Field Notes: The Right to Roam Comes With Responsibility

Litter picking our way up Pen-y-ghent

This weekend I joined Right to Roam and Trash Free Trails to litter pick our way up Pen-y-ghent, one of the Yorkshire Three Peaks.

The weather was typically Yorkshire. Mist, low cloud and not much of a view from the top, but what a place to spend a day doing something worthwhile.

The amount of appreciation we received from other walkers was amazing. People stopped to talk, thanked us and genuinely seemed pleased to see people out looking after the landscape.

But there is an uncomfortable side to that.

We shouldn't have to be doing this.

170 pieces of rubbish from one walk

On Pen-y-ghent alone, our group collected 170 individual items.

Tissues. Sweet wrappers. Energy gel packets. Pieces of clothing. Plastic and all the other little bits of rubbish that get dropped, forgotten or deliberately left behind.

Other groups were out across the other two Yorkshire Three Peaks collecting rubbish too, bringing back multiple bags between them.

When you see everything collected together, it becomes difficult to dismiss litter as the occasional wrapper accidentally blowing out of someone's pocket.

It adds up.

And ultimately, almost everything we collected had been carried onto the hill by somebody in the first place.

If there was room in your rucksack to carry it up, there's room to carry it back down.

Access should come with stewardship

I'm a massive believer in access to the countryside and the work being done to improve our right to roam.

Our countryside shouldn't be something reserved for those wealthy enough to own it. People should be able to walk, explore and connect with the landscapes around them.

But access and responsibility shouldn't be opposing ideas.

We can fight for greater access while also recognising that when we enter these places, we have a responsibility to look after them.

Litter isn't simply ugly.

Plastic, food packaging and other waste can remain in the environment, affect wildlife and introduce materials into ecosystems where they don't belong.

We need better education about what leaving rubbish behind actually does to our landscapes.

Because protecting the countryside isn't just about drawing boundaries around it and calling it protected.

It's about how we behave when we're there.

Take your litter home

Days like this demonstrate something I've increasingly come to believe through Rambling.

We protect the places we build relationships with.

Walk them.

Explore them.

Fight for access to them.

Learn about them.

And leave them in a better state than you found them.

Massive respect to everyone from Right to Roam, Trash Free Trails and the volunteers who headed onto all three peaks to clean up after other people.

Hopefully one day there'll be considerably less for us to collect.

Until then:

If you carried it up, carry it back down.

Take your bloody rubbish home.