Once I’ve got my bearings in a new area I like to look for features that will act as friendly reminders. This woodland on the opposite hillside in Wensleydale reminded me of a turtle. For the rest of my walk that day I looked to the turtle and knew that it ’swam eastwards’.

I have just received an email telling me that I have been ‘specially recommended in Rough Guides’ new book – Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways to See the World – published in August 2009.’ It goes on,

‘In writing this book, the authors have highlighted 500 fantastic places across the globe which will inspire people to see the world in a new light, selecting unusual holidays and alternative ways to travel which make a real difference to the lives of local people and the planet.

Only a few companies qualify for a special recommendation of this kind, which highlights your company as one of our authors’ favorites.

We are happy to offer you and your customers 20% OFF the price of the book, RRP £18.99. To obtain this, visit www.roughguides.com and enter ROUGH at the check out.’

So there you go, a 20% discount for all natural navigators. Although I noticed it is not as…

Read More...

I got back late last night after a very full day in the Yorkshire Dales. I was doing a shoot with the Escape to the Country team which finished at 6 o’ clock and then it was a six hour drive, Diet Coke and dark chocolate all the way, to get back home in time to get the first draft of my book to Virgin Books for the deadline.

Had a great, albeit quite short, time in the Dales. The production team and house-hunting couple were really fun to work with and it is hard not to enjoy a day in a place like that, even though it rained hard for half of the shoot. It will be shown around Christmas time I think.

Loads of great natural navigation clues and photos for me to share over the coming days.

I went for a walk with Matt Baker and the ‘Open Country’ team from Radio 4 a few weeks ago. It was broadcast a couple of days ago but you can still listen to the programme, ‘Sussex Visions‘, using BBC iPlayer. We chat about flowers and the Tuareg and one or two other things.

It was the Royal Institute of Navigation’s Annual General Meeting yesterday and I got to shake hands with Prince Philip as he presented me with my fellowship certificate.  I am now allowed to put FRIN at the end of my name, which is very nice and a great honour but not something that will find its way to the end of my emails very often. Hopefully that explains what all the weird acronyms in the title are though.

Out of curiosity, I just searched Twitter for ‘Royal Institute of Navigation’ and much to my pleasant surprise found the following entry:

1 day ago from Royal Household

The Royals are tweeting! Innit? Respect…

All the best,

Tristan FRIN (oops, sorry, it just slipped out, honest…)

PS. The photo is from last year’s AGM, this year’s aren’t out yet.

…

Read More...

__________________________________________________________

If you look closely at these two pictures you can see how the aircraft contrail cuts the lower cumulus clouds at a slightly different place in the second picture. It is not dramatic, but one clue that the upper winds at the altitude of the aircraft, probably about 35,000 ft, may be moving in a different direction to the lower winds moving the clouds. The upper wind direction is likely to be the more consistent and can be gauged by lining contrails or cirrus clouds up against fixed features like high landmarks, or even by lying under a tree.

I took this picture looking south over Halnaker Hill, the windmill can just be seen poking out at the top. On my outdoor courses I sometimes stop early on and ask people to give me as many clues to direction as possible. Quite often this leads to much frenzied studying of lichens and branches and lots of good ideas. More often than not I find myself having to point out a big one. ‘What’s the biggest clue you can see?’ Some might say the shape of the land, but very few spot the coast itself. If visibility is poor I resist the urge to borrow from a Mr Basil Fawlty and say, ‘It’s there between the land and sky.’

This is the full moon from two nights ago, rising amongst the clouds. The picture was taken at about 11 o’ clock and so we are looking close to southeast.

The following is an excerpt from the excellent website,

Hōkūle‘a Worldwide Voyage

Hōkūle‘a deep sea navigator and captain Bruce Blankenfeld shares with new voyagers some of the knowledge passed on to him by master navigator Mau Piailug.

Using Papa Mau’s star compass, he teaches some of the basics of traditional Polynesian wayfinding.

Watch the navigation lesson.

I ran a private course in the South Downs on Saturday for a group of four friends. One of them gave me a great example of using our senses and a little lateral thought to better connect with nature. Rachel lives southwest of Medway power station and said that she could tell when it was going to snow in winter because these were the only times she could smell the power station itself. The colder northeasterly winds bringing snowy weather and local smells with them.