Entries tagged "navigation"
2012-05-26
Navigation is about knowing where you are as much as working out how to get to where you want to be. A lot of the fun may lie in finding direction, but natural navigators also need to be tuned to the clues that help us to establish exactly where we are.
For thousands of years, humans gained an understanding of their latitude from the height of the sun and stars, but there are many clues beneath the sky. From general notions, the smell of the sea from land or the scent of a Caribbean island after crossing an…
2011-01-16
There is a good piece in yesterday's Telegraph travel section, by Kate Humble, encouraging those who visit Oman to step out of the resort and into the mountains.
The lines that caught my attention were. predictably, when she asked her savvy guides about their navigation skills.
"How do you know you're heading anywhere?" I asked.
"You get to know clues. The path down a wadi is never straight down; it usually follows a contour to the head of the valley and around. Omanis don't like going up or down if they can…
2010-09-06
My thanks to the RNLI, who gave me the opportunity of going to sea with them this afternoon.They were also kind enough to let me quiz them about their methods of navigation. As you might suspect, the sun, moon and stars don't play a big part, but they do have some fantastic kit. The Tamar class of lifeboat that we went out on is a formidable boat and the crew's eyes really light up when you get them on the subject of how good the boat is at righting itself from being upside down.The only major navigational surprise for…
2009-07-24
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…
2009-05-07
This just in...TristanMany thanks for a fantastic day yesterday. I learnt so much and was stimulated also by the opportunity to apply what I did know to a new "problem solving" challenge! I checked out the moon last night and located Polaris and was quite comfortable that it was NOT directly above my head as I always imagined it might be! (I do need to re-set the weathervane and I think I'll…
2009-05-02
During the Beginner's Guide course at West Dean College today we watched a few minutes from the unique film, 'The Navigators'.The film is about Mau Pialug, one of a very small number of Pacific Islanders still skilled in using traditional Pacific navigation methods. He explains his use of the stars and swell and demonstrates the methods using rocks on the beach, before embarking on an epic voyage without using instruments.Mau Pialug went on to play an important role in the founding of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, a non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving the traditional navigation methods.
2009-04-25
Most of my family and friends are aware how much attention I like to give to the journey, as opposed to focusing solely on the destination. They may not be aware that I also harbour two strong interests in Homer's, Odyssey, for the enjoyment it brings and also the clues to ancient navigation methods. At one stage Odysseus has to keep the Bear constellation, Arctos, on his left to hold his course.I was delighted this morning to find an email from my sister-in-law drawing my attention to this wonderful poem, Ithaca. It was written by the Greek poet, Constantine P.…
2009-04-04
There is a fly buzzing around me at the moment that is seriously dopey, it seems to me that its best days might be behind it. It keeps landing on my hand or face and lingering for a dangerously long time, like its will to live has evaporated.This reminded me of my trip to the Sahara last month. All signs of life in a desert are interesting at some level, usually including some navigation clues. Flies were no exception. They were not a big problem, and we could go for several hours without noticing them, but then they would appear…
2009-04-03
This morning brought with it a nice thick radiation fog, which the sun will probably burn off soon. There is not forecast to be much wind today, but even a breeze deals with radiation fog, usually anything over 12 knots.No visible sun, no discernible wind, these are the conditions that remind us that the trees reflect their environment over a long period. They act as a giant USB stick of data about thousands of days of sun and wind. All we need to do is tune our senses and look for it. The thin branch in the bottom left of…
2009-03-24
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…
2009-03-23
During a mild tidying effort this morning I came close to throwing out the Jan/Feb issue of Navigation News, but then spotted something that I had originally overlooked. A news item that hinted that the role of GPS in our lives may be waning:'Investment bank Goldman Sachs has voiced the concern that 2009 could usher in several years of decline in the portable navigation device market. It made the comment while moving stocks in Garmin, one of the leading satnav manufacturers, to its 'conviction sell' list.'I was mistaken. Unfortunately the reason it gave was…
2009-03-13
One of the things that I love about running my courses is that I'm guaranteed to learn something too, but because of the diverse backgrounds of those that attend I can never guess what area it will be in. Over the past few courses I have learnt something about drumlins, Foucault's pendulum, moles and sewage smells. This is a subject that is wonderfully difficult to pigeonhole, which reminds me...The Geographical magazine asked me today whether I considered myself a geographer.I gave the following, slightly long-winded answer:'Am I a geographer? Good question,…
2008-10-10
A fresh peach of a dawn this morning. The contrails in the first photo have a clear southeast track to them which is not unexpected as there's lots of civilisation to the distant southeast of Sussex and relatively little in other distant directions.
Dawn light always feels very different to sunset light. I use the word feel deliberately, because the actual light and colour differences are often subtle. Even if they look similar our normal sleep patterns and lifestyles, combined with the temperature differences mean…
2008-09-25
'Sagur, a spirit and chief, lived on the island of Pulap with his daughter, Inosagur. As she bathed in the lagoon before the canoe house one morning, she beheld a rainbow. It became a spirit, Anumwerici, which came to her. The spirit had eaten all the inhabitants of Truk and Naminuoito; now he intended to eat the people of Pulap, too.But Sagur told his daughter to fetch a little piece of taro and a small drinking coconut. Although Anumwerici complained this would not be enough, each time he tipped the cup containing the taro to his mouth it…
2008-08-11
The Gooley family spent Saturday in the lovely surroundings of West Dean enjoying their annual Chilli Fiesta. It was both an enjoyable and serendipitous occasion.
My gardening skills are usually limited to lawnmowing and leaving a small wake of destruction with a strimmer. About the only area where I have had any success with bringing new lives into the garden rather than violently curtailing old ones is in growing chillis. I have ten different varieties grown from seed and although not all bearing fruit, yet, they are all notably alive.
The West…
2008-07-14
Our summer holiday was at last beginning and all the joys and trepidations of a family outing with small children concentrated themselves into the lower section of the fast ferry from Poole to St Malo in Brittany.Rather unoriginally, I have always viewed seasickness as a mixture of the mental and the physical. I have seen war veterans reduced to blubbering wrecks and watched young children play snap through a howler. Oh the mysteries of the inner ear and the mind. Although I have been very queasy hundreds of times during travel, I am rarely sick. This is not…
2008-07-09
HRH the Duke of Edinburgh was kind enough to take time out to present me with a Royal Institute of Navigation Award this afternoon.
At the reception afterwards he spent a little time chatting with me and a lot longer in deep conversation with Mrs G. He was charming, funny and 'sparkly' apparently, whatever that means.
2008-06-23
Stumbled across a bit of a gem this evening. Marion Owen, 'master gardener', describing the moment she decided to become a gardener at the end of a long passage from Guam to Seattle.If navigation is about where we are and where we are going, then the senses have a bigger part to play than many realise, and not just physically. Marion's passage about a passage beautifully illustrates that honing our senses can get us to our destination in more ways than one. She found land and a new career.Here are some excerpts:'Wall-to-wall ocean, especially in the warm…
