The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

Last night I caught a few minutes of a programme on BBC4, called ‘Unnatural Histories.’

As so often seems to be the case, a short stroll from the mainstream channels uncovered rough diamonds.

In the programme, an aerial shot showed us clearly visible patterns in the earth, patterns that were partly concealed at ground level by dense undergrowth. The narrator explained that we were looking at ‘geoglyphs’ in the Amazon rainforest. Geoglyphs are shapes that have been deliberately formed in the land by the hand of man.

Like many pilots, I have come to love the way it is possible in the air to spot patterns in the earth that are hard to notice on the ground. Lines that are lost in their surroundings on terra firma, stand out luminously from 3000 feet. But my experience has been restricted to European Iron Age Hill Forts and the like. This was…

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It has been quite a restless few days.

Last Saturday I spent the morning in London as a guest on BBC Radio 4′s Excess Baggage. In the evening  I led a group on a night walk. The conditions were perfect. We watched as blue turned to orange. Then as the orange faded to dark blue and black we were treated as Arcturus, Deneb, Altair, Vega, Capella and others began to appear. Lurking luminously between the silhouetted branches of a two hawthorns there was a bright white light in the east. It refused to move or twinkle. It wasn’t an aircraft or a star, it was Jupiter rising to rule the sky. We looked at five different methods for finding the North Star.

Thank you to all 400 who came to a Night of Adventure in Bristol on Monday. Great cause, great audience, fun night. If this night comes to…

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A huge thank you to everyone for all the messages that have been coming in about All Roads Lead Home. I thought it was time that I added a bit more information about the series.

Below is a blog I wrote for the BBC website, which went out just before the programme on Wednesday.

I also wrote a piece for the BBC News Online Magazine, about 6 unusual methods for keeping your bearings whilst in a town. As soon as it went out, it went nuts. More than 300 people left comments before comments were switched off. Here is a feedback email from the BBC:

…

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For a short and strange time, the esoteric, romantic and mostly-undiscovered subject of natural navigation is about to shrug off its shyness and dive, screaming and giggling, into the mainstream.

On Wednesday 5th October at 8pm, All Roads Lead Home, will be on BBC2.

It is going to be a beautiful moment, except the bits I’m in, which will be a bit feral.

In the programme, Alison Steadman, Sue Perkins and Stephen Mangan learn the basics of natural navigation before being released into the wilds of Cornwall (Episode 1), Ireland and then Wales & Liverpool.

I will be posting more about the programme, including some info about the making of the series on this website over the coming weeks. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the programme.

You’ll love the telly, it’s like the newfangled internet but with good-quality large pictures that move and excellent…

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Welcome to those of you who have found your way here, on the trail from BBC1′s Country Tracks. (For those of you who haven’t, a programme has just gone out on BBC1 in which I gave the presenter Miriam Cooke some natural navigation tips in a forest by the Arch, near Devil’s Bridge, in Ceredigion, Wales. There’s a short clip here.)

However you found your way, now that you are here have a bit of an explore and get as lost in this website as you like.

If you’ve enjoyed watching some natural navigation on TV, then make sure you tune to the series, All Roads Lead Home, which will go out on BBC2 in October.

If you’d like to learn more about natural navigation in the meantime, then have a browse of the website or my book on the subject.

This photo, from my recent and gallette-packed French summer holiday, shows the distinctive orange lichens that have daubed a southern-facing wall of Suscinio Castle in Brittany.

Being a coastal region, Brittany is a natural home for these orange Xanthoria lichens, which can be both a blessing and curse when it comes to using them to understand direction. This is because conditions need to be close to perfect for lichens to thrive, but if they are too good then a lichen will manage well on more than one side, and occasionally on all sides.

This nuance creates a challenge for those new to the subject of natural navigation, including those who took part in the upcoming BBC2 series, ‘All Roads Lead Home’. Sue Perkins, in particular, was understandably frustrated that the lichens would not always obey a perfect rule in terms of the aspect they preferred. In the very short time…

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I’m just back from a week in Cornwall, where I have been helping the BBC with a new series called, ‘All Roads Lead Home’.

It has been an amazing experience and most excitingly it means that… natural navigation is coming to a televison near you soon!

The premise of the series is as follows: Alison Steadman, Sue Perkins and Stephen Mangan learn how to navigate naturally and then go on 3 journeys together, each one to a place that holds some important connection for them. (Sue Perkins loves and lives in Cornwall, when she is not inhabiting a tv or radio that is.)

There will be lots of walking in stunning locations, a little messing around in small boats and even some natural navigation in the air. I will be adding loads more detail here during the weeks in the lead up to the time the series goes out, in…

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Last week set a new record for restlessness… Thanks to all who came for the walk around the Long Man from Wilmington on Saturday afternoon and to Adrian Phillips who took the time to come for a walk for an article in West Sussex on Saturday morning.

The week leading up to this was spent exploring Cornwall with Zoe from the BBC. We found many familiar friends in the techniques we uncovered in Cornwall, but also a handful of totally new ones too. Our rarest discovery was at the private Tregothnan Estate and not strictly anything to do with natural navigation at all.

Tregothnan is home to what is believed to be the world’s only original Wardian case. These cases were designed by Dr. Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward around 1829 to allow plants that were being transported at sea, from Imperial posts in places like Australia, India and China, to…

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After an intense week of scouting in northwest Ireland with the BBC last week, I felt a little weary come Saturday morning. We had covered almost all of the largest island of the coast of Ireland, Achill Island in County Mayo, and then zoomed about Ballycroy and a few other places too. A couple of days mucking about would have been nice, but instead I had to get the first draft of my new book to my publisher’s by this morning. Tomorrow I’m off to Cornwall with Zoe Timmers from the Beeb again. One of those busy times, but all the small discoveries make the hecticness worthwhile.

In this picture we are looking east in Ballycroy National Park. Notice how the two sides of this drainage ditch look very different. The darker left side of the ditch, that is the south-facing northern side, is covered in a thick…

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I am spending a lot of time at the moment helping the BBC with a new series and have spent the last few days in North Wales.

When I was told that we were going down a slate mine in Snowdonia and that it would be great if there were some natural navigation clues to help us find our way in the mine, I was initially a bit concerned. Natural navigation methods can be used in a very wide variety of locations, including underwater, but I have not spent any serious time caving or in mines and so feared it might be a non-starter. It quickly became clear that I was wrong and that there is not only a method that works, but one that is beautifully simple and almost foolproof.

As is so often the case, the clue had been if not under my nose, then at least above…

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