Quick answer: Everything you need for a multi-day hike fits into six categories: your pack (45 to 60 litres), a sleep system, a layered clothing setup, cooking and water kit, food, and navigation and safety essentials. Aim for a base weight, meaning everything except food, water and fuel, of 8 to 12kg for UK three-season hiking, and remember the rule that makes packing simple: almost nothing in your bag scales with trip length except food, fuel and battery. A five-day pack should look nearly identical to a two-day pack, just heavier in one category. The full list, the weights, and the things to leave at home are below.

This list is built from an unusual vantage point. I run a food company that supplies multi-day hikers, thru-hikers and expedition teams, people walking the West Highland Way, crossing deserts, heading to altitude, and after years of conversations about what's in their packs, what they wished they'd carried and what they posted home halfway through, the same kit list keeps emerging. This is that list, UK-flavoured, with the weight arithmetic most packing guides skip.

The weight rules before the list

Two numbers matter. Base weight is everything you carry except food, water and fuel, and for UK three-season hiking, 8 to 12kg is a sensible target, with dedicated lightweight hikers getting to 6 to 8kg and gram-counters lower still. Total weight is what's actually on your back on day one, and this is where trips go wrong, because food and water are the variables. Water is heavy at a kilo per litre but the UK hills are generous with refills, so you rarely need to carry more than a litre or two at a time. Food is the sneaky one: at typical hiking rations of 700g to 1,000g per day, a five-day unsupported carry means 3.5 to 5kg of food, which is usually more than your tent, sleeping bag and mat combined. Nobody tells beginners that the heaviest thing in their pack is dinner. We'll deal with it in the food section, because it's also the easiest weight to engineer down.

The pack

For multi-day hiking with camping kit, 45 to 60 litres covers almost everyone; if you need more, the problem is usually inside the bag rather than the bag itself. Add a rain cover, and more importantly, line the inside with a rubble sack or use dry bags, because in UK weather a rain cover alone is optimism. Colour-coded dry bags also solve the daily archaeology problem of finding anything.

The sleep system

Tent, sleeping bag, mat. This trio is the biggest chunk of your base weight and the best place to invest for weight savings. A one-to-two person backpacking tent at 1 to 2kg, a three-season sleeping bag suited to UK nights (down packs smaller, synthetic shrugs off damp better, and damp is our national condition), and an inflatable mat, which earns its place over foam the first cold night you spend on one. An inflatable pillow is 60 optional grams that buys real sleep; a dry bag stuffed with your down jacket does the same job for free.

Clothing: the layer system, and less of it than you think

Think in layers, not outfits. On the move: a wicking base layer, a fleece or light midlayer, and a waterproof shell jacket that you should never skimp on, plus waterproof overtrousers, because UK forecasts are suggestions. Zip-off or quick-dry trousers earn their keep. In the pack: one spare hiking top, one warm layer for camp (down or synthetic jacket), a full change for sleeping, hat, gloves and a buff. On your feet, whatever boots or trail shoes your feet already trust, never new ones, with two or three pairs of decent wool-blend socks, one pair kept sacred and dry for sleeping. That's it. The most common packing mistake on any trail is a third, fourth and fifth outfit; clothes don't scale with days, laundry standards do.

Cooking and water

A small canister stove, one gas canister (two beyond four days), a single pot or large mug you cook and eat from, a spork, and a lighter plus a backup. A water filter or purification tablets turn every UK stream into a refill point, which is what lets you carry one litre instead of three, one of the cheapest weight savings available. Add a soft bottle or bladder for capacity on drier stretches, and a small sponge or cloth for washing up. Leave the plates, the second pot and the coffee press at home.

Food: the category that actually grows

Here's where the day-scaling maths bites, and where you can fight back. The lever is calorie density: the more energy each gram carries, the less food weight you haul. Standard dehydrated meals, nuts, nut butters, oats, cheese and chocolate all sit at the dense end of the spectrum, our calorie-dense foods guide ranks the field, while fresh fruit, tins and bread are luggage. Plan roughly per day: breakfast, an evening meal, and then more daytime food than feels reasonable, because hiking hunger is real and mid-walk fuelling is where most people run short. Pocket food matters more than camp food: things you'll actually eat while moving, in weather, without stopping. This is exactly the job Phoenix Bars were built for, up to 557 calories in a 120g bar, about 4.6 calories per gram, which is why they keep ending up in packs on the West Highland Way and a lot further afield; swapping half a kilo of average snacks for the same energy in denser form is the easiest kilo you'll ever not carry. Add one spare day's food as insurance, ideally something that needs no cooking, our emergency food guide covers the logic. For the full eating strategy, day-by-day quantities and resupply planning, that all lives in our hiking nutrition guide, which is this section's big sibling.