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In these four pictures we are looking at the same beech tree. See if you can work out which way you are looking in each picture. If you hover your mouse over each picture it should give you the answer.

If it has been a bit quiet on the blog recently, it’s because it has been a very busy time for the last few weeks with the launch of my new book, The Natural Explorer.

Thanks for all the positive feedback and nice reviews. I’ll be giving some more talks over the coming months, including at literary festivals in Cornwall, Wales and Scotland. It is quite an unusual talk, so it would be great if you can make it to one. What are you doing tomorrow? I’ll be at the Daphne du Maurier Festival of Arts and Literature in Fowey, Cornwall. See you there, I hope.

The theme of the Natural Explorer is enriching each journey, however small, by understanding how we can become more aware of our surroundings. I know some of you with an interest in natural navigation will also be considering some seriously big journeys too and so there is a new book I can recommend for that end of the scale, Tim Moss’ ‘How to Get to the North Pole‘. It’s great, full of practical tips for taking on some of the monster challenges out there.

In one of the biggest road trips I can remember, last week I visited the Lake District, the Scottish Highands and the North East of England. It was all work, but good fun too and I discovered two totally new natural navigation techniques whilst exploring the hills between jobs. So watch this space!

For all the great times I’ve had at festivals and in the outdoors over the past few weeks, I’d be being dishonest if I didn’t admit that one of the most fun days was celebrating the extraordinary achievements (endurance and fundraising) of those who took part in the Scott-Amundsen Centenary Race. I’d also be lying if I didn’t admit that one highlight of that day was getting to meet the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Outrageous name-drop! Forgive me. Outrageous suit in the video too. Forgive me.

I’ve owned this suit for a couple of years, but wear it only for certain appropriate occasions, like scaring the future King and Queen. When I put it on the other day, my younger son came up to me as I inspected my tie in the mirror and asked, ‘Daddy, why are you still in your pyjamas?’

Where is this blog post going? No idea. Lost.

Oh well, there may be many better blogs out there, but few that combine outdoor skills and royalty name-dropping quite so brazenly.

Happy navigating!

“Gooley returns with a highly readable and engaging work devoted to the temporarily mislaid art of exploration…it’s an inspiring account but also a turning point – perhaps a classic in years to come – because its simple aim is to help you recognise what your senses are telling you.

It’s also an object lesson in how to frame a call to action, because this is a book you can’t put down until you absolutely have to get out and start seeing the world as you should. And that’s when the adventure really begins.”

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You can order The Natural Explorer from Amazon.co.uk

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I’m running a small competition on Twitter. One person who retweets and names the artist who inspired the cover of The Natural Explorer will win a signed copy. If you’re not on Twitter, you can still have fun trying to work it out. There is a slightly cryptic clue on this page: The best skies in art.

Update and results:

The cover image of The Natural Explorer was inspired by

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich

Congratulations to @GeoBlogs and @LosGazquez_Joya on winning signed copies!

The book builds from explaining how understanding the physical landscape, from geology to botany, can be enhanced by understanding the more ephemeral aspects of landscape: the sky, light, colours, smells and temperatures. The final part of the book is about the sense of wonder that we can experience when we manage to sense the whole. It was this final part that I was keen for the cover to hint at.

“The Natural Explorer takes us on a multi-sensory, literary journey intent on heightening awareness of our surroundings. An ambitious combination of Gooley’s own insights and those of countless other writers, explorers and philosophers, this is serious armchair adventuring.” Prospect Magazine

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I spent Thursday morning at the sparkling new headquarters of Ordnance Survey in Southampton. I was fortunate enough to be given a tour of the work they are very busy doing (Did you know that there are on average 5000 daily changes to OS maps? On Wednesday last week there were over 12,000 – maybe strange things happen on Tuesdays?).

