The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

Welcome to the Natural Navigator

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.

It has been an interesting few days. I spent yesterday in the South Downs with Michelle Kosinski and the crew from America’s NBC network.

Whilst it’s fun and helpful to be able to do the odd high profile thing, like TV or radio, what is more exciting for the long term is the way the grass-roots network is building around this unusual subject.

There is little that I love more than being made aware of one of the many natural navigation clues that have so far escaped my notice. I like to say towards the end of all my talks or courses, ‘You have unwittingly signed up to be part of my extended research team.’ I mean it half-jokingly and half-seriously, as I’m very aware that I can never see as much of the world as those who I meet can as a group.

Every time someone brings a…

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I was going to wait until next year before getting the word out about this event, but… The Sunday Times have just very kindly spilled the beans by suggesting it as a Christmas gift.

On March 15th at The School of Life, I am going to begin the challenging business of changing the way we think about exploration.

I will be attempting, against the odds, to wrest exploration back from those who think it is all about racing to summits or unhealthily-long relationships with camels.

By looking at the experiences of some of the most insightful travellers of the past 2000 years, I will be showing how it is possible to raise our levels of awareness to new heights and make discoveries in the most unlikely places.

All being well, exploration will return to its roots and become, once more, about a sense of discovery on our journeys, large…

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