Waymarking is a language, and every country speaks a different dialect

These are listed in the order worth acting on, which with waymarking is not the order they are usually presented in.

Paint blazes carry a grammar

Across much of Europe a horizontal band system indicates route type — long-distance, regional, local — through colour and arrangement. A blaze with a turn indicator means the route leaves the obvious line, and a crossed blaze means the opposite: not this way.

Once you know the local scheme, a junction that looked ambiguous usually turns out to have been marked clearly. The schemes are documented by the national walking federation that maintains them, and are worth ten minutes before a trip.

Absence is a signal

On a well-maintained route, waymarks appear at every point where a walker could plausibly go wrong. Walking for a long stretch without seeing one therefore means either the route is unambiguous or you have left it.

The detail that matters: building a habit of noting the last confirmed marker converts that from a vague worry into a specific distance to backtrack. Reroutes complicate it, because old paint is rarely removed when a line is moved for felling or erosion, so two sets of marks can coexist for years and the fresher, more consistently repeated one is the live route.

Cairns are the least trustworthy marker

Most cairns are built by passing walkers rather than by anybody responsible for the route. They accumulate at attractive spots, at false summits and along wrong turnings that many people took.

On the ground, in poor visibility a line of cairns can lead confidently to somewhere nobody intended, which is a well-documented accident pattern. The exception is a line of substantial, evenly spaced cairns across a featureless plateau or a glacier, which is usually deliberate infrastructure maintained by an authority and marked on the map — and telling that apart from an accumulation of tourist stone piles comes down to spacing and consistency.

Signposts encode time, not distance, in mountain country

Alpine and Pyrenean signage conventionally gives walking time rather than kilometres, calibrated to an assumed pace. Those times generally assume a fit walker with a light pack in good conditions and no stops. Treating them as a baseline to be adjusted rather than a prediction avoids a lot of late arrivals.

Over a season, the posts frequently carry a difficulty grade as well, coded in their colours, so a mountain path and a genuinely alpine route can be signed from the same junction with the same walking time and entirely different requirements — and the colour is the only thing saying so.

Maintenance is voluntary and uneven

Waymarking on most routes is repainted by volunteer sections of walking clubs on a multi-year cycle. Sections near towns tend to be well maintained and remote sections less so, which is the reverse of where clarity is most needed.

On the ground, reporting missing or damaged markers to the maintaining federation is the mechanism by which this improves, and almost nobody does it. The marks themselves are often protected, since the symbols used by the major long-distance networks are registered and painting your own version of one — however helpful the intention — is an offence in some countries and a reliable way to send somebody down the wrong valley.

Marks are painted for one direction of travel

Paint goes where a walker coming the intended way will see it, which in practice means the downhill face of a boulder or the far side of a tree. Walking a marked route in reverse means looking behind you at every junction, and the rate at which people miss turnings rises accordingly. Snow removes the system altogether: ground-level paint, low posts and cairns all disappear under the first serious fall, so a route that is well marked in summer is an unmarked one in winter.

Worth knowing before you go — any route that depends on waymarking still needs a map, a compass and the practised ability to use them, because the marks can be covered, repainted onto a rerouted line, or simply missed in cloud.

Everything above, in order of what to do first

1. Paint blazes carry a grammar. Across much of Europe a horizontal band system indicates route type — long-distance, regional, local — through colour and arrangement.
2. Absence is a signal. On a well-maintained route, waymarks appear at every point where a walker could plausibly go wrong.
3. Cairns are the least trustworthy marker. Most cairns are built by passing walkers rather than by anybody responsible for the route.
4. Signposts encode time, not distance, in mountain country. Alpine and Pyrenean signage conventionally gives walking time rather than kilometres, calibrated to an assumed pace.
5. Maintenance is voluntary and uneven. Waymarking on most routes is repainted by volunteer sections of walking clubs on a multi-year cycle.
6. Marks are painted for one direction of travel. Paint goes where a walker coming the intended way will see it, which in practice means the downhill face of a boulder or the far side of a tree.

The takeaway

Learn the local scheme before you go. It converts a whole category of navigation problem into reading.

Go slowly enough to notice, and most of this stops being advice and starts being obvious.