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Don’t tackle the fire.
Seems like odd advice. And so very British.... Couldn't they say something more nuanced like don't expose yourself to too much danger by tackling the fire?
If you haven’t already, self evacuate the area as soon as possible. These fires can spread fast.
So isn't it therefore important to try to tackle it asap?
Good and timely advice. We have suffered many heathland fires in recent years here in Dorset, unfortunately a good proportion of them started deliberately or by people stupidly having camp fires or BBQ's. The picture below is of Holt Heath (taken June 2026) and only shows a very small portion of the damage caused by a major fire in 2025, it is a long long way from recovering after 170+ acres were destroyed.
There was a small(ish) one on Froggat edge last year. I was amazed at how quickly the ferns grew back.
But still, no excuse.
Don’t tackle the fire.
Seems like odd advice. And so very British.... Couldn't they say something more nuanced like don't expose yourself to too much danger by tackling the fire?
If you haven’t already, self evacuate the area as soon as possible. These fires can spread fast.
So isn't it therefore important to try to tackle it asap?
you won’t be able to tackle it yourself, even the smallest grass/scrubland fire takes way more water than you have available to extinguish.
I came across one last summer that was only a patch of around a metre squared and emptied my two water bottles onto it and it didn’t do jack to extinguish it, and there wasn’t even visible flames just smouldering.
Given how quickly it can turn to something really dangerous you’re far better off just ringing the fire service and leaving quickly.
What initially looked like nothing to me took two firefighters with huge backpacks of water with supersoakers to put it out and even then they basically ran out just as they managed to.
It all seems very good, sensible advice to me, much if which seems quite logical for most (I hope), but one thing that had never occurred to me was
Don’t park on dry grass at the trailhead – hot exhausts can easily start a fire.
I'll certainly be thinking about that in future.
It all seems very good, sensible advice to me, much if which seems quite logical for most (I hope), but one thing that had never occurred to me was
Don’t park on dry grass at the trailhead – hot exhausts can easily start a fire.
I'll certainly be thinking about that in future.
I remember being at work late on a Friday watching the fire spread on the fields on the horizon as festival (boomtown, Winchester) goers cars all went up in flames.
Don’t tackle the fire.
Seems like odd advice. And so very British.... Couldn't they say something more nuanced like don't expose yourself to too much danger by tackling the fire?
If you haven’t already, self evacuate the area as soon as possible. These fires can spread fast.
So isn't it therefore important to try to tackle it asap?
I'm a Fire fighter. Don't do this, wildfire, especially when it's as dry as present can develop quickly and change direction without you realising leaving you with nowhere to go. Ring us.
I phoned in a moor/woodland edge fire left from a previous nights camp.
Fire brigade turned up wth a couple of those huge euro liquid cubes - and spent next 12 hours shipping water in with help of the farmer.
The fire area was about 4m x 4m - but deep in the peat and roots.
Just phone it in and get out of there.
Ah full forum. So after fire and a month later..
It will depend though. Was in Scotland later on last year for some kayaking. Cant quite remember which area it was but drove through an area where there had been a major wildfire about 3-4 months early. For about a mile it was very obviously fire scarred both sides of the road stretching off into the distance. All the trees were dead.
I've helped put out a couple of wild fires, it's scary how quickly these things get out of control. I certainly wouldn't consider getting involved if I was on my own and didn't have the right equipment.
Got to love this place. My wife frequently reminds me not to to try and explain things to people that are experts in that field. However if the Fire Brigade don’t want me to tackle moorland fires then in think I’ll go with the flow.
I think it was my mother that told me that they can burn underground so it’s easier to get cut off than you expect
I think it was my mother that told me that they can burn underground so it’s easier to get cut off than you expect
This has happened a few times in the Peak District. The peat base effectively carries the fire underground and it'll spring up again above ground somewhere else with no warning. It's very easy to find yourself surrounded, like a high tide racing in and cutting off your escape. And it takes vast amounts of water. They've used helicopters sometimes on remote Peak District fires - thankfully a lot of reservoirs around the place!
Firefighters often stay on the site of a blaze for 2-3 days after it's apparently been extinguished, damping things down and making sure that the fire doesn't just spark up again where it's been burning below ground in the peat.
