How hikes.guide works

Who writes it

I do. I am Lee McCoy, a fell walker and a member of The Wainwright Society, and I write and build this site myself, with the AI help described below: the routes, the conditions, the parking, the bits that go wrong. There is no team and no sponsor. Elsewhere the site writes as "we", which is its editorial voice and still means me; a walk described first-hand is always mine, and the page says Lee walked it.

As of 17 October 2026 I had walked 171 of the 214 Wainwrights by my own count, 170 of them matched to a Strava track that passes within a hundred metres of the summit. The two figures are kept apart on purpose; the About page says how each is counted.

What walked, planned and computed mean

Every route page says which it is, near the top and at the end of its search snippet. Walked means I have walked the line and recorded the month; where a track of mine covers it, the page says so at the download button. Walked in part means my track covers only some of the line, and the page names the stretch that came from the map. Planned means a line I have drawn from the map and the guidebooks and have not walked; its ground notes say so until I have been. Today's counts are under how every route is checked.

Computed is a third thing and is labelled as one wherever it appears: the view from a summit, the light a route gets, the departure-time map, the daily conditions score. These come from data and a method, never from a walk, and each names its method.

A planned route becomes a walked one when I have walked it and entered the month in its record, and the site's checks refuse a page that disagrees with that record.

How every route is checked

Three kinds of checking stand behind every route page: what I check myself, what the computer checks, and what changes every morning. None of them sees the fell on the day you walk; the last part of this section says what that leaves to you. The figures are from 2 November 2026, the day this page was last built.

What I check myself

• Walked or planned. Every route page says whether I have walked it. 51 are walked, with the month I walked them; 38 are walked in part; and 162 are planned lines from the map, not yet walked. That is all 251 routes on the site.
• Part-walked routes. A route I have walked only in part names the stretches, by kilometre, that came from the map.
• Parking. I have placed or checked 170 of the 974 parking spots myself, on the ground or on Street View. The rest are placed from OpenStreetMap and other sources.
• Buses. A last bus is printed only where I have checked it against the operator's own timetable, and only while that timetable runs. 13 of the 108 bus stops the site follows have a checked last bus; the rest print none until they are checked.
• Hazards. Of the 121 fells with a hazard section, all 121 carry my name and the date I checked it.
• Wording. A new claim about difficulty, access, parking or hazards waits for my go-ahead.
• Suggestions. Walks readers suggest are never published as they were sent. If one goes into the guide, it is as my own track from walking it, or as a line I have drawn again from the map and labelled planned.

What the computer checks

Every night 327 automated checks run over the site's code and data, and up to 257 of them also run before each change is accepted. Among them:

• Directions. Every compass point, climb and descent in a route's directions is tested against the track, and the finish the words describe must be where the track ends.
• Summits. A route counts a summit only when its line passes within 30 m of the top, or within 80 m and no more than 12 m below it on the Copernicus GLO-30 terrain model, unless I have confirmed it by hand.
• Steepness. The steepness grade comes from the steepest 500 m stretch of the track, and every stored grade is worked out again from the track to make sure it still matches.
• Paths and crags. Unless I have graded a route on the walk, its terrain, navigation and exposure grades come from the paths and crags mapped along the line in OpenStreetMap. A grade made without that map data has to say so on the page.
• Buses. A printed last bus must match my check, and the check lapses on the day its timetable ends. A bus service I have chosen not to show appears on no page.
• Closures. A path closure is read against each route's line, not just where the route starts, and a route is named as affected only once a person has confirmed it. A closure that cannot be placed on the map says its effect on routes is not yet assessed.
• Difficulty notes and road advice. A check refuses any difficulty note or road advice that tells you a line is without risk.
• Counts. The number of fells I have walked is worked out from my walk record, never typed in.
• Sources. Where a route page lists its essentials (where to arrive, toilets, food), each carries its source and the date it was checked, and a hazard section credits a Mountain Rescue team only as far as the record shows.

