Why the moors play tricks on you

Open moorland is one of the least forgiving places to lose your bearings. A path that was obvious at the car park becomes a faint braid of trodden grass, then a smear of peat, then nothing at all. Add cloud down to 500 metres and your whole world shrinks to twenty paces of heather and a grey wall where the view should be.

Bogs, peat hags, tussock grass and endless identical hummocks all look the same from any direction. Landmarks that seemed distinctive on the way out somehow vanish on the way back. The trick is to stop relying on what you can see and start relying on what you can measure: the map, the compass, and the distance under your boots. These skills are learnable in an afternoon and refined over a lifetime.

Know your map before your boots leave the house

Navigation starts at the kitchen table. Fold the map so only the leg you're walking is showing, and read it properly before you go. A 1:25,000 sheet gives the detail you want on moorland — crags, stream junctions, boundary stones and small lochans. A 1:50,000 map is useful for the bigger picture and for planning escape routes.

• Mark the start, the finish and the significant features in between: a stream confluence, a wall corner, a spot height, the edge of a crag line.
• Note down grid references for bail-out points — a track, a bothy, a road end — in case the weather turns.
• Work out which way the ground drains. Water runs downhill, and in mist a stream can be the most reliable handrail you have.

Photograph the relevant section on your phone as a backup, but always carry a paper copy in a map case. Batteries die in the cold; paper does not.

Setting and walking a compass bearing

Hold the compass flat on the map with the edge of the baseplate running from your position to your destination. Rotate the bezel until the orienting lines sit parallel with the grid lines and the orienting arrow points to the top of the map. Read the number at the index line — that's your grid bearing.

Magnetic variation in the UK is currently small, but it shifts by region and by year, so check the information panel on the margin of your map. For most walkers on most days the difference is under a couple of degrees and can be ignored; on a long leg in poor visibility, apply it as instructed.

To walk the bearing, hold the compass level in front of you and turn your whole body until the red end of the needle sits neatly inside the orienting arrow. Then look up, pick out a feature in line with the direction-of-travel arrow — a boulder, a tussock, a patch of paler grass — walk to it, and repeat. This is called taking a sighting, and it stops you drifting off line without noticing.

On a long leg, break it into shorter ones of 200 to 500 metres. Fewer things go wrong, and you get a position check at every stage.

Pacing: the skill that saves you when nothing else will

On featureless ground, distance is the only thing you can measure with any certainty. Count double paces — every time your left foot lands. On the flat, most adults take roughly 60 to 70 double paces per 100 metres; ploughing uphill through heather, it might be 80 or more.

Calibrate on a known stretch, ideally with a tape or a measured section of quiet road. Then time yourself over a kilometre of similar terrain. Write both figures in a small notebook and keep it in your chest pocket.

Naismith's rule gives you a planning baseline: about 4 km/h on open moorland, plus one minute for every 10 metres of ascent. Add extra for bog, thick heather and the slow, deliberate walking that poor visibility demands. In mist, assume half your normal speed until you've proved otherwise.

A tally counter is the neatest way to keep track, but moving a pebble from one pocket to another every 100 metres works just as well. Counting under your breath is fine too.

Handrails, aiming off and catching features

Good navigation isn't only about bearings. It's about using the shape of the land to do some of the work for you.

• Handrail: follow a linear feature — a wall, a stream, a fence line, a ridge edge — that runs towards your destination, and navigate along it rather than across open ground.
• Aiming off: deliberately aim to one side of your target rather than straight at it. If you're looking for a stream junction, aim off upstream, hit the water, and follow the bank down until you find it. Now you know which way to turn.
• Catching feature: identify something beyond your target that tells you if you've overshot — a road, a plantation edge, a shoreline.
• Attack point: a definite feature close to your objective from which you can navigate the final few hundred metres accurately.

When the cloud really comes down

Stop. Eat something. Put on a layer. The temptation in mist is to keep moving because standing still feels like failing, but five minutes of calm map work saves an hour of wandering.

Set a bearing, walk it carefully, and confirm every hundred metres with your pacing. If the ground beneath you doesn't match what the map promises, stop and work out why. Ask yourself what you would expect to see here, then look for it.

Practise in poor conditions on purpose. Start with short, safe legs on ground you know well on a drizzly day, and build up. Tell someone your route and your return time. Carry a whistle, a head torch, spare food, warm layers and a fully charged phone in a waterproof case.

The confidence that comes from knowing exactly where you are, even when you can see nothing but grey, changes a moorland walk completely. Mist stops being frightening and becomes simply weather — and the hills open up to you all year round.