Planning your Welsh mountain walk

Local TV

We’re catching up with Nick from Ordinance Survey who gives us some important tips on how to plan ahead if you’re heading up Pen-y-Fan or Yr Wyddfa anytime soon.

Transcript

00:00The key thing around this time is if you do get outside then just get outside as

00:06safely as you possibly can. So charge your phone, download the maps so that you

00:10don't need a mobile signal and be prepared, pack your bag well, take an

00:15extra layer, take some food, take some water, make sure you've got appropriate

00:19footwear, don't go climbing Snowdon in flip-flops, that's never a good thing to

00:23do and above all stay safe and enjoy yourselves.

00:27Wales is an absolute haven for day trips out in the great outdoors. We've got

00:31hills, valleys, mountains, cliffs, beaches, anything that makes for a good walk you

00:36can find it somewhere in Wales. As we're getting into the warmer months people are

00:39making the most of it heading up to the mountains to take in some of our

00:42beautiful scenery.

00:43Urruri, formerly Snowdonia in North Wales, is one of the most popular walking spots

00:48anywhere in Wales or the rest of the UK with thousands of people flocking to the

00:52mountain ranges whenever they get the chance. Same for Pennavan in the south

00:56North, there are plenty of real hot spots but Nick from Ordnance Survey says it's

01:00important to be properly prepared.

01:02I mean there's three things that you really want to be thinking about. One is

01:06have you got the right equipment, have you got an extra jumper. Every hundred

01:10metres you climb the temperature drops by one degree so if you're going out into

01:13the hills, you're going out to the mountains then actually the temperature at

01:16the top of the mountain can be significantly colder than at the bottom. Equally the

01:20weather changes all the time so the second thing is check the weather. Make sure that

01:24actually you know what the weather's going to be doing. If you are going up high, the

01:28Met Office have got a fantastic mountain forecast which will be able to give you

01:32all of the data for the top of a hill. And the final thing is actually just being

01:39comfortable with your level of confidence.

01:41It's important to be prepared and Nick says that there's an increasing number of

01:45people making the most of our landscape for their social media. He welcomes people

01:49young and old getting into mountain walking and loves the Instagram pics, but

01:52there's much more to think about on a hike.

01:55What we've seen is an increased level of call outs for mountain rescue amongst the

01:59Gen Z's, the 19 to 24 year olds of for the first time ever the highest level of

02:05people that have had to go out and rescue. And we think there's a couple of

02:08reasons for that. One is social media and we've all seen the Instagram posts with the

02:13fantastic backdrop and and the great shots that you can see and people want to recreate those

02:18for themselves, which basically means that sometimes they're going out without the right

02:22kit or either without the right footwear, clothing and certainly without the right maps.

02:27Ordnance survey have been making maps for as long as any of us can remember. And Nick says

02:31that maps are an incredibly important part of getting out in the mountains. But it's important

02:35to remember with most of us using our phones now, they are not guaranteed signal wherever you go.

02:40So you might not be able to rely on maps all the time.

02:43And we're all used to using mobile phones for

02:46navigation and mobile phones are great for navigation. But it's making sure you've got

02:50the right data. It's like having a hammer to fix everything. Sometimes you need a screwdriver

02:57and sometimes you need the right map with the path information.

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