The Clocks Go Back Today: How Walkers Get Benighted, and the Turnaround Time That Stops It

The clocks went back at 2am this morning, and sunset has jumped an hour earlier on the clock. In Keswick, the sun set at about 5.54pm yesterday. Today it sets at about 4.52pm. Nothing about the hills has changed, but a walk that finished comfortably in daylight last weekend can now finish in the dark if you start at the same time.

That’s one of the easiest ways to get benighted, caught out on the hill by darkness. It doesn’t take a big mistake. A summer timetable meeting an autumn sunset is enough.

The fix is simple, and it’s three things: start earlier rather than trimming the route, set your turnaround time from today’s dark rather than last week’s, and put a working head torch in your rucksack now. We’ll go through each, with the actual numbers, and then what to do if the dark catches you anyway.

What does benighted mean?

Being benighted means being caught out on the hill by darkness before you’re back down. It isn’t an emergency in itself. Plenty of people walk the last half hour off a hill by head torch and think nothing of it.

It shows up in the rescue figures as its own category, though. In 2025 the Lake District teams logged 10 calls where the reason given was that people were benighted, and Scottish Mountain Rescue recorded being benighted as a contributing factor 13 times. Scottish Mountain Rescue also recorded 101 mountaineering incidents that year that happened in the dark.

They’re small numbers, and the figures don’t say why each one happened. What they do say is that the dark gets its own line, and it’s one of the easier ones to plan out of.

How do the clocks catch walkers out?

The clock change doesn’t make the day shorter. Autumn does that, a few minutes at a time. What the clock change does is move the dark one whole hour earlier against your watch overnight, which is the bit our habits don’t adjust to.

Here’s what that looks like for Keswick, worked out for 2026. Edale and Fort William are within a few minutes either way.

Times calculated for Keswick, and given to the nearest few minutes. Check a sunset table for the place and day you’re actually walking.

Look at what that does to an ordinary day. Leave at 10am, plan six hours of walking and stopping, and you’re down at about 4pm. A month ago that left you three hours of spare daylight. Today it leaves you less than one. Run an hour late, which is easy on a short autumn day, and you’re finishing in the dark.

The ways a day runs late

None of these is unusual, which is the point. Any one of them, on a short day, eats the margin:

• A later start than planned. Ten minutes at the car park, twenty at the café, a wrong turn finding the start.
• Slower than the timings said. Wet rock, a muddy path or a tired group, and the Naismith’s rule estimate starts to look optimistic.
• The pull of the top. “We’re nearly there” is the most expensive sentence in hill walking.
• The way down takes longer. Tired legs on steep ground are slower than you planned for.
• It gets dark earlier where you are. A deep valley or a thick cloud base loses its light before the sunset time on your phone.

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How do you set a turnaround time when the clocks go back?

A turnaround time is the time you turn back, whether or not you’ve got where you were going. You decide it at home, before anyone’s tired or invested, and you write it down.

Here’s the method, the same one we use in what time of day most mountain rescues happen:

1. Look up sunset for the day and place you’re walking.
2. Take off an hour. That’s the margin you’ll want and won’t otherwise have. This is the time you want to be back down.
3. Work out your window from your start time to that point.
4. On an out-and-back, halve the window. That’s your turnaround time.

Worked through for Keswick today: sunset about 4.52pm, take off an hour and you want to be down by about 3.50pm. Start at 9am and you’ve got a window of about 6 hours 50 minutes. On an out-and-back, you turn around at about 12.25pm, wherever you are.

On a circular route, find the point where it’s quicker to carry on than to turn back, and make sure you’ll reach it well before your turnaround time. And reset all of this every few weeks through the autumn, because sunset keeps moving.

Do you need a head torch for hiking?

Yes, on every walk, all year round. A twisted ankle can keep you out past dark in June too. But from now until spring it stops being a just-in-case: on a short day, it’s the thing that gets you down. A head torch weighs next to nothing and it’s the difference between a slow walk out and a phone call.

A few things that matter more than which one you buy:

• Put it in the bag now, before you think you need it, and leave it there.
• Check it works before the walk, not when it’s dark.
• Carry spare batteries, or a second small torch. One torch is one failure away from no torch, and batteries run down faster in the cold.
• Don’t plan on your phone torch. It works, but it drains the battery you need for calling for help and finding your position.

What should you do if the dark catches you?

First of all, don’t panic, and don’t rush. Being benighted isn’t an emergency on its own. Rushing a descent in the dark is how it becomes one.

1. Stop and get your torch on before it’s fully dark, while you can still see to dig it out.
2. Put on every layer you have. You’ll cool down fast once you slow down. Expect to walk a good deal slower in the dark than you did in daylight, and break the way down into short, obvious legs: a wall, a stream, a path junction.
3. Decide calmly. If you’re on a clear path you know, with a torch, walk down slowly. If you’re not sure of the way, stop somewhere sheltered, get off the wet ground, eat something and save your phone battery while you work out where you are.
4. If you’re not sure you can get down safely, call 999, ask for the police, then Mountain Rescue. Call early. Teams say consistently that they would far rather come out to a situation that’s still manageable. What happens when you call mountain rescue walks you through it. If you can’t get a call through, a text to 999 works only if you’ve registered your phone for emergency texts beforehand.
5. If you need to signal, the distress signal is six flashes of your torch spread over a minute, then a minute of silence, then repeat. And if a helicopter comes, never shine your torch at it, because the crew are flying on night-vision goggles. Point it at the ground.

If the only problem is that you’ll miss your train or your lift, that’s a money problem, not a mountain one. What to do if you miss the last train off the hill covers the rest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Before your next walk

Look up what time the sun sets where you’re going, pick your turnaround time at the kitchen table, and put the head torch in your rucksack tonight.

Your phone is part of this too: the battery you save for the end of the day, the grid reference you’d give if you had to call. Our free Digital Safety Net course sets all of that up properly, and it costs nothing. Ask any questions in the comments below.