The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

Another very enjoyable Beginner’s Guide to Natural Navigation course at the Royal Geographical Society yesterday. The diversity of interests and experiences never fails to amaze me; from desert wanderers to cruise ship sailors and even a sailor from a tall ship in the Pacific. Wonderful!

It was a beautiful full moon last night and I got to experiment with a new lens that I have bought. Still a long way to go until I take a photo of the moon that I am happy with, but always learning which is satisfying.

The phase of the moon appears the same all over the world, but the orientation changes depending on your latitude. In other words, a full moon will be full all over the world, but its features may appear upside down from the opposite hemisphere. When high in the sky, crescent moons will appear closer to ‘vertical’ at higher latitudes and ‘horizontal’…

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A detailed review of the book has just been published on Nick Gallop’s Skills for Wild Lives website, which is well worth a visit anyway. (Image courtesy of his website).

I really enjoyed giving a talk to a wonderful audience at the Daphne du Maurier Festival this morning, in the beautiful coastal town of Fowey.

I’m very grateful to everyone who bought tickets and came – so wonderful to be greeted by a packed out theatre at 10am on a wet and misty Wednesday morning in deepest Cornwall.

A huge thanks too to all those who bought a copy of the book. Waterstones thought they had things covered with 35 copies, but they all flew off the shelf and so apologies to those that left empty-handed.

Another big thanks to Jonathan, Kate and the Festival team who made it all feel so relaxed; there is a talent to this, one that they possess in abundance.

An enjoyable afternoon with the Soles and Souls walkers yesterday. We set off from Plumpton, led by Louise Gorst who runs a walk once a week and and likes to combine Sussex walks with an immersion in nature and a mindful approach to the outdoors. Periods of silence are interspersed with the opportunity to learn new things, from the arts of watercolour painting to natural navigation. Yesterday we climbed up from the Half Moon Inn to the South Downs Way, via Plumbton Bostall. The return walk took us through Ashcombe Bottom towards Blackcap.

Some of yesterday’s group can be seen in the picture, heading across a typically chalky South Downs field.

There is a ‘Camping Special’ in today’s Guardian and in it I get to lay an old ghost to rest. The first question I was asked was, ‘What is your favourite camping song?’

I can still remember being at prep school and finding the surname, ‘Gooley’, was proving an unwelcome additional burden to the trials of growing up. Chants of Ging Gang Goolie echoed for what seemed like about two years.

At the time I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to laugh, cry or sing along. If I remember correctly I tackled it with a mix of nonchalance, introspective sulks and racing around trying to punch people on the nose. None of these were very effective and so it is all the more extraordinary that I do have a fondness for this song. However testing those early years were, in a school that made Lord of the Flies look like a perfect…

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A couple of weeks ago  I promised to write up the story of my afternoon with the Bedouin. The article can be found here.

Only one of these compasses can be correct, since I took the photo in my garden in the south of England in April, not at the South Pole.

The stick’s shadow should tell you which compass is still accurate and also very roughly what time of day the picture was taken. Which compass is still working, why and when was the picture taken?

The answers will appear here after a few tantalising days!

I came across this fantastic map showing the direction of Mecca, known as ‘al Qiblah’, from different parts of the world.

It shows quite beautifully how counterintuitive it can be over the surface of a sphere. Who would have thought that the direction of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, from New York is northeast? This is due to the fact that the direction is calculated using the shortest route and this is what is known as a great circle route. If you want to get from A to B across the surface of a sphere then the most direct route will always be a part of a circle which if continued would wrap itself all the way round the Earth, in a full circuference of the planet, and return to exactly the same point as you started at – a great circle. (This is the reason that airline route maps show routes that…

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