leave early, and keep numbers small. Stay well away from water — 30 metres at the very minimum, and more on a busy loch shore — and wash and rinse well back from the bank. If there is no loo, dig a hole about 30 centimetres deep, well away from streams and paths, and carry out your paper. Stoves, not fires: a fire scar on a popular shore can outlive the person who lit it, and ring stones look grim long after the weekend is over.

Care on Ridges, Scrambles and Summit Tops

On rocky ground the damage is subtler. Vegetation gets yanked as a handhold, loose blocks get trundled, and worn rock becomes polished and greasy for everyone after you. Test holds rather than trusting them, keep your weight over your feet, and never roll stones down a slope. Use established belays and avoid adding more tat to a thread that is already crowded.

Cairns are worth a mention too. Build one only where it genuinely helps navigation, and never dismantle an existing one to make your own. Keep off fragile summit vegetation, which survives on very little and recovers very slowly, and take your photographs from rock rather than from a patch of arctic-alpine flowers.

None of this requires heroics. Take your litter home, keep your boots on the line, and sleep on ground that is already bare. Do that, and the busiest paths on our hills will still be there, in decent nick, for the people coming up behind you.