I do not share everything in this blog, you will be pleased to know. Most matters familial and ablutionary are kept from these pages.

So too are exact locations from time to time. It is not usually necessary to pinpoint the precise spot where a natural navigation technique revealed itself, or to give a 16 figure grid reference of the perch from which a photograph was taken.

Sometimes, I must confess that I deliberately fail, as unostentatiously as possible, to reveal even a general location if I am keen not to encourage visitors for any reason. This is rare, but it does happen. I have walked on certain routes in the Lake District and felt guilty for having let my boots join the millions of others that etch too deeply into these rocks at times. The guilt would worsen if I then added in any way to the numbers who walked the exact same path.

On occasion a place I find is magical because of its remote, untouched nature. Then I feel conflicted. I try very hard to make sure that there is genuine value in my blog, that it reveals not just natural navigation observations and techniques, but also shares wherever possible the broader joys of the outdoors and where these are to be found.

I have just returned from a short family break in the Vale of Ewyas in the Black Mountains. However aware I am that we were not the first to visit or discover this corner of the Brecon Beacons National Park, shock may not have registered on my face if a shepherd had appeared from behind a rocky outcrop and announced that we were the first to visit the valley in a hundred years.

This is a place that has been carelessly and wonderfully overlooked by modernity. As if to add a piquancy to the natural wonders of the Llanthony Valley as it is also known, mobile telephone signals have failed to penetrate the land. Not even TV signals can bulldoze their way through the high rock fortresses on either side.

The place has drawn monastics, writers, artists, recluses and rebels of every flavour for centuries. And in fitting testimony to the wildness of this place, it spits them all out again. Even those who, like the designer Eric Gill, came to get away from  ‘men of business’ find that it is altogether too remote and run back to milder wilderness, their reclusive tails tucked between their legs. The few that stay are eccentric, and if not tinged with madness when they moved there, then they guard against its onset for sure.

A thin and at times testing road runs up through the village of Llanthony, with its 12th Century Priory, heading northwest towards the town of books, Hay-on-Wye. Either side of this tarmac that has a weak grip on the green, is a valley that sighs in the face of anyone who dares bring the slightest urbanity with them. It is a place that challenges, a place that inspires. Bruce Chatwin was a convert and based his novel, On the Black Hill, here. If you have ever wrestled with writing poetry, if you have ever stared within and asked if you are truly a poet and been tortured by that simple question, then this is the place to head. You will know shortly after arriving and be able to answer the question with authority by dusk.

If you are more content to sense than create and you go seeking natural wonders, you will soon find it is impossible to take a big enough mental basket. It will overflow with observations before you have actively sought any.

Natural navigators will find the valley teeming with clues. In the dawn photograph above we are looking northwest. This perspective gives us a chance to appreciate one of the most beautiful clues, albeit one that is sketched out with one of nature’s broader brushes.

Natural navigation is dominated by an interest in finding direction, it is both the amuse-bouche and sirloin steak of the subject, but there are many navigational delights that do not concern themselves with compass points.

We can garner an understanding of our altitude from the life we find around us.

In the view above we get a chance to witness how the plant life changes with altitude. Deciduous woodland in the valley bottom surrenders to hardier pines. At the treeline the pines give way to the rust of winter’s bracken. Looking higher still only the hardiest of plants, lead by the grasses, will be found. The plants themselves shrink as the rock of the mountain forces its way higher into the more violent winds and more determined snows.

These are the clues to our height that are easiest to take in from a distance before we head up the hills themselves and risk failing to see the wood for the trees.

There was a temptation for me to fail to mention the Vale of Ewyas at all. There are many who would prefer me not to whisper its secrets. However, three things made me happy to share it. They are all related.

Some places are stronger than us folk. The Vale of Ewyas I hope and believe is one of them. If it is not and it ever needs help in its defence, then its chances are better if at least a few have fresh memories of it. Finally, this is a blog and blogs that fail to let slip the odd secret are not worth their electronic ink!

