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: the routes, the conditions, the parking, the bits that go wrong. There is no team and no sponsor.

As of 1 September 2026 I had walked 164 of the 214 Wainwrights by my own count, 154 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 that is 68 walked, 21 walked in part and 94 planned.

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 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 on every change to the site: 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 17 September 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: a GPS track where walked, a line drawn from the map where planned, and each is labelled.

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.

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.