I learned a lot during my precious few hours at this wonderful hub, but I think the overriding lesson that I will take away concerns the fluidity of mapping data. No sooner is a map made, then it needs to be remade, because some inconsiderate individual will have tweaked the land in some small way. This little patch, like all little patches, will need to be overflown, photographed – using cameras that Dr. Who would approve of – and then worked on in stages by teams of experts, many of whom wear bizarre stereoscopic goggles and stare into stranger machines.

The Olympic site is proving a fascinating challenge for OS. Many government agencies, not least the emergency services, need up-to-date and very accurate mapping data for the Olympics. But those building the site have displayed a propensity for putting things up, enlarging buildings and creating new roads at a pace that does not have the mapmaker in mind.

The data Ordnance Survey harvests and manages is constantly being repackaged for our evolving world. Chances are that, even if you are not one of those who considers the opening of an OS paper map to be one of the few essential ingredients of a happy life – somewhere below food and water, but above the need for satisfying work – then you probably do still benefit enormously from the work OS is doing. A huge number of online maps feed off OS data, often at no direct cost to the end user. If, for example, you’ve typed a postcode into a computer for a map, or checked a floodplain online, then you’re probably part of the OS community. But for the millions of these anonymous searches, there are opportunities to enlist the help of Ordnance Survey in more personal ways.

Towards the end of my visit, the Director General of Ordnance Survey, Dr. Vanessa Lawrence CB, was kind enough to give me a pair of maps. The first was centred on my home near Chichester and the second on the hill I spend much of my time walking over, Bignor Hill. That is neat enough, but the thing that made these Explorer maps really stand out from the approximately one gazillion others that I own was the front cover. It read, ‘Bignor Hill, Tristan’s Favourite Walking Area.’ It is a near-certainty that friends and family will be receiving personalised maps of their homes for a couple of years!

You can make your own maps, with personalised covers via this link.

A big thank you to everyone at Ordnance Survey for your time on Thursday and no less for the work that lies behind countless good times and adventures.

A couple of weeks ago I had the immense privilege of accompanying Eric Staples in Oman on a small voyage. Eric and his team restore historic Omani boats and build many from scratch. From fantastically detailed models, through small reed boats to great vessels, Eric brings back to life craft that might have feared their days had been ushered away. Many are now to be found on the water once more.

Two such vessels, named ‘zaruqas’, were used during the final leg of an ambitious expedition by young Omanis, under the auspices of Outward Bound Oman. It was a great pleasure to see these young adventurers climb ashore from craft that represented their own heritage and to be congratulated by a minister from the Oman government.

After the awards ceremony, Eric offered me the opportunity to climb aboard and help him take a zaruqa back to its home port.

It was great fun as well as an extraordinary opportunity. We rowed most of the way as the winds were very light, but we did get the sails up for the final third of our short voyage.

The the next day Eric showed me around his workshop, a simple collection of temporary buildings on the shoreline with a large awning to offer shade to those working outdoors. There were many treats amongst the steam boxes, rhythmic sounds and inimitable smells of wood being worked. One of my favourites was a sample of a reed sail.

Before the days of choice, sails in this part of the world were often made from reeds woven together to form a mat. These sails are rare now, because of the labour involved and because the end product is heavier and less robust than many other materials. But the reed sail did have one advantage that no other modern materials that I am aware of can emulate.

Reed sails auto-reefed. (For non-sailors, reefing is the process of reducing the amount of sail you have up as the winds strengthen. It is sometimes a flustered business as you don’t tend to reduce sail when conditions are perfect.) If you look at two photos below you can see a small sample of the reed sail, which Eric allowed me to smuggle back to share with you.

In the first picture the reeds are under no tension and are tightly packed together. In the second picture I have (or I should say my ‘would-be willing assistant – if it hadn’t been as she was trying to get the kids in the car for the school run’, Mrs G has) simulated strong winds by pulling at the reeds. Notice how the reeds open up, lots of tiny holes appear. This meant that as the winds grew in strength, the sails allowed more wind to escape, an ingenious method of automatic reefing!

Top photograph credit: David Willis. Thanks!

