Plan the day before you leave the house

Most rescues in remote British countryside begin with a small thing going wrong — a turned ankle, a misted-in ridge, a river running higher than expected — and get serious because nobody knew where the walkers were. The single most effective piece of safety kit you own is a plan that other people can act on.

Write down your route and leave it with someone reliable: not just "we're going to the Lakes", but which valley you'll start in, the car park, the intended summits or passes, and the time you expect to be back at the car. Include an alternative plan if the weather turns. Give them your mobile number and the number of everyone in the group.

Set an agreed deadline. If you haven't texted by, say, 9pm, that person should call you, then call the police on 999 and read out your route card. Ten minutes of writing at the kitchen table can shave hours off a search.

Know what your phone can and cannot do

Mobile coverage across moors, valleys and coastal cliffs is patchy in a way that maps of signal strength rarely capture. A phone showing two bars on a hilltop can lose everything the moment you drop fifty metres into a cwm. Never treat a signal as something you can rely on.

Make it earn its place in your pack:

• Download offline maps for the whole area, plus a wider buffer around it, before you drive out of coverage.
• Charge to 100%, carry a power bank, and keep both warm — cold dramatically shortens battery life in winter.
• Switch to airplane mode on long sections where you don't need it. A phone hunting for signal in a valley drains itself in a couple of hours.
• Save your emergency contact, mountain rescue and the local police non-emergency number in your favourites, so you're not scrolling with cold fingers.
• Practise reading a grid reference — or a precise location from a location-sharing app — from your screen. Fumbling through menus in the wind wastes precious minutes.

Summoning help when the bars disappear

If someone is injured and you have no signal, the priority is getting to a place where you do. That usually means height, not distance: a ridge, a summit shoulder, a headland above the bay. Leave one person with the casualty, keep them warm and sheltered, and send two others together — never one alone — to find signal.

Once you get a call through, ask for the police, then ask for mountain rescue or the coastguard. Be ready to give:

• A grid reference or precise location description, plus the nearest named feature — a bothy, a trig point, a bridge, a bay.
• What has happened, when it happened, and how the casualty is now.
• How many people are in the group, and the ages of anyone young or elderly.
• What you're wearing and what colours, especially rucksacks and jackets.
• Your phone number, and confirmation you'll keep the phone on and stay put.

Emergency texts work too, but only if you've registered your phone for the service in advance — it takes a few minutes online and is useless to arrange once you need it. If you can't call or text, six blasts on a whistle or six flashes of a torch, repeated at intervals, is the internationally recognised distress signal. Any three of anything — three shouts, three whistle blasts — means "come and help".

Carry for the accident, not the forecast

Pack for the version of the day that goes wrong, not the version the forecast promised. On a coastal path in June you can be soaked by a sea fret within twenty minutes; on a moor in October, a clear morning can end in horizontal rain and a windchill near freezing.

• Waterproof jacket and trousers, and a spare warm layer in a dry bag.
• A foil emergency blanket or lightweight group shelter — they weigh almost nothing and keep a casualty alive.
• Head torch with spare batteries, plus a whistle on a cord around your neck.
• Extra food and water beyond what the day requires.
• A paper map and compass, and the ability to use them if the phone dies.
• Small first aid kit, including a way to immobilise a sprained ankle, and any personal medication.

If it happens to you

Stop. Most accidents get worse because someone tried to walk out on a bad leg, or pushed on into cloud to "save time". Sit down, get out of the wind, put on every layer you have, sit on your rucksack rather than the cold ground, and eat something. Hypothermia and exhaustion turn minor injuries into emergencies.

Call for help if you can, then stay where you are and make yourself visible. Bright colours, torch flashes, whistles. A rescue team would far rather walk to a known point than search a whole valley in the dark.

Back home, tell the person holding your route card that you're safe. It's the cheapest form of goodwill in the hills, and it keeps mountain rescue teams free for the people who really need them.