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Why Leave No Trace Matters in the Glens

Scottish glens grow slowly. Peat accumulates a centimetre at a time, deer grass and moss take years to knit back over a broken patch, and a high-rainfall climate means any scar you leave stays soft, muddy and obvious far longer than it would in drier country. A flattened patch of heather, a ring of scorched stones or a scatter of toilet paper can still be sitting there a decade later, because there is nothing here to grow over it in a hurry.

Leave No Trace is not about rules imposed from outside. It is simply the practice of walking in, spending a night or two under the hills, and walking out again as though nobody had been there. Done well, it costs you almost nothing: an extra five minutes when you break camp, a small trowel, a couple of bags in your pack. Done badly, it costs the glen something it cannot quickly replace.

Pitch on Durable Ground

Where you put your tent matters more than what you do inside it. Aim for surfaces that are already hard wearing and will not be visibly changed by a night of weight and warmth.

• Good options: gravel and shingle banks well above the waterline, dry earth and bare rock, and established, coarse grass that has clearly been grazed or walked over.
• Avoid: sphagnum moss and bog, heather and dwarf shrubs, lichen-covered rock, machair and any springy, spongy vegetation. These are the surfaces that bruise and stay bruised.
• Keep your distance from water: pitch at least 30 metres from a loch, burn or tarn. This protects the fragile margin, keeps silt out of the water and reduces disturbance to otters, divers and thirsty deer.
• Arrive late, leave early. This lowers your profile in the landscape, disturbs wildlife less, and gives you a reason to be efficient about packing up.

Never dig a drainage trench, never clear vegetation to make a flat spot, and if you are staying more than two nights in the same glen, move your tent a few metres and let the old pitch recover. Small groups, and a tent rather than a small village, keep the impact tiny.

Human Waste, Sorted Properly

This is the part most people get wrong, and it is the single most visible sign of a badly managed wild camp.

Walk well away from water — at least 30 metres, and further if the ground is boggy — and away from paths and any place someone might reasonably sit. Carry a small trowel. Dig a hole 15 to 20 centimetres deep, well above flood level, and use it for everything. Cover it afterwards, replace the turf if you lifted any, and disguise the spot with leaf litter and stones so nobody ever finds it.

In the thin, stony soils of the higher glens you may not manage a proper hole at all. In that case, take it out with you in an airtight bag. It is unpleasant, and it is the right answer.

Toilet paper should go in a bag and come home with you. If you genuinely bury it, it must be plain, unbleached, bury-in-the-same-hole paper — and never wet wipes, which do not break down in any useful timescale. Urinate on rock, gravel or bare ground rather than on vegetation, at least 30 metres from water, and not on the same spot repeatedly, as the salt draws animals in.

Cook Clean, Skip the Fire

Use a stove. It is lighter than a fire, boils faster, works in the rain, and leaves absolutely no trace. A small gas or liquid-fuel stove and a windbreak are all the glen asks of you.

Open fires in Scottish glens carry real costs. The deadwood you gather is habitat for insects and fungi; peat is a vast carbon store that burns underground once lit; and a circle of stones at a popular pitch becomes an invitation for the next party, and the one after that, until a scar becomes a permanent structure. There are places where a fire is legal and appropriate, but they are rarer than most people assume, and a wild camp is almost never the time.

If you do use a stove, keep the flame off moss and exposed roots, and never rest a hot pan or a lit stove directly on peat. Take every scrap of packaging away with you, and pour washing-up water into a sump hole or scatter it widely, well away from water, using minimal, phosphate-free soap.

Litter, Food and Small Craft

Assume that everything you carry in is coming out, including the bits you think will rot. Apple cores, orange peel, tea bags, nut shells, eggshell and tomato slices all take months or years to break down at glen temperatures, and while they sit there they pull animals towards campsites and paths, which changes behaviour and, in the end, harms the wildlife.

• Repackage food at home into reusable bags so there is less packaging to lose in the wind.
• Weight your rubbish bag down inside your pack so nothing blows away when you open it.
• Store food securely, in a dry bag hung from a branch or hung well off the ground and away from your tent, so pine martens, mice and deer are not rewarded with an easy meal.
• Never feed anything, and never leave scraps behind "for the birds".

The Five-Minute Sweep

Before you lift your pack, walk a slow circuit of your pitch. Check for pegs, guyline cord, bread tags, cable ties, hair bands, bits of foil and any twist of tissue. Look at the spot from ten metres away, from a different angle, in the low morning light — small things show up far better from a distance. Leave stones and deadwood exactly where you found them, and do not build cairns or markers.

Then check the ground you have pitched on. If there is a hollow where your body lay, or a yellowed patch, note it and pitch differently next time. Take home one or two pieces of litter that were not yours if you can carry them comfortably. Do that, and the glen will look exactly as it did when you arrived — which is the whole point, and the quiet pride of a wild camp done properly.