What changes every morning

Each morning the 214 Wainwrights are scored again for walking conditions from the Met Office's UK forecast model, read for each summit through Open-Meteo. The conditions page says which day the scores are for, and no other page calls a score today's once that day has passed.

What nobody can check for you

None of this sees the fell on the day you walk. I cannot check:

• the weather and the ground on the day;
• changes to a path since I or the map last saw it, such as a landslip, a new fence or a diversion;
• livestock in the fields you cross;
• how high the becks and rivers are running.

A route is a guide. Conditions change, and the decisions on the hill are yours, including the decision to turn back. The terms say the same. If you find something these checks missed, tell me.

How data is sourced

Every figure on the site carries its source and the date it was read, and a range is shown as a range rather than a midpoint. An empty answer is a real answer here: a bus stop page prints no last bus until I have checked it against the operator, and a train time appears only from a timetable edition I have signed off.

Data sources lists every dataset the site uses, what it is used for and the licence it comes under, and the attribution each asks for is printed where the data shows.

The cross-checks are mechanical and run every night: a printed train time must match the signed timetable; a printed last bus must match the record of my check; a fell's hazard section must cite exactly the sources its store holds; the round figure must match its store and state its basis. A check that cannot fail is replaced.

Hazards and safety information

The hazard section on a fell page is editorial background compiled from published Mountain Rescue material, not a live callout feed, and it says so at the top, with the date it was last updated and the teams whose published material it draws on.

A Mountain Rescue team is credited in one of three ways and no other: its published material is cited; wording it supplied is described as shared only where a written exchange is on file; a section is described as reviewed by a team only with written confirmation and the team's agreement to be credited that way. As of 23 October 2026 every credit on the site is the first kind.

Uncertainty

Where the data cannot answer, the page says so in words rather than hiding it: "not shown until checked", "no mapped path to the summit", "we do not know where the walk begins". A qualifier like "no mapped ladder stiles" means the map holds none, not that there are none.

Forecast pages say how sure the forecast is, from the spread of the model runs, and the climate report labels every series as observed or as a modelled projection so a reader never has to work out which is which.

Independence and money

No brand pays to appear here. There is no sponsored content, no paid placement and no gifted-product review anywhere on the site, and there are no affiliate links: the Amazon maps-and-guidebooks section came off every page in September 2026. Nothing here earns a commission and no recommendation is paid for.

If that ever changes it will be said here and on the affected page.

Corrections

Something wrong or out of date? The quickest route is the report a problem form in the footer of every page; the contact page has the others. I read every report; corrections jump the queue.

A confirmed correction is fixed on the page, listed on the changes page, and the page's updated date moves. There is no editorial board and no separate checker: the checks are the mechanical ones above, and me.

How AI is used

First-person accounts of walks are mine and describe walks I did. They are never generated.

Route lines are mine: the published line is the mapped route, labelled walked, walked in part or planned, and not necessarily the track I recorded on the walk.

Many facts on this site are computed by scripts from public data, such as bus times from the national timetable feed, walking distances on the mapped path network, the view from a summit and the light on a route. Each is labelled with its source and date. I use AI tools to help write and check that code.

Much of the explanatory text on the site is drafted with AI assistance from those data and sources, under my direction, and read by me before it is published. Walk observations and route lines are not drafted that way.

Page titles, search descriptions, photo descriptions and the answers to common questions are drafted the same way, from each page's own data, and read by me; the hazard notes on each fell are drafted from the sources they name and checked by me before they show.

AI is not used to make up hazard information, difficulty ratings, walk reports or figures. If you think something here is wrong, report it.

Privacy

The site collects almost nothing. Analytics are cookieless and identify nobody. One cookie of its own is set only if you answer the Instagram question. Your progress ticks live in your own browser. If you subscribe to The Fell Report, your address goes to MailerLite, who send it, and nowhere else. A problem report goes through a Google form. The privacy page has the whole of it and your rights.

Contact

lee@hikes.guide, or the contact page. It is just me, so there is no autoreply.