This will invariably prompt wails of protest on social media if a road remains closed as morons shout that 'the fire is out, let us drive along the road again..'
Years ago at the start of my tree cutting career and we were removing dead elm from Redford barracks. I'd been left on my own to cut the timber and tidy the fire.
The grass caught fire and spread with surprising speed. It took a lot of effort to beat out a small grass fire. I wouldn't like to try to tackle a large moorland fire.
Got to love this place. My wife frequently reminds me not to to try and explain things to people that are experts in that field. However if the Fire Brigade don’t want me to tackle moorland fires then in think I’ll go with the flow.
Cool, you do you. I'd rather make an assessment based on the info available to me at the time, rather than a blanket statement made by someone else possibly hundreds of miles and multiple weeks/months/ years away.
you won’t be able to tackle it yourself, even the smallest grass/scrubland fire takes way more water than you have available to extinguish.
There are sometimes other ways of keeping a fire under control, and there may well be other people about to help.
The grass caught fire and spread with surprising speed. It took a lot of effort to beat out a small grass fire.
But you did which in this circumstance was good as you succeeded and it didn't become a huge fire.
I wouldn't like to try to tackle a large moorland fire.
Indeed neither would I. Which, as stated above, is why sometimes it might be worth the effort to put it out before it grows
With horrible inevitability Darwen Moor has gone up. Just hoping that they can contain it soon as the last time it happened it was ablaze for days and destroyed acres of peat.
Timely advice, it's going to be an increasingly difficult problem.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy8w67l642no
Seems like odd advice. And so very British.... Couldn't they say something more nuanced like don't expose yourself to too much danger by tackling the fire?
actually if all instructions were blindingly obvious, it wouldn’t need providing as advice. Advice is most useful when intuition (to try and put it out yourself) is contradicted by experience.
Given the article was written for an MTB audience discovering a fire whilst riding what size of fire do you think you can put out with only your water bottle whilst wearing synthetic fibre?
If this advice is “so very British”, which country do you think would provide significantly contradictory advice?
Found & reported a fire in North Hampshire 6 weeks ago. 3 big takeaways
1) My What3Words had gone dormant so I had to re-install on 1 bar of 4g phone - very annoying so well worth regularly checking that the app works
2) I smelt smoke and was asking other forest users if they had seen anything. Some horse riders had seen smoke had but had not reported it. I then found the fire and 2 lads watching the fire - they'd been there 30mins but not reported it
3) stamping out smouldering vegetation - seemed like a good idea until I jumped back on my bike and the the cleats burnt the soles of my feet!! (yes, I'm a knobba!)
Fire crews and chopper busy at Dovestones again today courtesy of the grieving fireworks dickheads.
The bill for the chopper alone hopefully focussing the limited brain cells of the well documented perps.
stamping out smouldering vegetation - seemed like a good idea until I jumped back on my bike and the the cleats burnt the soles of my feet!!
Sounds somewhat familiar. My bouldering mat strongly objected to being used for that
Had to resort to plan C at that point... Weirdly enough, it appears that that very same forest has gone up in flames again today. Alas nobody put it out whilst it was still small...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/13/france-fires-wildfires-fointaineblue-forest-paris
what size of fire do you think you can put out with only your water bottle whilst wearing synthetic fibre?
As previously stated, I'd base my decision on the facts at the time, rather than some hypothetical incomplete parameters that you have come up with just now.
If this advice is “so very British”, which country do you think would provide significantly contradictory advice?
I'd expect those countries without such a strong Murkan liability culture to be less inclined to give such advice. The ones that don't see the need to festoon their toilets and kitchens with "Danger Hot Water" signs ( and indeed many other places with many other stupid signs)
The advice in Norway is pretty similar as they can blow up very fast, even when you think they're extinguished. The ones I see are a mixture of farming burnoff running away and natural
Oh dear!
I saw this earlier but didn't post as it was only an arrest on suspicion; she's subsequently been charged.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6212vj664no
GMP statement says they aren’t stopping with just her.