If I was forced to choose my favourite piece of navigation technology, I would find it hard. The GPS, for all its many known vices, really is an extraordinary piece of kit. But it will never be my favourite, because… of all its many known vices. Also, because I’m very fond of any technology that harnesses nature, instead of rudely ignoring it.

I think my favourite would be an unusual contraption, which on first inspection appears to defy the laws of physics. When I first came across this device I thought it must be the impossible fruit of some wire-haired professor. ‘Very nice idea,’ I thought, ‘Now please put it back alongside any other perpetual-motion machines that this crackpot has on their worktop.’

Long distance sailors have a great pedigree for inventiveness and it is a type of inventiveness that often works with nature. Not because such sailors are motivated to invent by a love of nature, but because of a practicality forced by a lack of resources. In the middle of a large ocean, electricity is a lot scarcer than wind, sun or water, of which there are, trust me, no shortage.

It is time for me to introduce the device that works beautifully and does not break any laws of physics. Ladies and Gentleman, I give you…

The Windvane Self -Steering Mechanism

Its beauty, you will already have surmised, lies not in its name. Its beauty, you will also be able to deduce from the photograph above, lies not so much in its looks either. No, this contraption is exquisitely beautiful, as beautiful as the word ‘exquisite’ itself, because of the way it works. If ingenuity were the measure of popularity, then every home would have one. But it’s not, so there are only a few thousand of these in the world.

Enough of the tattle, what is so special about this overgrown nutcracker, I hear you cry…

This strange contraption allows a sailor to hand over steering of a boat to a machine that has no engine and uses no electricity whatsoever. The windvane self-steering gear will steer a boat forever on a course relative to the wind, without any electrical power source or any input of any kind from the skipper. (I used one non-stop for weeks at a time when crossing the Atlantic.) All it needs is wind and water. But how does it manage this? I will now attempt to describe the workings of the machine in one sentence. And fail, but pick myself up and try again.

When the boat changes course relative to the wind, the windvane is blown over and this causes a rudder below the vane to twist; the water passing over the twisted rudder forces the rudder to one side and this powerful movement channels a strong force via a rope and pulley system to the tiller and steers the boat back on course.

If you do not find this amazing then you have not drunk enough coffee. If you have drunk enough coffee and still do not find this wonderful, it is time to move up the stimulant scale to something that requires a prescription.

The wonder, for me at least, is the way this machine finds the force to make big steering changes to a big heavy boat through heavy water, even when all it is sensing is light winds. With no electricity or combustion or anything except natural forces.

In case you are still a little bemused – I know I was – I will focus in on the real genius in the method. When the boat comes off course, the windvane (the large bit of floppy white and red plastic in the top picture) is blown over by the wind that it is no longer aligned with. This generates a small force, nowhere near enough to move a tiller, but enough to twist a rudder blade. The rudder in question is not the rudder that steers the boat, it is a small one that is an integral part of the mechanism and is just visible at the bottom of the picture below.

The rudder blade underwater is now not aligned with the direction the boat is moving and so it is hit by the water that the boat is moving through, forcing the rudder to one side. This creates a much much bigger force, which is channelled via ropes and it is easily enough to pull the tiller to one side until all the forces are once more in equilibrium. At this point the windvane is upright once more and the rudder returns to a neutral position. Equilibrium is restored, until a few seconds later the windvane is gently blown over a bit and the process begins again, ad ingenious infinitum.

No technology is without its foibles, but this machine has a rather fun one.

One of the inescapable facts about windvane self-steering devices is that they have no idea which way they are going. They work by keeping a boat on a constant course, but only relative to the wind. If the wind changes direction, so will the boat, but its course will have remained constant relative to the wind. What this means is that in theory you could set one of these things to work and it could steer you in a circle if the winds happened to veer or back a full 360 degrees.

