Entries tagged "night navigation courses"
2012-12-11
The outdoors can feel less exotic in winter and to counter this I thought I would run a competition to get us looking a little harder for intrigue at this time of year.
The Competition
The winner of the competition will be the person who emails me the most interesting winter natural navigation clue, but to qualify it has to be one that I have not come across before.
The prize is a private nighttime natural navigation course in the South Downs in West Sussex, for up to 4 people. The winner will also receive signed/dedicated…
2012-11-02
A couple of nights ago I went on a solo night natural navigation exercise, in a patch of woods I haven't explored before. As it was Halloween I thought I would add a question into the mix for fun:
Did I get frightened at any point and if so, when and why?
I walked for approximately two miles through occasionally dense woodland, a mixture of alternating beech and yew mainly.
The navigation itself was fairly straightforward, despite the heavy cloud cover and lack of moon or stars.
At the start of the walk I could…
2010-09-20
My thanks to Kevan Hubberd for sending in the idea about using Orion's Sword as a way of finding south.
Orion's Sword can be seen in the image to the left as the short vertical line of 'stars' under Orion's Belt.
The Sword does indeed point to a spot on the horizon that is close to due south when the Sword is near vertical (as in this image), but it is a less dependable guide when it is well off-vertical, ie. when it is lower in the sky.
Technical bit for natural navigation zealots…
2009-01-29
I was on a night navigation exercise the other night - not to be confused with a 'stumbling around in the dark effing and blinding' exercise. I downloaded the photos this morning and this one reminded me of the importance of sound and touch, especially at night. The paths and animal trails were slightly lower than the surrounding grass and had been sheltered from the thawing effects of the day's warmer breezes. They had all retained their hard frost, unlike the grass which had softened.It was possible to tell if I strayed off a path without…
