The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

… 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 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 the ‘Green Room’ in a rather…

Read More...

My book is on the printing presses – this is very exciting and an excuse for a quick plug in my blog!

In the book I emphasise the importance of using our senses in natural navigation. I cover examples from the sound of birdsong to the smell of trampled fruit in London.

I stumbled across a kindred spirit on the Internet this morning in Sachin Somanna, the author of this article about Gayathri Tiffin Room. It certainly smells from here like one of the joys of the Indian city of Mysore:

“We do not need any directions to reach Gayathri Tiffin Room (or GTR as it is popularly known) because once we close in on Chamundipuram circle, the irresistible aroma of a Mysore Masala Dosa works like a natural navigator to this vegetarian restaurant that is located just a few meters from the circle.  Although the restaurant looks rather plain on the outside, the packed…

Read More...

Regular blog readers will know that I am a bit of a fan of Robert Pirsig’s book, ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance‘. I’m just about to finish the sequel, ‘Lila‘, which is also a bit of a positive mind-bender (that is if you have some alternative views, and possibly a negative one if you consider yourself a conformist. Come to think of it, a conformist wouldn’t buy the book, and if they stumbled across it would be unlikely to start it and if they did start it, would be extremely unlikely to finish it.)

Pirsig takes on some massive philosophical beasts in both books, but the freshness of his approach can sometimes be seen best in the way he deals with more simple and natural phenomena. This is his take on the fabled ‘green flash’ of the setting sun,

‘When Phaedrus started to read yachting literature he ran across a…

Read More...

Nice article on the Beeb website about the Saturn equinox. A succinct definiton of ‘equinox’ in the article too:

‘Equinox is the moment when the Sun crosses a planet’s equator, making day and night the same length.’

I forgot to mention that I delivered the manuscript of my book to my publishers, Virgin Books, three weeks ago. It is an exciting moment, a good line in the sand, but far from a terminal one. Work will continue on it until about November probably.

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 kind, which highlights your company as one of our authors’ favorites.

We are happy to offer you and your customers 20% OFF the price of the book, RRP £18.99. To obtain this, visit www.roughguides.com and enter ROUGH at the check out.’

So there you go, a 20% discount for all natural navigators. Although I noticed it is not as…

Read More...

I got back late last night after a very full day in the Yorkshire Dales. I was doing a shoot with the Escape to the Country team which finished at 6 o’ clock and then it was a six hour drive, Diet Coke and dark chocolate all the way, to get back home in time to get the first draft of my book to Virgin Books for the deadline.

Had a great, albeit quite short, time in the Dales. The production team and house-hunting couple were really fun to work with and it is hard not to enjoy a day in a place like that, even though it rained hard for half of the shoot. It will be shown around Christmas time I think.

Loads of great natural navigation clues and photos for me to share over the coming days.

I had been working on the chapter about the sea in my book last week, so was even more finely tuned to its vagaries than normal as we crossed to the Isle of Wight on Saturday morning.

The sea’s colour is influenced by its depth, the colour of the seabed, salinity, microorganisms, silt and light levels to name a few factors.

The subtle shift in colour can be seen as the sea shallows to the coast off Ryde. The dark horizontal strip in the middle distance is caused by a thin cumulus cloud.

Last night I went for a run through some beech woodland. The perfect tonic after twelve hours straight on the book.

Possibly the worst blog post title that I have yet come up with, and there have been a few…

Our cat, Murphy, can be seen reflecting the direction of the last of the suns rays here.

The tree shadows in the distance have broken free from the woodland in the background too for the first time this year at sunset.

In the spirit of randomness to which this posting has succumbed I thought you might like this puzzle, set by a friend and former NN alumni.

Do not be alarmed if my postings continue to be sporadic, poorly constructed, lacking in theme, good titles, concise argument or beautiful short sentences. Most of that energy is being directed into the book at the moment.