We now leave navigation to our phones. The result: more of us are getting hopelessly lost | John Harris

Mountain Rescue England and Wales reported a record number of annual callouts.

For the first time, teams of overworked volunteers had been called out on every day of the year .

Across Britain , there is evidently a mounting problem about the gap between people’s urge to experience wild and open spaces, and their ability to cope when they actually get there.

People's inability to find their way through the physical world reflects our declining skills at navigation more generally and through information in particular.

We need to talk about improving people’s understanding of what the countryside is like up close, and how to get around it a conversation that might revive interest in the much-mocked subject of geography.