The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

Welcome to the Natural Navigator

The last astro quiz proved so popular that I thought we’d do another.

This fantastic photo was taken by the expedition photographer, James Walker.

Thanks, James, for permission to use it here. Do check out James’ website, there are some stunning images, but only after you’ve had a go at answering the questions below.

Which way are we looking in this picture?

Bonus: roughly what latitude was the photo taken at?

Good luck! I’ll post the answer here in a few days.

Photography tip from a pro: The tomb in the picture was not illuminated and James achieved this effect by keeping the shutter open whilst he climbed up to the tomb. Whilst there, he used a flash to illuminate the tomb, making sure that his body was always between the flash and the camera, to avoid any of the light from flash spilling directly into the lens.…

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I’m just back from some micronavigation in the Black Mountains in Wales.

I should get a chance to blog in more detail in time, but for now I just wanted to share a couple of nice clues I found in the light snow and ice I walked amongst.

The first photo shows the first snow I encountered on a climb out of the Vale of Ewyas. We are looking east in this picture, the only snow to have survived the thawing warmth of the day are the thin strips hiding in the shade on the south side of the path. This technique is analogous to the one using puddles on the south side of west-east tracks.

The sunlight can be seen lighting the hillside in the background and unsurprisingly there is little snow to be found there. It is only in the shadows that it survives on the lower…

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Last night I caught a few minutes of a programme on BBC4, called ‘Unnatural Histories.’

As so often seems to be the case, a short stroll from the mainstream channels uncovered rough diamonds.

In the programme, an aerial shot showed us clearly visible patterns in the earth, patterns that were partly concealed at ground level by dense undergrowth. The narrator explained that we were looking at ‘geoglyphs’ in the Amazon rainforest. Geoglyphs are shapes that have been deliberately formed in the land by the hand of man.

Like many pilots, I have come to love the way it is possible in the air to spot patterns in the earth that are hard to notice on the ground. Lines that are lost in their surroundings on terra firma, stand out luminously from 3000 feet. But my experience has been restricted to European Iron Age Hill Forts and the like. This was…

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It is that time of year again. The sun and Jack Frost are working together to paint the land.

In this photo of a dog-mauled football, we are looking southeast. But why does the football’s shadow appear longer than the patch of frost? Surely, since the sun is rising it should be the other way round?

Useless clue: it doesn’t have anything to do with the dog, who wisely avoids footballs until they are well defrosted.

UPDATE: The patterns of frost we see as the day wears on are shaped by more than one factor.

The areas that have received direct sunlight will of course thaw faster than those that remain in the shade.

The colour of a surface has a huge effect too. Dark earth will thaw faster in the sun than light-coloured stone.

The wind also has a big impact on any day with a light breeze or…

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This really is one of the best astronomical photographs I have ever come across. It is amazing even before you notice that the sea is glowing with bioluminescent algae.

Congratulations Sim on taking this fantastic photograph and allowing me to share it and thanks Mark for sending it my way.

To celebrate this great pic, I thought a little quiz would be fun. Or to be more precise, several shades of the same question…

To make this more interesting I’m going to give you the opportunity to test yourselves at the level you feel most comfortable with. Anyone who has been on my Beginner’s Guide to Natural Navigation course or read The Natural Navigator book, should be able to crack this at one level at least.

Depending on your level of confidence try one of the questions below, A is very difficult, B slightly easier etc. (Don’t read…

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Happy New Year!

I do not share everything in this blog, you will be pleased to know. Most matters familial and ablutionary are kept from these pages.

So too are exact locations from time to time. It is not usually necessary to pinpoint the precise spot where a natural navigation technique revealed itself, or to give a 16 figure grid reference of the perch from which a photograph was taken.

Sometimes, I must confess that I deliberately fail, as unostentatiously as possible, to reveal even a general location if I am keen not to encourage visitors for any reason. This is rare, but it does happen. I have walked on certain routes in the Lake District and felt guilty for having let my boots join the millions of others that etch too deeply into these rocks at times. The guilt would worsen if I then added in any way to…

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Happy Winter Solstice One and All!

Here’s an interesting solstice fact for you: the Earth is actually receiving more solar radiation at this time of year than at any other time. This is because the Earth does not orbit the sun in a circle, but in an ellipse. In the northern hemisphere winter the Earth is at its closest to the sun, a point called ‘perihelion’, but in summer it is at its furthest point, or ‘aphelion’.

The Guardian have published a little article on the timing of the winter solstice.

However, my favourite solstice image is on a different page. The same technique used in the photo on that page, from the same position, but on the summer solstice would probably not catch the sun at all, or perhaps just a glimpse of it in the top corners.

At this time of year the sun is always…

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I was interviewed by Susan Gray on behalf of the Ramblers yesterday. We chatted over tea, blasts of icy December air and then some more tea. Did you know that the amount of tea walkers drink is inversely-proportional to the number of days we are from the winter solstice?

We only went for a short walk, it was more of an indoor interview than a walking one, but we were outdoors just long enough to appreciate the difference a couple of hundred feet of altitude can make. In the valleys it was far from balmy, but it was a pleasant temperature that did not draw attention to itself. On the tops of the South Downs, there was grimacing aplenty and the sandwiches we had planned to eat en route stayed in the rucksacks to be taken back down to the village of Houghton Bridge, whence they had come. The…

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Sceptre, the publisher of my upcoming book, is celebrating its 25th birthday this year. To mark the occasion, Sceptre invited their writers to pen something on the theme of 25. The following formed my birthday offering.

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Anyone who finds their mid-twenties easy is open to accusations of being a dullard. I wanted to be many things when I was twenty-five, but a dullard was not one of them. Fortunately, it proved to be a most irksome age.

Almost every molecule in my twenty-five year old body was urging me to become a writer. But, deciding to become a writer requires courage and I was lacking in it. The urging molecules and absent courage battled with each other and led to a nauseating, fizzing sensation. Sensible decisions, I now know, are not made in the midst of fizzing sensations.

Sitting on a bench in Paddington train station,…

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If you have navigated your way here from NBC’s Today, welcome to the wonderful and unusual world of natural navigation.

Have an explore and get as lost in the website as you like!

There is more information about my book on natural navigation here.

If you did not arrive from the Today show, but would like to see the piece with Michelle Kosinski, then here it is.