Staying Safe Outdoors: A Simple Guide for Walkers, Runners and Hikers

The outdoors is for everyone, and getting out into it is one of the best things you can do. None of what follows is meant to put you off, or to make a gentle afternoon walk feel like an expedition. Most trips go exactly to plan. Safety outdoors is really just a short list of sensible habits that quietly stop the small things from becoming big ones, and once they're second nature you barely think about them. Here's the whole lot, from planning at the kitchen table to what to do if something does go wrong.

Before you go

Most problems outdoors are solved before you've left the house, in the few minutes you spend planning. This is the part that does the heavy lifting.

Pick a route that matches you

Choose something you're confident you can finish comfortably, in the daylight you have, at the fitness you're at today.

Judge a route by time and climbing rather than distance alone, because a hilly five miles is a very different day to a flat five. Leave yourself a buffer of daylight, especially in autumn and winter when the afternoon disappears faster than you expect. If you're not sure how to size a route up, there's a full walk-through in how to plan a walking or running route.

Check the weather, properly

Look at the forecast for where you're going, not just where you live, and pay attention to what it does across the whole time you'll be out.

Hills and coasts make their own weather, and conditions can change fast and dramatically once you gain height. Wind, rain and low cloud turn an easy route into a serious one, and fog in particular makes navigation far harder. If the forecast is genuinely bad, the bravest and smartest thing you can do is change your plan or save it for another day.

Tell someone your plan

Let someone know where you're going and roughly when you'll be back, then tell them when you're safely home.

This single habit is the most valuable one on the page. If anything goes wrong, someone knows where to start looking and when to raise the alarm, long before you'd otherwise be missed. A quick message with your route and expected finish time is all it takes.

Charge up and save a map

Start with a fully charged phone, bring a power bank on longer days, and save an offline map of your route before you leave.

Your phone is your map, your compass and your way of calling for help, so keeping it alive matters. An offline map means you can still see your position when the signal drops, which out in the good places it will. There's more on why that works in do you actually need offline maps for hiking?.

What to take

You need less than the shops would like you to believe, but a few things earn their place every time.

For a typical day out that means layers you can add or take off, a waterproof, enough water, some food including a little more than you think you'll eat, a small first-aid kit, and something warm to put on if you stop moving and cool down. A head torch is worth carrying any time you might still be out towards dusk, because being caught by the dark is one of the more common ways a straightforward walk turns into a drama. Scale it up for longer, higher or more remote routes, and keep it simple for a short local loop. The aim is to be ready for the day getting a bit colder, wetter or longer than planned, not to carry your whole house on your back.

While you're out

Once you're moving, staying safe is mostly a matter of paying a little attention and being willing to change your mind.

Keep track of time, daylight and weather

Glance at the time against how far round you are, so you know whether you're on schedule to finish in the light. Keep half an eye on the sky, because weather coming in is much easier to deal with early. If either one is turning against you, adjust the plan sooner rather than later.

Know your turn-back point

Decide, roughly, the time or the point at which you'll turn around regardless of how close you are to the goal. Having that line in your mind beforehand makes it far easier to make the sensible call in the moment, when the pull to push on "just a bit further" is strongest.

Stay on your route, and check now and then

Keep a quick eye on your position against your planned route, so a wrong turn stays a small correction rather than a long detour. If a path splits and you're unsure, stop and check before you commit. A two-minute pause beats twenty minutes walking confidently the wrong way.

Turning back is always allowed

This is worth saying plainly, because it's the habit people find hardest. Heading home early because of the weather, the light, tiredness or just a bad feeling is never a failure. The hill, the trail and the view will all still be there next weekend. Far more trips go wrong from pressing on than from turning back.

If something goes wrong

Even with good habits, things occasionally don't go to plan. Knowing roughly what to do takes most of the fear out of it.

If you lose signal or get lost

Losing phone signal is not the same as being lost, and getting briefly unsure of where you are is not an emergency. Stop, stay calm, and work back to the last point you were certain of rather than pressing on. There's a full calm-headed walk-through, including how to get a message out, in what to do when you lose signal on a trail.

If someone is injured

Stop and assess before doing anything else. Keep the injured person warm and still, use your first-aid kit for anything minor, and work out whether you can safely get yourselves back or whether you need help. Note where you are, using your map and your position on it, so you can describe your location accurately if you do call for assistance.

Calling for help

If you genuinely need help, call the local emergency number (999 in the UK, 112 across Europe, 911 in the US). Emergency calls can sometimes connect through any available network even when your phone shows no signal, so it's worth trying regardless. A text uses far less signal than a call and will often get through when a call won't. Being able to tell them exactly where you are, from your position on your map, makes everything that follows faster.

A few things worth respecting

None of this needs to loom large, but a little awareness goes a long way.

Cold and wet are the quiet risks, because they creep up gradually rather than announcing themselves, so keep warm and dry before you feel you need to. Heat deserves the same respect on hot days, mainly by carrying enough water and not overdoing it. Give steep or exposed ground, cliff edges and fast or deep water a wide margin, since these are where small slips have big consequences. And where there's livestock, keep a calm, wide berth, particularly around cattle with calves.

Walking or running alone

Heading out solo is a genuine pleasure, and plenty of people do it safely all the time. The habits are simply the same ones, applied with a little more care.

Share your plan and your expected return time, stick to your planned route rather than improvising somewhere unfamiliar, and keep your phone charged and your map saved. Trust your judgement: if somewhere or something doesn't feel right, you're allowed to turn around, change your route, or call it a day, no justification required. The goal of going alone is the quiet and the freedom of it, and good habits are what let you relax into that rather than keep one eye over your shoulder.

How LaceLock fits in

LaceLock won't keep you safe on its own, because nothing can replace planning and judgement. What it's built to do is make the sensible habits easy.

You can plan a route that matches your day, save it and the map for offline so a dropped signal doesn't leave you blind, and follow your position live so you always know where you are and whether you're still on track. Looking back at where you went afterwards helps you judge the next one better. Good tools and good habits, working together: that's the whole idea.