Loving the Mountains Means Getting Your Hands Dirty

There is a particular type of magic involved in reaching the top of a Welsh mountain.

You spend several hours questioning your fitness, your choice of footwear and possibly every decision you have made since breakfast. Then you reach the top, look across Wales and suddenly decide it was all absolutely worth it.

What we don’t tend to think about is the path beneath our feet.

Someone has to look after it.

And today in Eryri, people are doing exactly that.

From 14–16 September, volunteers are joining a three-day Get Stuck In conservation event in Eryri, working on the mountain paths that allow millions of us to experience this extraordinary part of Wales. The work can involve clearing drainage channels, shifting stepping stones, repairing eroded peat, landscaping paths and building stone steps.

This isn’t a ceremonial litter pick followed by tea and a photograph.

It’s proper graft.

And there is something rather wonderful about that.

Four million people leave footprints

Eryri covers 823 square miles, contains nine mountain ranges, 74 miles of coastline and around 1,497 miles of routes to explore.

Nearly four million people visit Eryri every year. Yr Wyddfa alone receives more than 600,000 visitors annually, either walking or travelling by train, making it the busiest mountain in the UK.

Those numbers represent something enormously positive.

People want to experience Wales.

They want mountains, rivers, forests, silence, waterfalls, views and that peculiar feeling of standing somewhere enormous enough to remind you that most of the things you were worrying about this morning aren’t actually very important.

But millions of feet inevitably leave a mark.

Paths erode. Vegetation gets trampled. Water finds damaged channels. Soil washes downhill.

People avoid muddy sections by walking around them, gradually widening the damage.

The landscape might look indestructible from the summit.

It isn’t.

Earlier this month, 16 volunteers worked on the Miners’ Path below Glyder Fach, clearing scree that had buried sections of the stone-pitched path. Because walkers had begun creating an unofficial route around the obstruction, vegetation beside the original path was being trampled too. The volunteers uncovered the old route, moved stone and built retaining structures to help protect it.

Nobody reaches the top of a mountain and announces:

“What an absolutely magnificent drainage ditch.”

Perhaps occasionally we should.

Freedom works better with respect

There is something in this that matters to naturists.

We talk a great deal about freedom.

Freedom from unnecessary judgement.

Freedom to experience sunlight, water and fresh air naturally. Freedom to enjoy our bodies without constantly measuring them against somebody else’s idea of what they ought to look like.

I believe passionately in those freedoms.

But freedom works best when accompanied by respect.

There is a subtle difference between saying this landscape is here for me to enjoy and saying I am fortunate enough to be able to enjoy this landscape.

The first can become entitlement.

The second creates responsibility.

Naturism can encourage a wonderfully direct relationship with the natural world, but taking your clothes off doesn’t automatically make you environmentally enlightened.

You can still be naked and leave a crisp packet behind.

That isn’t communion with nature. That’s just littering without trousers.

Living naturally ought to make us more conscious of the places we use, not less.

The people repairing Wales while we’re enjoying it

The scale of the wider effort is impressive.

Since Mend Our Mountains began in 2016, more than £1.5 million has been raised for path and access projects, with around 100 kilometres of fragile footpath restored. Path repair isn’t cheap either: the campaign estimates that repairing one metre can cost around £250, while transporting stone into inaccessible mountain locations can run into four figures.

In Eryri itself, the campaign has raised £66,000 towards a two-year apprentice ranger position with the National Trust path-repair team. The idea isn’t merely to repair today’s damage but to pass practical conservation skills to another generation.

I like that enormously.

Because landscapes survive when somebody cares for them.

Skills survive when somebody teaches them.

Communities survive for much the same reason.

Acceptance, Kindness, Respect & Community mean very little if they exist only beneath our logo. They become meaningful when they influence what we actually do.

Sometimes community means checking on somebody who has gone quiet.

Sometimes kindness means welcoming the nervous person standing awkwardly at their first naturist gathering.

And sometimes respect means standing halfway up a Welsh mountain in the drizzle with a shovel, repairing a path for thousands of strangers who will never know your name.

There is something rather beautiful about doing something from which other people will benefit without receiving any recognition for it.

Perhaps Naturism Wales should get its hands dirty

And that leaves me thinking about us.

Wales gives us an extraordinary natural playground: mountains, coastline, woodland, rivers, valleys, waterfalls and open countryside.

Naturists have every reason to treasure those places.

But loving somewhere cannot only mean photographing it.

Occasionally love requires maintenance.

So perhaps there is a challenge here for Naturism Wales.

What if, over the coming year, we chose somewhere in Wales and gave something back?

A conservation day. A beach clean. Path maintenance. Habitat restoration. Something practical where a group of us finishes the day muddy, tired, laughing and able to look behind us at a little piece of Wales that is genuinely better because we turned up.

No grand speeches required.

Just people doing something useful together.

The volunteers heading into Eryri today understand that.

They will probably finish aching, filthy and wondering why every stone in Wales appears to become six times heavier when carried uphill.

But somewhere behind them will be a little piece of our country in better condition than when they arrived.

I’d call that a pretty successful day.

So here’s today’s question: if Naturism Wales organised a day giving something back to the Welsh landscape, where should we go — and what should we do?