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Really enjoyed this - tales of people getting lost in the wilderness and how they survived.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/ng-interactive/2025/sep/30/wilderness-survival-search-rescue
Reminds me of a couple of times MTBing - nothing as serious, one was on a training camp with a well-known UK team/brand and an overly optimistic leader, who was thankfully tempered by another well known rider who was also a professional guide and took the safer option.
And then various times with a friend of mine who often takes the wrong trail for various reasons.
Let's have your stories of getting lost.
I got lost on the way to work once but that's probably more to do with "have you ever taken drugs" than anything else and being lost in a leafy town in buckinghamshire wasn't a near death experience.
Before sat nav, I struggled to find my way out of Crawley once. It was tough.
I got lost running in Victoria Park in Glasgow this year, the layout makes you turn around without realising you have.
I got lost in the forest yesterday- my phone gps stopped working, i had to restart it a few places, a 2hour walk turned into 4, the sun was out and it was lovely.
My son and I went up scafell pike,and phones died, maps werent downloaded, alltrails is useless, etc. We asked someone the route back down.
On a busy day and knowing a bit of the ariya it wasnt a problem, but if it was another mountain,another day, it could make all the difference. Im hoping to get this engrained in my sons mind, but hes adamant that hes done everything possible, and that nature will see that everythings alright
I got lost in Worksop once whilst driving a horse box. Round and round we went, it was dark and raining too…
Solved the problem by driving down a one way street the wrong way.
Not so much "got lost" but more of a navigational cock-up...
Years ago, a mate and I planned a big two day/overnight trip to bag about 10 munros around Glen Shiel.
It was sometime early May but was unexpectedly sunny and hot, so we opted not to walk up the sunny side of the access Glen.
Now, I gotta stress that I wasn't in charge of navigating!
Anyway, dozy mate didn't realize we'd missed the point where we were supposed to divert up the west side of the Glen onto a different ridge until we actually hit the wrong ridge. So we ended up on the wrong mountain...
As we were carrying heavy rucksacks with camping gear, we couldn't be arsed back-tracking and losing so much height, but instead opted to blitz the whole Glen Shiel ridge in one long (14+ hr) day, carrying a whole load of camping gear we didn't need. Grrrr.
That turned into a 20+hr day by the time we dropped down to the pub for dinner then started the long walk back to the car in the dark. (Luckily, a random car stopped and picked us up, saving us the final couple of KMS walk)
My wife and I got properly lost in a UK forest once many years ago. We had no GPS, phones etc and we had our youngest daughter in a papoose who was less then 1. It was winter and we had only expected to walk a couple of miles from the car park and swing back. Its not even like we were inexperienced either - both of us had hiked hundreds of miles in our lives all over the world in all sorts of conditions....but this was England....and getting cold which for a 1 year old wasn't great.
There was no sun and the forest deadened any traffic noise
In the end we found a road and I recognised it as the only A road it could possibly be and in my head I worked out which way we needed to go and after a couple of hours we made it back to the car but I was genuinely worried - only because we had the kid with us and she was getting dehydrated and cold.
we still both remember it even though it was 20+ years ago!
I got lost in central Edinburgh. Driving a work van relying on Sat nav which didn't work because of the high buildings either side.
I have also been slightly lost in the midwest of the USA while bike touring. Before smartphones and I had gone off the edge of my paper map. I just kept going west at any junctions for a whole. Eventually solved it by stopping at a junction and tried to look puzzled while holding an unfolded map. First car that came along 10 minutes later stopped and gave me directions.
we got lost in Wales on our yearly week away lads trip.
it was mid September so got dark around teatime.
we spent the day riding offroad from Mach to Dolgellau.
got to a pub in the town about 4pm.
