Another week and another special place falling prey to overtourism.
Visitors to Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, also known as the Brecon Beacons, are urged to travel outside peak times and use buses to reduce pressure on walking trails, car parks, photogenic spots and local amenities.
Social media "influencers" posting photos of Pen y Fan - Wales' highest peak - and the so-called Waterfall Country walking area in Ystradfellte, Powys, have led to a surge in visitors, leading to crowds and traffic and parking problems.
About four million people visit the national park each year. The park authority says it does not want to deter tourists, but encourages them to visit outside peak times.
Rangers also report that some visitors arrived unprepared, and extra staff were hired to ensure that those walking in the park had adequate footwear and clothing. South-east Wales is one of the wettest places in the UK, and the weather in the Highlands is particularly changeable.
But so do Instagrammers, and no amount of honest advice will deter the pigeonholers, selfie addicts and cliché collectors.
An often overlooked fact is that the eastern end of Bannau Brycheiniog is the closest mountain area to London - the epicentre of the young e-generation.
If you want to avoid the crowds and the hustle and bustle, why not consider these options?
The Western Brecon Beacons: The Carmarthen Fans
Just 20 miles and an hour's drive from the influential peaks of Pen y Fan and Fan y Big lie the serene solitudes of the western Brecon Beacons. Overlooked, like so much of Carmarthenshire, they contain some impressive peaks - Fan Brycheiniog and Picws Du are the two highest points in the Black Mountain range (not to be confused with the Black Mountain/Black Mountains on the English-Welsh border).
Llyn y Fan Fach is a beautiful lake with views of Picws Du and other prominent mountains, and the walk from the car park at Llandeusant is popular but not crowded with kit-less children shooting video. Fforest Fawr, which covers much of the area, is a 300-square-mile UNESCO Geopark. Some 480 million years of geological history are contained within the rocky layer cake, and the area also forms a bridge between rural mid-Wales and the post-industrial valleys.
Llandovery, Llandeilo and Carmarthen - Roman Moridunum - are excellent bases for exploring the Carmarthen Fans.
Caithness and Sutherland: the UK's newest UNESCO site
Flow Country, the largest lowland peat bog area in the world, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July.
Exploring a vast, spongy plain may not seem like an easy task, but thankfully the 270-kilometre Far North Line winds through the heart of the area. The train travels along an embankment, offering views of shimmering pools, streams and spongy peatlands full of peat moss, heather, asphodel and stonecrop.
The peat was formed over 10,000 years and is up to ten metres deep. The area was once a battleground between pro-plantation developers and conservationists, but is now being allowed to recover, which is good for the planet - peat is a great carbon sink - and the native wildlife.
Merlin, short-eared owls and golden eagles hunt over the mosses and pools. Divers, plovers and greenshanks feed and nest in the wetlands. Microhabitats support insects, spiders, amphibians, reptiles and small mammals such as shrews.
Flow Country covers some 3,800 square kilometres across Caithness and Sutherland, two of Britain's least visited counties. These are the Highlands overlooked by most NC500 drivers, the crowds that gather around hotspots and attractions such as Glencoe and Loch Ness.
The RSPB maintains a visitor centre and lookout tower at Forsinard, and there are cottages, lodges and hotels dotted around the moors. If you want amenities and some evening action, Wick and Thurso are welcoming, historically fascinating towns close to the coast.
Cumbrian Coast: The Lake District's stunning coastline
Cumbria! The Lakes!? Escape the tourists? It's easy, really. The solution is to start in the south - which is actually Lancashire, but administered by Westmorland and Furness - a unitary authority created in April 2023.
There are two ways to get there. The more challenging option is to take one of the regular charity walks across Morecambe Bay from Arnside, which run every summer. The easier option is to take a trip on the Furness Line from Lancaster, taking in Grange-over-Sands, Ulverston and Barrow-in-Furness, perhaps stopping off there.
The latter has a rich industrial past and present (the Dock Museum is fantastic), beautiful beaches on Walney Islands, a very special pub (where the owner has the official title of King of Piel) on Piel Island, spectacular abbey ruins and, at Swarthmoor Hall between Barrow and Ulverston, a cradle of Quaker history. South of Barrow rises Black Combe, a 1,970ft hill rising almost directly from the sea.
