The Peak District is being wasted on people who only take photos

Last Saturday, at the top of Mam Tor, the wind was whipping my hair against my face when a couple standing next to me extended a selfie stick, took exactly seventeen photos from the same angle, and left. Round trip, maybe four minutes by my count. I stood there quite a bit longer. I wanted to feel where the wind was coming from, and honestly, I'd also forgotten the way back down.

I go to the Peak District almost every week. It's just over an hour's drive from Leeds, so finishing up code reviews on Friday evening and heading out Saturday morning has become routine. The problem is that every time I go, I see the same scene. People park their cars, pull out their phones at the trailhead, pace around looking for an Instagram-worthy angle, take the shot, and leave. I genuinely can't tell whether they came to see the landscape or to see the landscape on a screen.

Getting Lost Is a Skill Too

I'm bad at planning. Embarrassing confession for a frontend developer. I meticulously design components in code, but in the mountains I operate on a "that way looks good, let's try it" basis. Once I set out from Edale intending to reach Castleton and somehow ended up on a back lane behind Hope, bought a pie at a pub, and took the bus home. The pie was pretty good. It was a pie I never would have eaten if things had gone to plan.

When you get lost, the scenery changes. Step off the tourist trail and there are no people, and when there are no people, there's no reason to take out your phone. Sheep block your path and stare at you with judgmental eyes, nameless farms peek over stone walls, and all you hear is the wind. I like that. Not collecting highlights along a set route, but simply being there. The difference is bigger than you'd think.

When Competitiveness Helps

I'm a competitive person. I admit it. I silently seethe when I lose at board games, I check rankings in coding challenges, and the mountains are no different. The only thing is, I'm not competing against other people. I'm competing against myself from last week. Did I take a more unexpected path than last time? Did I last longer without my phone? Did I notice something I missed before?

This happened when I went to Stanage Edge. I walked past the climbers all the way to the end of the rocks and just sat there for an hour. Doing nothing. The first fifteen minutes were anxious. That feeling of needing to do something. The urge to check my phone. My fingers twitched as if to open a new tab. Occupational hazard of being a frontend developer, I suppose. Without a screen, your hands feel empty. But around the twenty-minute mark, I started to see the texture of the rock. I noticed the patches of moss were each slightly different in colour. If I'd taken a photo, it would have been one shot of "mossy rock," but with my eyes I could see fifteen different colours.

It's Not That Photos Are Bad, Exactly

Don't get me wrong. I don't dislike photos themselves. A person who collects vintage travel posters and puts them up on his walls can hardly object to visual things. What I'm getting at is that there are moments when the act of taking a photo replaces the experience itself. The instant you press the shutter, a mental switch flips: "Done, I've secured this one, on to the next." Collection complete. One box on the checklist ticked. Before you know it, you've walked an entire mountain and the time you were actually "there" amounts to a few minutes.

I used to be like that too. There was a day I took over fifty photos walking near Chatsworth. When I got home, they all looked the same. Green hill, green hill, green hill from a slightly different angle. I can't remember a single thing I felt that day, but I've got a gallery full of pictures. After that, I made myself one rule: no more than three photos per mountain trip. Everything else, I take in with my eyes.

Three is enough. One when you arrive, one at the most unexpected moment, one just before you head back. Everything in between is better left to exist only in memory. Memory may have a low pixel count, but its emotional resolution is high.

I'll be going to the Peak District again next week. I don't know where yet. I'll get in the car, turn the wheel whichever way I feel like, probably get lost again, and if I'm lucky, stumble upon another decent pub. My phone will stay in my pocket, and the sheep will still stare at me with those judgmental eyes.