5 of us, so we had a full round of beer, then decided to head to Kings hostel where we were staying.
got outside, and shamefully, not one of us had any lights. it was now pretty dark.
instead of riding on the main A493 road we opted for the much quieter road that runs below Cadair Idris,
we spent well over a hour riding up and down the road trying to find the turn down to Kings, 5 men riding 1 handed holding phones with light on in the other. it was pitch black and the road down to Tynyceunant is a tiny little double gated road. we must have ridden past it a few times.
bad planning by me, good beer session and a good beer tale nowadays.
Trying to get home after a ride in the forest, thought there was a bridge, there wasn't, i ended up in a clearing in the forest, next to the river, the wrong side of the river. Was probably only my third ride since i'd moved. Eventually retraced my route, worked out that the clearing was only about 8km from home. The shortest route home would have taken me over an hour. Actually took me nearer two as there were not that many roads/signposts, and none that went in my direction. Mostly just dirt tracks and footpaths.
At the end if the 90s, pre decent sat nav, I got lost in Swinley (Bracknell) forest. Luckily after many minutes I happened upon other humans who pointed the way to the carpark.
My somewhat ineberated mate got stuck in Hampton Court Maze. Sober when he got out.
I got lost in Savernake Forest, just outside Marlborough once. I took the bike over, parked in town then rode up to the forest and spent the afternoon happily pottering around, then noticed the light was going and set off back to the town.
Got to a road, and turned onto it, looking for a signpost. I had a map, but this was before gps on a phone, and it was about a mile before I realised I was on the wrong side of the forest, heading further away from Marlborough!
Thus ensued a frantic ride back through the entire width of the forest, with the light going, and no lights on the bike! Fortunately, it’s a fast downhill on the main road into the town, and I just about made it. I needed the pint before I went back to the car park!
it was mid September so got dark around teatime.
Odd, I’ve only just stopped my weekly evening archery sessions because the sun sets at around 7pm by the last week in September, and the range faces due west, so it’s getting difficult to see the targets by then. I guess it all depends on when your teatime is, though.
Up above a Mid Wales bothy at the boundary of a truely massive boggy hillside and an apparantly inpenetrable pine forest. Mist was down so we had minimal features to help us navigate apart from slope, compass and wind. There is a bridleway shown on the map... ...but it's Mid Wales and the Afon Arban track like so many others is notoriously vague. We could have been in a number of places according to the map so were more than a bit unsure. We made our way along the boundary and found a massive quartz boulder. Looked again at map and lo and behold 'Carreg Wen Fawr' -which translates as 'Big White Rock'. Ta Da!
Not so much lost as confused in Icelandic interior where I was using NASA! maps that were the best available but seriously out of date and just not showing the many corrugated tracks going hither and thither. Misty lava desert in the rain is not my favorite. Compass was useless so it was dead reckoning plus distance travelled according to my CatEye speedo leading to 92 miles of fully loaded shenanigans that day. I was very pleased to climb into my sleeping bag that night.
Odd, I’ve only just stopped my weekly evening archery sessions because the sun sets at around 7pm by the last week in September, and the range faces due west, so it’s getting difficult to see the targets by then. I guess it all depends on when your teatime is, though.
I think this is the only time that navigation has meant we were out over night
Mrs Ampthill and had a week touring in Tunisia, back in the 90s. No tents just payjng for accommodation plus some emergency stuff like water and food
At the end we had 2 days to get to a station otherwise we’d miss our flights home
This resulted in a heated debate about the best route, on our 1 in a million scale map. I favoured the A road she favoured the track through the middle of know where as she didn’t fancy being buzzed by lorries all day. She won
The first 25 miles were fine and we got to a town for lunch
Over the nest 25 miles our trail got harder to follow. In places people had ploughed right over it. Eventually we are stood on a col with no path ahead of us and the sun setting and desert stretching to the horizon in all directions. Well that’s how it looked to me
I was i was in bits. Mrs Ampthill says don’t worry i head a dog barking a few miles back. I asked how that helped. She said that the dog will have an owner and we can stay with them
So we had a night in a cave with an old man and a child. We had no language in common. But in the morning he pointed when we said the name of the town with the station. We had gone wrong by just one fork. 17 miles later we got to the station. The only real issue was saddle sores. We stayed in our cycling shorts, under a blanket, on the floor of the cave, all night. Which isn’t good for your butt
A crazy but brilliant week. We stayed in the hotel where they filmed the bar scene for the first Star Wars movie. Dinner bed and breakfast £7 each.