It looks like the Cairngorms Nation Park is in trouble too!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3v0kpderp9o
Talking of the Abernethy fire, is there somewhere on the t'internet where I can view the extent of the fire and/or the area closure overlaid on an OS Landranger map? Or is there a way to download a shape file, or KMZ or GPX so I could do it myself?
This is very good ... but not sure the UK is included. Bushfire.io | The Natural Disaster Map
@reeksy : I've used other websites like that for US and Canadian fires when I've been travelling and was hoping they'd be something similar for the UK. But bushfire.io doesn't show anything (currently) for the Abernethy area
The Abernethy, Ryvoan pass area is currently cordoned off. The wildfire was under control but still smouldering yesterday and we’ve had lots of rain overnight so it must be well dampened down now.
They have bulldozed through the Abernethy forest and the Glenmore forest to create huge firebreaks. As fas as cycling round there is concerned the outer Cairngorm loop through Abernethy to Dorback is a no go due to the cordon. The inner loop goes right through where the fire started near the junction between the Lairig an Laoigh pass and the Ryvoan loop. So that’s a total no go just now. If you want to cross the Cairngorms off road at the moment best to stick to the Feshie Linn o Dee route or the Glen Tilt route. You can make a nice loop out of these passes if you add in the Gaik pass.
There was a video on FB yesterday showing 4 or 5 relief engines arriving from London under police escort through Tintwistle and on up the closed A628 (Woodhead Pass).
Resources coming from around the country but it'll be leaving some parts very thin.
Whilst doomscrolling through YouTube I zipped past a video that I think was a social media MTB influencer with a video shot of him riding through the fires in Cairngorms...I'm hoping I just imagined it as I can't find it now.
Can't find it now and can't remember the person's name, has only just started appearing in my doomscrolls, so isn't a name I'm recognising.
If you can help safely, then do what you can but don't be ignoring it or trying to be a hero...
On the map front, this isn't going to give much in the way of resolution, but it does cover the UK so should give a general overview of what's going on. I assume it gives heat sources. Anyway, it's quite fun to play around with if a little over my heard.
Good video here.
As an outsider it seems Scottish Government are just not prepared and planned for such events. Seems Scottish Fire and Rescue similarly under resourced for this as well.
/p>
No fire service in the UK is properly resourced for huge wildfires. In my near 28 years in the service it just doesn't happen often enough to warrant the cost although the last couple of years could change that and wildfire has moved right up the priority list in my service.
Probably need a national resource funded from Government, much like the High Volume Pumps and Mass Decontamination units that are scattered around but as mentioned earlier, these cost loads and are hardly ever used.
Probably need a national resource funded from Government, much like the High Volume Pumps and Mass Decontamination units that are scattered around but as mentioned earlier, these cost loads and are hardly ever used.
That's the thing about emergency preparedness for anything though, it's a cost/risk balance.
We spend thousands on a confined space rescue team, (which as it happens are all retired fire and rescue staff) each big outage at work. 95% of their time is spent sitting in a site cabin near the action and they've never been used in anger. Feels like a right waste of money when I'm paying the bills, until you've got someone passed out or injured where they're hard to get to.
The thing I would do is get well away from it. If there's a choice of direction I would go upwind (with the wind in your face) as the fire is most likely do spread downwind, and might be faster than you.
Re: fire overlays on maps.
I have both Trailforks and Gaia mapping apps on my phone and both have options to overlay current wildfire boundaries and smoke/air quality forecasts on which I've used when road-tripping in BC and the US.
For anyone road-tripping in the BC or the US, I suggest you check this before you commit to a specific area. All this data is public domain, so it's available in numerous North American orientated mapping apps....
I was hoping the UK had something similar.
Found the video and then lost it again! I did manage to watch a bit of it before I closed it down in error. They were out on a bike ride and didn't intentionally go looking to ride through the fires...fire spread and they got asked to evacuated as soon as they could.
Suspect my last post suggested they were doing it for show but no, they got caught amongst it all and had to get out asap.
Ended up ringing the fire brigade last evening after coming across this delightful sight in Chopwell.
400 mL of water wasn't going to put it out, and didn't want to risk spreading it as it looked like it was started at the top 
