The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

Last night we got back from a family camping trip to a site near the Hay Festival in Herefordshire. It was my first visit to the Festival and it was a really great family trip.

The campsite was the best I have ever been to: small, sheltered, great facilities, lovely owners, amazing views… Not even a day of heavy rain could wash away the fun we had chez tent.

We had too much fun at the best circus in the world, Giffords, which, following a health and safety warning, totally shuns modernity.

Hay-on-Wye was everything a writer and rampant bibliophile could hope for: characterful bookshops – run by fellow sufferers, bohemian street entertainment, the best people in the world… You can measure a Festival by what happens in the jostling. Everyone in Hay-on-Wye was friendly, someone saw that I had dropped one of my kid’s wellies whilst carrying him and jumped across a muddy…

Read More...

I really enjoyed giving a talk to a wonderful audience at the Daphne du Maurier Festival this morning, in the beautiful coastal town of Fowey.

I’m very grateful to everyone who bought tickets and came – so wonderful to be greeted by a packed out theatre at 10am on a wet and misty Wednesday morning in deepest Cornwall.

A huge thanks too to all those who bought a copy of the book. Waterstones thought they had things covered with 35 copies, but they all flew off the shelf and so apologies to those that left empty-handed.

Another big thanks to Jonathan, Kate and the Festival team who made it all feel so relaxed; there is a talent to this, one that they possess in abundance.

Thanks to everyone who came to hear my talks and buy the book at the Outdoors Show yesterday. I will be giving the talks again today and on Sunday at the following times on the stage at the Wilderness Camp:

1.15: The Wonderful World of Natural Navigation. A quick peek at a couple of the journeys that led to my passion for the subject, including the transatlantics, and then a whirlwind tour of lots of techniques that you can use yourself.

4.00:  Navigating Using the Night Sky. The ways we can use the stars, moon and planets to find our way. Introducing the ‘celestial sphere’, which despite its name is a great way to simplify the night sky.

I will be signing copies afterwards so bring yours along if you already have one or hopefully there will be some left to buy later at the show.

Hope you can make it!

…

Read More...

Sorry if you are trying to buy a copy of ‘The Natural Navigator’ – Amazon have sold out again!

After selling out, restocking and two reprints in the past three weeks, the book is now temporarily out of stock again on Amazon. Another massive thanks to everyone who has bought a copy so far.

You can still order it from Amazon. Or there are still quite a few bookshops that have a copy (worth phoning before), or online while stocks last at these places:

The Book Depository

Waterstones

Foyles

The photo above is of the hill to the east of my home, taken very early this morning. This is the first time this year that the morning light has appeared from the north of the hill. By June the sun will have moved all the way up to northeast.

A beautiful six day old moon is hanging high in the sky at the moment. There are some weird, wonderful and slightly complex ways of using it to find direction. There is also a really easy one that takes less than five seconds. The method is on page 147 of the book, with an illustration on page 148.

Are those cries of, ‘You tease!’, I hear echoing around the blogosphere?

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 around the wood.’ – Paul…

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 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...