A friend and I enjoyed sailing using one on the Solent last Sunday and I was reminded of one of the rather nice consequences of the way this mechanism follows the wind. It turns the whole boat into a kind of windvane. We were enjoying a sail west across the whole Solent from Chichester to Lymington on a northwesterly Force 4. Occasionally the wind would strengthen a little and each time it did, it also veered round to closer to NNW. Since we were enjoying letting the windvane do the helming, each time one of these changes came through we would watch the bow swing round to the northwest as the boat accelerated. Although any half-decent sailor would pick these changes up just as quickly with their hands on the helm, there was no denying that this was a more visual demonstration of the fluctuating wind patterns.

If you’d like to know more, the windvane I have installed on my boat is fantastic and is called a Monitor windvane.

A cold front is the leading edge of a mass of cold air as it displaces a warmer mass of air at ground level.

Cold air is denser than hot air (hot air balloons rise) and so as a cold front advances it slides under the warmer air forcing it up. As the warm air is forced up its moisture condenses. This movement of moist air upwards is often quite dramatic and this can lead to bad weather: heavy downpours, often thunderstorms.

This brief band of very unsettled weather and high winds is typically followed by three things. There will be a shift in wind direction, often from a wind from the southwest to one from the northwest. There will also be a drop in temperature and a big improvement in visibility, often very clear air and skies.

So… Over this weekend take note of the wind direction. Then notice how we experience a brief period of very bad weather, this will be followed by a clearing of the skies, a noticeable drop in temperature and change in wind direction.

The image above shows the predicted positon of the double cold front as it passes over the UK at midday on Saturday. (Cold fronts are always shown as blue lines with blue triangles.)

Update 18/02/12 at 18.40:

The front has just passed through, Venus, Jupiter and the stars are all beaming brightly in the clear air. It all happened in good old ‘textbook cold front’ style. But don’t take my word for it, have a look at these graphs of wind direction, wind speed and air temperature over the past 12 hours:

But natural navigation is a little different to all of the above, because it keeps its interest throughout the year, without too many troughs, and unlike geology it does it by constantly changing.

I’m often asked when is the best time of year for an outdoors natural navigation course and I can honestly answer that there isn’t one. Summer is pleasant for all the obvious reasons, but it is a poor time for stargazing. Midwinter can be bracing, but it is also possible to go for a three hour walk after lunch that includes sights of the planets and stars.

The recent snowfall has thrown a blanket over many of the clues on the ground that are so rewarding at other times of year. But, as ever, new ones appear for the aware navigator. I went for a short drive followed by a short walk on Friday. Below is a selection of the clues that revealed themselves in that brief window.

A Minute Expedition in Minus Two

Five minutes after setting off in the car I pulled into a small, icy car park in an area on the OS Map marked as Fryan’s Hanger. It offers fantastic views. I honestly did not know which clues to expect as I looked northwest past West Sussex villages, like Graffam. Something leapt out instantly.

In the picture above, I’m sure you spotted the snow shadows pretty quickly. It is the asymmetry that is most interesting. There are green patches, bare of snow, beneath each of the trees, but not directly underneath. The green patches are off to one side, they are on the west-northwest side of each tree and this is a consistent pattern. This must have been caused by the snow being borne by a ESE wind, each tree has left a ‘snow shadow.’ In fact if you look closely below the branches of the evergreen on the left of the picture, you can see a pointy patch of snow which has sneaked under the branches of the tree and settled. Once noticed this pattern was consistent over miles.

I drove on, but barely two minutes later it was time for me to stop the car and take this picture, which emphatically shows the effect of sun’s uneven warming over the course of the day:

In the picture above, we are of course, looking west.

It was time to begin the walk itself and I set out on the path that heads south-southeast away from the White Horse pub in Sutton. The next clue to reveal itself was found underfoot. In the book, I refer to the importance of using all the senses and give this exact example. Paths tend to be at a slightly different height to their surroundings, which means that any snow or ice on them will last a longer or shorter time. Either way they feel and sound different underfoot. During daytime this leads to beautiful patterns in open country, but at nighttime it can be of more practical value. There have been countless times when I have double-checked my course at night, because the sound of my footsteps has changed.