We stayed in a grain store at another hotel. These were later used as Anakins House in The Phantom Menace
Just reminded of another one, where we weren't lost, just temporarily misplaced. Did a short out and back loop with a few mates, in mid january. Started just as the light was going, planned to follow one of the big looping tracks for about 10k, to gain most of the height, then link together a few of the gnadgery smaller trails on the way back to the car park. Mostly to be done in the pitch dark (so we had lights).
By the time we'd got to the furthest point, we'd gone from about 5 cm of snow and a clear crisp day, to about 20-25cm and a few drifts, and it was still coming down. We thought we'd be a bit more sheltered and have less snow to deal with, heading back though the (really quite dense) forest.
We were wrong.
Lost the trail within 2km, then eventually couldn't ride any more and had to wade the last 5 or 6 km through thigh deep snow (and deeper) all while looking for the trail which admittedly we did find, eventually. Ran out of batteries about 7pm, think we had two head torches on low power to rely on.
Ended up being a 6 hour ride, to cover 18km.
To add insult to injury, it'd gone from about -5 (which is perfectly reasonable for a winter MTB ride) to something like -14 by the time we got back to the cars. I then had to drop someone off and then drive another hour home... Needless to say, the car heater was on full whack for the entire journey. Think i eventually got home about 11.
Me, Mrs Sparkle and 2 dogs were walking on Fairfield with the intention to do the Horseshoe and drop back down to Ambleside. Wind started blowing a hooly and snow was coming in sideways. If I'd got a map out it would have blown away. No problem I thought. I know this route from running the fell race. Set off, 'remembered' a few familiar looking bits and persuaded myself I was heading in the right direction. Ended up in Patterdale after dropping off St Sunday Crag. The van was parked in Rydal on a pay and display. Mrs said 'we can just walk up that road and back that way.' That road being Kirkstone Pass and about a 10 mile walk.
£20 in a taxi and a lesson learnt. I still mentally beat myself up about that one.
Before sat nav, I struggled to find my way out of Crawley once. It was tough.
Similar – but it was Milton Keynes for me.
Similar to @winston the worst one was with young kids lost in a forest in Dumfries. What was supposed to be a 15 minute walk from the campsite to a pub turned into a 2 hour increasingly dark and worrying ordeal.
No phone signal and no map, walked up and down and around what I am sure we're the same few forest tracks but always feeling like we were going.deeper into the woods with absolutely no way to get any bearings whatsoever. We were saved when we spotted a car going down a minor road way off through the trees.
It was topped off by having to make our way through a cow field to exit to the road. My eldest (who was about 7 at the time) jumped down beside a small stream running across the field which looked solid from above but was actually deep mud and cow muck.
Had to rinse him down pretty much entirely in the public lav wash basin next to the pub. Oh how we laughed.
It took us about 10 minutes to return to the campsite from the pub walking the road way 😂
Being lost in the woods was horrible at the time but it's a great family story and we laugh about it now!
I was staying at the Wasdale NT campsite with my son a couple of years ago and we overheard one of the NT staff explaining to two young lads where they were. They had gone up Scafell Pike from Langdale and intended to go back that way, but come off the wrong side and not realised. They asked for a lift, and were given a taxi number.
In the same area, Mrs NS came across a couple near Sty Head late in the day who asked her for advice on finding the corridor route. They were navigating by Google Maps. She suggested it wouldn't be wise to continue...