From here the scenic Cumbrian Coast Line continues along a less touristy stretch. The views to the right are classic Lakeland: mountains, sheep, changeable weather, glacier-clad valleys.
To the left is the sea, sandy beaches and clear skies, and small settlements that are never overwhelmed by tourists. Nethertown and Braystones grew out of temporary camps for the military and later for Sellafield contractors. Whitehaven is a pretty harbour town with cool cafes and restaurants, the Beacon Museum and the Moresby Hall Hotel, a Grade II listed 17th-century country house and B&B.
The people of Whitehaven call the people of Workington "jam-eaters". The people of Workington call the people of Whitehaven... "jam-eaters".
The term originates from the mining days when, it is said, miners who could not afford meat for the rolls in their tins had to make do with jam butties. So lots of jam, but little traffic.
Durham Heritage Coast: post-industrial paradise
Tourist boards often divide walks into categories such as nature, city, wildlife and history. The beauty of the Durham Heritage Coast trail, part of the never-completed England Coast Path that links Hartlepool in County Durham with Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, is that it covers all the bases.
The area was once a centre of coal mining and has now been beautified and landscaped. Along the route you will find monuments, but also scars and geological reminders of the long history of exploitation and development.
It's worth taking a look around both towns, but the Durham Coastal Footpath itself is an 11-mile long walking route between Seaham and Crimdon. Blackhall Rock beach featured in the climax and bloody closing scenes of the 1971 Michael Caine film Get Carter.
In the film, the beach is littered with sea kale; in some places, black spots are visible. On North Sands Beach, which is easy to walk across at low tide, is the wooden Steetley Pier, a remnant of the magnesite industry.
There are several former mining towns along the route, including Blackhall, Horden and Easington - the last mine to close in the area and the setting for the film. Billy ElliotWhere once there were slag heaps and koppen, there are now meadows full of orchids and poppies and, beyond that, fields of rapeseed and wheat. Along the bank are protected nesting areas for little terns. Larks serenade walkers all along the path. It's enough to make you pirouette and stand still on point.
When you eventually arrive in Sunderland or Hartlepool, depending on your preferred direction, you will be amazed at how much England has changed in the last half century.
The loss of industry is sad and the impact devastating, but the natural beauty of the region is undeniable. Hartlepool-born author Compton Mackenzie once said: "Never stand if you can sit. Never sit if you can lie down. Never walk if you can ride." Ignore him when you come to the paradise-like north-east.
Shropshire Hills: beautiful border country
Every time there is an Olympics there is a mini-boom in interest in the village of Much Wenlock, rumored to be the home of the modern Games. But then Shropshire fades into happy obscurity, ignored by the Snowdonia-bound and beach-loving crowds who head for Barmouth and Pembrokeshire. Landlocked has never been much loved in the UK.
Tony Wilson is reputed to have said: "Manchester is different." Shropshire certainly is. It has no cities, is one of the least densely populated counties in England (just 136 souls per square mile) and a quarter of the country is a protected National Landscape - with the Shropshire Hills, an idyllic border zone between the Midlands and Wales.
For your first taste of this rugged ridge, test your mettle on the Clee Hills, which rise directly east of Ludlow. Brown Clee Hill is the highest point in Shropshire. It's a steep walk or cycle, but the views from the top are breathtaking.
The peaceful Shropshire Way begins just behind Ludlow Castle; a path follows the River Onny for 11 miles to Craven Arms, past Stokesay, where the fortified 13th-century manor house of Laurence of Ludlow rises from a bend in the river like a buttress of Lord of the Rings.
West of Craven Arms the path winds through sheep-strewn farmland to the grass-covered whorls of the Iron Age hillfort at Bury Ditches and on to the village of Clun, where the 11th-century motte-and-bailey castle was sacked by Owain Glyndŵr, the last Welshman to hold the title Prince of Wales.
The Long Mynd above Church Stretton can get a bit hectic, especially at weekends. Otherwise, Shropshire is an undiscovered area and this national landscape, though locally beloved, is an unspoilt frontier.