This is the best wild place I’ve ever been to that is relatively easy to get to.

Addendum:

The rather poor and poorly-focused photograph below was taken a couple of days before the one above. Notice how there is still a tiny and thin band of snow high on the northeastern side of the distant mountain, but none elsewhere. Such places are teeming with clues.

—————

Anyone who finds their mid-twenties easy is open to accusations of being a dullard. I wanted to be many things when I was twenty-five, but a dullard was not one of them. Fortunately, it proved to be a most irksome age.

Almost every molecule in my twenty-five year old body was urging me to become a writer. But, deciding to become a writer requires courage and I was lacking in it. The urging molecules and absent courage battled with each other and led to a nauseating, fizzing sensation. Sensible decisions, I now know, are not made in the midst of fizzing sensations.

Sitting on a bench in Paddington train station, I punished myself for a lack of courage by deciding to attempt to fly solo and then sail singlehanded across the Atlantic.

It took the view down into the blue from a single-engine aircraft, followed by the view up a series of monstrous white waves to convince me that it was time to write.

The blank page remains more fearsome and exciting than the Pond.

————-

Happy Birthday Sceptre!

What do you reckon? Let me know on Twitter (@naturalnav) or by email.

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 a town near you I’d really strongly recommend going if you can, there isn’t anything else remotely like it in the calendar that I am aware of. Well done Alastair Humphreys!

On Wednesday I submitted the edited copy for my next book. That night I waved a fond goodbye to All Roads Lead Home, the series which has hopefully given a couple of million their first taste of the joys of natural navigation.

Yesterday morning I was back in BBC TV Centre in London to film a short sequence for their global travel programme, Fast Track, with the presenter Rajan Datar. This morning I’m off into the hills for a private course.

In Bristol I took the opportunity for a bit of an explore, as you would expect me to. The two pictures above are of the same stone pillar. In the first one, we are looking northeast. In the second one, showing the pollution stains and algae, we are looking southwest. This is a trend that was repeated over a wide area of the city. It was great to find such a vivid example so close to the ground, normally it is worth looking above ground level for the best examples.

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.

Who is this book for? How does it differ from the original book? How big is it? So many questions!

First the jacket blurb, then my take on the book:

‘Starting with a simple question – ‘Which way am I looking?’ – Tristan Gooley blends natural science, myth, folklore and the history of travel to introduce you to the rare and ancient art of finding your way using nature’s own sign-posts, from the feel of a rock to the look of the moon.

With Tristan’s help, you’ll learn why some trees grow the way they do and how they can help you find your way in the countryside. You’ll discover how it’s possible to find North simply by looking at a puddle and how natural signs can be used to navigate on the open ocean and in the heart of the city. Wonderfully detailed and full of fascinating stories, this is a glorious exploration of a rediscovered art.

The Natural Navigator Pocket Guide is a user-friendly, practical book and the beautiful illustrations are a useful tool to help travellers on their instrument-free journey.’

The following is my take on the book, not my publisher’s, so here goes:

You may have noticed that the blurb for the Pocket Guide is very similar to the blurb for the original book and this is no coincidence. The first and most important thing to say is that the Pocket Guide is an abridged edition of the original book. It contains the same text, albeit cut down to less than half the length. It does have original material in it, however, in the form of twenty new illustrations.

The next thing I think I need to make clear is that it is a Pocket Guide in the sense that it is more compact than the original, but it is still a hardback and a fairly generous size (19.8 x 13 x 2.2 cm to be precise), so it would require an ample pocket as a home. This is still more of a book to be enjoyed indoors (in hardback format at least), with the new knowledge taken outdoors with you, rather than the book itself.

Who is the Pocket Guide for?

If you or someone you know has a definite interest in the subject of natural navigation then don’t go for the Pocket Guide, go for the original Natural Navigator book. If, however, you have a passing curiosity or are buying a book for someone who you think may find the subject interesting, but you’re not certain, then the Pocket Guide is a great option.