Local woods. Not lost, but definitely not managing to exit on the same track more than twice
yep, spain isn’t as flat as Bristol and taking a wrong turn can equate to a lot of effort to retrace steps as you can be on the wrong mountain/hilly thing and it can be disorienting as you do sometime go round in circles to go forward and tbh it takes a while to get landmarks here as one olive field looks like another 🙂
bike computer phone and power banks are king, although I’ve been looking at maps and compass for backup in future (can’t beat old school) as tech is less resilient.
I got embarrassingly lost cave diving once. Annoyingly the visibility was excellent at about 15m!
I’d swum/decended down a large tunnel to about -35m and was probably slightly narced and on the way back out swam straight over a line junction and ended up following a different line…. Recognised my mistake as I didn’t encounter and bad visibility from stirred up sediment on the inward journey and while not “lost” perhaps as I still had the guideline I wasn’t entirely sure how that related to the way out…. A swim back until I found the junction and then a slightly nervy deco stop at 6m clipped to a boulder as the almost empty cylinders became increasingly bouyant and all ended happily.
I now pop a clothes peg on the “out” side of junctions even if the vis is so unusually good I think it’s impossible to miss……
Back in the early days of sat navs a group of us heading out for a boys weekend. Richard phones up saying he can't find the place. He was about 100 miles away having got one letter wrong on the postcode.
"we weren't lost, we just didn't know exactly where we were". This phrase has since been deployed many times.
This again is a story from a pre gps world. On an evening ride, we had a yellow 1:25000 map and only rear red lights. It got late, it got dark. Have you ever tried looking at a yellow map with a red light ?
Winter hillwalking in snow and thick cloud on top of the Long Mynd one time... "Blimey, I didn't expect that, there's someone else up here in boots with exactly the same tread pattern as mine. Oh, wait..."
Koflach Vivasofts were quite distinctive.
I'd just done a great big circle, obviously. All ended with no drama.
I took a tear out MBR route guide out for a ride in a bit of the South Downs that extended my normal riding zone East a bit.
It crossed a busy A road for a little section and then recrossed it further down. I was a bit tired, hadn't brought much food so I decided to short cut it on the road. Quite what happened next I've never fully understood but I ended up going East not West, I was off the tear out sheet and on a mission (the wrong way).
I must have gone 3-5 miles on said busy A road looking for my turn, convinced I was headed back towards the start before I realised but then I was off the know reasonably well ara and firmly into the "never go this far east". I didn't even recognise the village names on the signs.
No mobile phone and way before smart phones, car was at Cocking and home was Southampton. Not ideal.
I'm still not entirely sure how I found my way back to the car but it involved a fair bit of uneducated and random guess work. I had bonked, was quite dehydrated and feeling quite daft after years of meticulous navigational preparation for Scouts, DofE and such like!
Early 90s. Following a photocopied trail route complete with freehand 'map'.
The prompt was something like,
Right turn into Hoe Lane, right at end, take bridle way 100m on left.
Retraced my steps a dozen times before realising ththat Hoe Lane' had one 'entrance' and TWO 'exits'.
Zero danger, but peak frustration.
Still smile when i ocassionally pass it (one of the ends) in the car.
Genuine question, is this road configuration /name unique to TV he Surrey Hills. Surrey hills
Back in the early days of sat navs a group of us heading out for a boys weekend. Richard phones up saying he can't find the place. He was about 100 miles away having got one letter wrong on the postcode.
Reminds me of a very good mate attempting to meet up with me and other friends. Texts me from the train to say he's on his way... But to Woking not Wokingham where I was living at the time.
Back in the early days of sat navs a group of us heading out for a boys weekend. Richard phones up saying he can't find the place. He was about 100 miles away having got one letter wrong on the postcode.
I know someone who didn't use the postcode but put the town name in then selected the wrong one.
The destination was Gillingham - the one in Dorset, not the one in Kent that had been chosen on the sat nav. 🙄
Still, it was only 150 miles and the entire southern stretch of the M25 to contend with to get to the right place...