The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

Welcome to the Natural Navigator

Welcome Radio 4 listeners! You have found your way to the home of natural navigation on the Internet. (A podcast of my walk with Evan Davies for the Today programme can be found here. The short article that I wrote to go with the interview and the video that accompanied the broadcast can be found here.)

The book reviews are starting to come in:

‘In a sat-nav dominated world, where GPS and a host of other acronyms designed to get us from A to B have overtaken paper maps, it is refreshing to meet someone who understands technology, but prefers to find his way by practising the rare and ancient art of using nature’s signposts, from puddle patterns to shadow lenghths… I’m hooked. Back at the beech, I make a mental note of emerging bluebell patches, forming an internal map that I’ll use to find my way…

Read More...

After selling out in under 48 hours on Amazon and elsewhere, the book has been reprinted and is now available again at most shops – online or off. Thank you to all who have bought the book so far; after the thousands of hours that have gone into the research, writing, editing, illustrations, production and launch, it is wonderful to know that it is being read. Thanks for the nice feedback too, a recent favourite:

“I recently bought a copy of your book and loved it – quite remarkable! My brother has stolen it from me yesterday – he’s a Qantas Pilot so I’m guessing it’s somewhere over the Pacific at the moment.”

A couple of days ago Sir Ranulph Fiennes – no stranger to fresh air projects! – described the The Natural Navigator as:

“The perfect book for getting you started on your own adventure.”

It is…

Read More...

… but it is temporarily out of stock of my book. They sold out in less than 48 hours which is great news in many ways, but less good if you are trying to get your hands on a copy quickly. They are re-stocking and a reprint is also underway. You can still order it at a fantastic discount and they will deliver as soon as more copies come in, hopefully only a few days.

The book is still currently available from Waterstones and Foyles have a few copies left. It will hopefully be in your local independent shop too.

A big thank you to everyone who has bought a copy and left Amazon’s cupboards so bare!

I have just found out what my plans for Sunday are, and they do not involve roast lunches, watching Narnia for the sixty-second time or trying to get our remaining stash of slightly green logs to burn.

At 2 o’ clock I am being interviewed by Adrian Phillips from Bradt Travel Guides at the Destinations Travel and Holiday Show in Birmingham.

Hope to see you there, or if you live a bit south of that (towards the midday sun) then perhaps at the Oxford Literary Festival on Wednesday 24th March? Or could it be that you like the taste of the Atlantic and can be found dreaming of Manderley, in which case I will look forward to our meeting at the Daphne du Maurier Festival on the 19th May.

More times and places – where I will be describing life without a copy of ‘The Natural Navigator’ book…

Read More...

This photo of the roof of my home tells a story of the sun’s journey.

The morning shadow from the dormer window is retreating and the sun is reaching more of the roof with each minute. The frost from the night before is thawing in the warm light. It is also forming a very simple shadow compass. At this time of year the sun rises very close to east and the direction that the frost is retreating will be west to east. The protruding ‘nose’ of frost near the top of the roof can be joined to the jutting part of the shadow to form a near perfect west-east line.

This effect can be seen in so many places at this time of year, as we get closer to the spring equinox (20 March). It will also work close to the autumnal equinox (23 September this year), but not in…

Read More...

… or a clue to direction. One of the challenges in natural navigation that never goes away is the need to constantly change our focus. Our eyes have a tendency to drift towards a middle-distance focus. This can mean that clues in the background and the foreground can be easily overlooked. The first photo of a field on the lower slopes of a volcano in La Palma is a good example of this. There is a temptation to look to the trees for help, and they do offer some, but better help can be found much closer as the second picture shows. The southern side of these flowers is opening up before any other side. When seen close up like this it is hard to miss, but we all walk past clues like this everyday and our eyes are so often drawn elsewhere.

I was at the Royal Geographical Society for the Travellers’ Tales Festival yesterday, to give a talk about my book. Less than a fortnight until it hits the shops!

I arrived early to listen to some of the other speakers, including the National Geographic photographer, Frans Lanting. The speakers’ notes are very explicit about not running over your alotted time, but Frans was on a serious roll. That guy is not short of slides. It was enjoyable but as it shot past it’s slot, and then on some, enjoyable though it was I had to nip out. I’d inspected the schedule for the day and had a plan of sorts; listen to this talk, pop out for a bit to meet a friend, return for my talk at 3.30 etc.

In the nicest possible way it all went wrong. Outrageous name-dropping time…

In the speakers’ waiting room (called…

Read More...

I landed back at Gatwick last night following an accidental visit to Tenerife.

The wind has been my friend on so many occasions recently, a dependable breeze helping me on my way through the woods or the clouds scudding overhead pointing the way home. It was probably time that it reminded me that it is not just in the business of helping me on my walks.

The plan was simple: I wanted to use a one week gap in the diary to get out to one of the wildest spots within five hours of home to do some natural navigation research. Days one to six went well as I walked, mainly without reference to map, compass or GPS (all were within reach), around the dramatic volcanic landscapes of La Palma in the Canary Islands. More details to follow here over the coming weeks, including photos of the incredible ‘

Read More...

‘Courting bustards’ is not an excellent new profanity, something that would sound good with rasping voice and sent in the general direction of a parking warden putting a ticket on your car, it is actually a reference to the romantic habits of the male great bustard bird.

Researchers from the IE University School of Biology in Santa Cruz, Spain, have found that the male bustards align themselves with the sun when trying to attract a female. Their white feathers, the bustard’s equivalent of an Armani suit/Ferrari/pair of Reeboks – delete as applicable, show up better when aligned to catch the sun’s rays. Dr Tommaso Pizzari, an ornithologist from Oxford University, observed that although it made the birds more vulnerable to predators, it certainly made them more visible to females. ‘That’s why we think these puzzling traits evolved and are specific to males.’

Although the bustards have been found to do…

Read More...

After an enjoyable private course on Friday – we finished standing in a field looking at Orion, the Plough, Cassiopeia and, of course, Polaris – it was time for a family outing to West Wittering beach early on Saturday.

I adore the Witterings in winter, the barbecue and beach towels may have to stay at home but it is invigorating to get blown along on miles of abandoned sand. In between games of hide and seek amongst the beach huts, games of football on the sticky sand and races to pieces of seaweed, I noticed some interesting patterns in the sand.

This photo shows how there tend to be broad ripples parallel to the coastline itself, but closer inspection reveals more subtle patterns and these can be used to decipher the action of the water and therefore yield more clues to direction. The ripples of sand fan out over…

Read More...