The Pocket Guide makes a perfect gift as it really is an attractive book and gives an accessible introduction to the subject in a beautifully designed package. Natural navigation is about using our senses and I’m delighted to be able to say that everybody coos when they see, touch and feel the cover. There is no harm in sniffing the pages either.

The Natural Navigator Pocket Guide.

I have included Amazon links above, but please do support your local bookshop if they have been broad-minded and sage enough to stock the Pocket Guide!

It only takes 5 seconds to vote:

This could be lichened to an X-Factor for outdoors books and I thought it would be nice to sea if I could get the word out there. Of course it would be tree-mendous and I’d be over the moon, it really would be a very sunny day to see The Natural Navigator star in such a way, but I must be on another planet to think that it stands a chance.The question is not weather it should win, but whether anything can beat the old birds. There are one or two books that appear to be plants, that will probably win regardless of the voting and that would cast a terrible shadow on this whole thing. If you feel like voting, then don’t let moss grow under your feet as the vote ends soon and there is snow time to waste. The winner will be announced at the Hay Festival at the end of May, where you will likely find my tears forming a puddle…

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-events/w-visits-hay-festival/w-hay-festival-outdoors-book-of-the-year.htm

Mike Saunders, Kew Garden’s Digital head, and I exchanged ideas and perspectives yesterday in a glancing and enjoyable way.  ‘Today’ is prime radio real estate and they could not have been expected to indulge us for much longer.

Of course there were many points that I would have like to have made, but could not, the effect being a rather truncated view, which appears to many to be fairly blunt. No wonder I was accused by a few of being a Luddite! My fascination and interest in technology might surprise them, but that’s not important.

If I’d had the opportunity, the point I would have loved to have shoe-horned into yesterday’s discussion was that I believe the best of both worlds is achieved when information is gathered or delivered at a separate time to our sensing nature.

It so happens that the physical form of books lends itself to this, they tend to be read at home and then left there as people venture outdoors. But the convenience and now seeming necessity of carrying smartphones allows information to be delivered at the same time as the outdoors experience.

Books may be better, not because they are low-tech, but because they accidentally lead to a richer relationship with nature. The mild impracticality of books divorces the research from the experience. Smartphones are just too practical sometimes.

The word I used yesterday to describe this form of technology is ‘beguiling’, it is a Trojan Horse – I mean that of course in the classical sense not the IT viral sense (there’s another tiny part of our cultural heritage that is wilting under the hot influence of technology). Nature is much more interesting than anything a smartphone can manage, but it is a harder-won fascination.

This is the same story we see played out in so many developments. The pressure on our time, our increasing conditioning to instant-gratification, means that in any competition for our attention technology will regularly win over the complex matrix that is the natural world. As ever, there are food analogies. Big Macs are a faster way of getting a lot of calories into our body than making a burger at home. Hence the ‘golden arches’ survive despite many raising eyebrows at their now almost neo-antiquated philosophy of cuisine.

I think we may be moving towards a world where there are two different groups of people enjoying the outdoors. Those with a photo of a flower on their phones, and those who have smelled the flower.

Update 15/02:

My thanks to everyone who has been in touch with horror stories of technology taking over the natural world. I thought I’d share just this one for now. Shaun Brady took this photo of everyone in Yosemite National Park ‘enjoying’ their own and each others’ pictures of the wonderful scenery. Thanks Shaun!

Bear Grylls

Massive thanks Bear!

I am fortunate, my work takes me to all sorts of places: deserts, mountains, universities, bookshops, islands, offices, clubs, societies… but never before had I been invited to a venue that describes itself as, ‘a sybaritic haven’.

If talking about the natural world in such a quintessentially urban venue was to some extent a clash of cultures, then it did not seem to phase readers of GQ, who beat the tube strike to pack the place out. There were lots of good questions at the end of the talk. Notably a series of ones enquiring about the difference in abilities between men and women. It wasn’t an all-male audience by a long way and, even if it had been, I knew to step carefully. These questions need a cool navigational approach at all times!