The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

I find myself drawn into discussions about technology on more days than not. On the navigation front it is all quite comfortable, but when it comes to the social networking thing it’s another matter, Web 2.0 it might be called, I really don’t know.

I do Twitter occasionally, because I’ve been told to by my web design company, but I’ll confess that the concept still slightly escapes me. Last week a friend that I had not seen since university got in touch to tell me what another mutual friend who he had not seen for ten years, but I had met recently, was doing from his Linked-In page. He seemed to know him better than I do. Before I start to sound too much like an incontinent old dribbler I should get to the point and mention that I’ve just done an interview for the lovely crowd at

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A lot of people are aware that TV satellite dishes can be used to find direction. There is a popular belief that in the UK that the dishes point south, which fairly accurate, it is actually normally south-southeast. The areas of Libya that I have just returned from are a few degrees north of the Tropic of Cancer and so some south in the dishes made sense, although I did note that there they tended towards south-southwest.

Just back after a fantastic and physically intense fortnight in the Libyan desert. This photo of me scaling a dune was taken after nine hours trekking. Every little helps at this stage of the day and so you’ll notice that I’m walking on the firmer windward side of the ridge.

It was a great test of skills and opportunity to research. I learned plenty during my time with the Tuareg and, outrageous to claim so I whisper it quietly, I may even have taught them one or two things. I return with over 1000 photos, a packed notebook, some video, some sound recordings and tired legs after averaging over 15 miles a day on foot. A real natural navigation treasure trove, that I will be sharing over the coming months, but now it is time to face the email inbox etc.