As I returned from Muscat on Wednesday (more on that in another blog soon I hope), I had enjoyed spotting something  from the aircraft, which was now easy to enjoy close up. The snow that survives most determinedly can be found along the southern edges of field boundaries, especially strongly where trees offer some shade.

The following picture needs little introduction, except to say, isn’t it pretty!:

Likewise, I’m sure it took you only a couple of seconds to deduce from this picture that we are looking…?

East!

After my short walk it was time to head on home in the car. But the snow was not finished with me yet! On the way home my eye was drawn up towards Upwaltham Church. I parked and bounded up the snowy hill like an over-eager St Bernard puppy. To my surprise I met a photographer descending the hill, tripod and serious looking kit clutched in both hands.

‘I’m afraid you’ve missed it.’ He said. ‘I’ve been shivering up there for hours, but finally got it.’

‘Well done.’ I said, ‘But I’m after something a bit different.’ And I quickly explained the strange world of natural navigation clue-hunting to him and then went about snapping the following picture.

There are seven navigation clues in this picture and I’m going to use it as one of the fun competitions in my courses.

It doesn’t matter the time of day, or year, you can’t ever really ‘miss it’.

This fantastic photo was taken by the expedition photographer, James Walker.

Thanks, James, for permission to use it here. Do check out James’ website, there are some stunning images, but only after you’ve had a go at answering the questions below.

Which way are we looking in this picture?

Bonus: roughly what latitude was the photo taken at?

Good luck! I’ll post the answer here in a few days.

Photography tip from a pro: The tomb in the picture was not illuminated and James achieved this effect by keeping the shutter open whilst he climbed up to the tomb. Whilst there, he used a flash to illuminate the tomb, making sure that his body was always between the flash and the camera, to avoid any of the light from flash spilling directly into the lens.

UPDATE (Warning answer included):

The two arcs we can see on either side of the picture are formed because the stars wheel around the celestial poles, anticlockwise around the north and clockwise around the south. The line where the two celestial hemispheres meet is the celestial equator and where this cuts the horizon will always be due east or west.

There are two ways of working out whether it is east or west if you know your location, but only one if you don’t. The bright stars forming the shape of Orion can be made out in the middle of the picture, in particular the three stars of Orion’s belt. With experience this shape alone tells you it is Orion rising.

In the picture above we are looking due East.

Latitude:

The picture was taken in Oman. The clue to that latitude is the angle of the rising stars, which is always your co-latitude, that is 90 degrees minus your latitude. Here the stars are rising at approximately 67 degrees (up from horizontal), because the photo was taken at approximately 23 degrees North.

It all sounds much more complex than it is, initially at least. This is a great free program to help you visualize these things: Stellarium.

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On a different subject, the first review of The Natural Explorer has come in:

“The Natural Explorer is an essential part of any outdoor/nature writing library and it works in several ways. It’s a cogent paean to the glories of nature, a subtle manifesto, a call to arms to get out and appreciate the wonders of the natural world. It’s also full of wonderful examples of how to better read, understand and connect with the landscape.”

Damian Hall, Country Walking magazine

I should get a chance to blog in more detail in time, but for now I just wanted to share a couple of nice clues I found in the light snow and ice I walked amongst.

The first photo shows the first snow I encountered on a climb out of the Vale of Ewyas. We are looking east in this picture, the only snow to have survived the thawing warmth of the day are the thin strips hiding in the shade on the south side of the path. This technique is analogous to the one using puddles on the south side of west-east tracks.

The sunlight can be seen lighting the hillside in the background and unsurprisingly there is little snow to be found there. It is only in the shadows that it survives on the lower slopes.

On reaching the ridge and the Offa’s Dyke Path, the snow and ice were a little more abundant. In the photos below, notice how there are lines in the ice, sculpted by the wind. These lines proved consistent over the local area.