In this photo you can see the dew that the sun has not yet burnt off. The shadow itself is mostly moving right to left in this picture, leaving the thin band of wet wood in the shade all the time. This thin band is a rough east-west line at all times of the year, but quite an accurate one at times like this, close to the spring and autumnal equinoxes.

The small patch of moisture that is in the sun reveals the direction that the shadow is shortening, a crude north-south line as we near the middle of the day.

On outdoor courses one of the ways that I try to keep participant’s senses sharp is by telling them that I expect them to spot something that I have not, even if we are walking a route that I know well.

This photo from the Pathfinder course on Saturday shows a phenomenon that I am very familiar with, but an example that my trainee, Guy, spotted before me.

There are a lot of great wayfinding methods that revolve around deducing prevailing wind direction. It is always worth looking for lee build-up. It works in most parts of the world, and doesn’t matter whether we are looking for snow, sand or leaves. In this case last year’s dead and discarded corn leaves and husks lie in the lee of the westerly winds that had been dominating for the past couple of days. (Those who have been on a course will probably also…

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I now have a YouTube page. I just loaded a couple of very short videos of walking in the Sahara during a lull in a sandstorm. Enjoy!

I am in the process, with the help of Chichester Design of redesigning the website, so… much in the way that the Irish monks of the sixth century making their way to Iceland probably had to wait occasionally for the sight of the migrating geese overhead… please bear with us.

Something that I must have been aware of at some level for years, but that only arranged itself in my mind as an idea yesterday was the difference between the observations of characters in travel stories. There is a marked difference between what a character notices depending on the viewpoint that the author has chosen. First person travel characters seem to notice more natural detail. It must be easier to convince a reader that the subtle way a tree branch bends is relevant if the character is portrayed in the first person. Something that I had not previously given much thought to is that this seems to apply equally to fiction and non-fiction. This has probably organized itself into a coherent idea at the moment because I am having to concentrate my research for the book I am writing. It is a non-fiction book, but I am simultaneously doing some…

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I woke early this morning to a great twilight view of Jupiter, or ‘Jove’ as the Romans liked to call it, over the eastern horizon. It was a welcome coincidence because I had been studying Antarctic exploration late last night and it featured on a couple of occasions.

The wonderfully named Apsley Cherry-Garrard wrote the following in his strongly titled account, ‘The Worst Journey in the World’,

“Generally we steered by Jupiter, and I never see him now without recalling his friendship in those days!”

On January 27 1912 Robert Falcon Scott, wrote,

“A long way to go, and, by Jove, this is tremendous labour.” Poor soul survived for another two months after that before finally succumbing on the 29th March. His frozen fingers managed this final entry in his journal, ‘For God’s sake look after our People.’

‘By Jove!’ That, in two words, does a good job of encapsulating the spirit of the age…

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I’ve spent the morning sorting photos from my trip to the Libyan Sahara. Here are a few to help us look forward to that Indian summer that must be just around the corner…

Sand and camels, sand and tent, sand in eyes and sand in tea. The full desert experience.

Man follows sat nav to cliff edge…

… The future is wet. Full story can be found here.

An enjoyable afternoon spent teaching a group of second year theatre students at Dartington College of Arts near Totnes. Totnes is unlike any other town I know of in Britain. It has a deep affinity for the alternative and so was a welcoming part of the world for someone like me, practising an art that most consider, if they consider it all, not very relevant and definitely not mainstream.

Misha Myers, who had kindly invited me down to teach, explained that the college is going through something of a transitory period. It is a wonderful place and I do hope it has a bright future. The students that I met seem to have the energy to help with that, although I’m not sure if that was drawn from the inspirational surroundings or their apparently bottomless supply of Red Bull.

We spent most of the time walking outside, looking for the usual suspects of…

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As we move on away from the equinox I thought I would post this photo of the lines made by the shadow tip from a stick (or in this case a kids swingball!).

These two lines are from the shadows approaching noon and only one day apart. Since it is the equinox, they are near exact east/west lines. The gap between the chalk lines is at its greatest at the equinox and closes to near zero at the solstices.

On a slight tangent, it was a very similar method, ie. measuring the length of the shadows that helped the ancient Greeks come up with their first estimates of the size of the earth.