The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

I have just returned from a wonderful couple of days in the Lake District. I was at the ‘Words by the Water‘ literary festival in Keswick in the Lake District. My thanks to Kay and Steve for hosting such a great event. When I was invited to give a talk it did not take long to make up my mind: a literary festival, in a theatre by a lake, surrounded by beautiful mountains? Where do I sign?

It would have been churlish not to sample some of the local bumps whilst up there and I enjoyed a fantastic walk up to High Street (named after the Roman Road that went over the peak). The conditions changed almost instantly, as they are wont to do at this time of year, from mild and sunny to bitter cold, freezing fog and ferocious winds near the summit. The map came out to…

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Yesterday afternoon I threw the snow off the Land Rover and headed out into the white – I had about half-a-dozen minor outstanding ‘to-do’s for the book, but there is no point writing a book about natural navigation if you are the sort of person who can resist these conditions. Dressed in a suitably ridiculous balaclava I made my way to the foot of Halnaker Hill and then proceeded uphill in wellies. Unless I’m on a mountain I find wellington boots with two pairs of socks the ideal footwear for small excursions in snow, even good hill-walking boots let some moisture in eventually, but wellies do at least stay dry even if it means slipping about a bit in places.

A roe deer jumped across the path in front of me as I climbed the hill and there was the red breast of a robin waiting on the branch…

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It is a pity that I didn’t have a video camera with me to capture the motion in this puddle. The wind was blowing in from the southwest, but the trees that can be seen in the reflection of this puddle were offering some shelter. The half of the puddle nearest the trees was in their lee and receiving little or no wind. The half that was further from the trees was catching a breeze as it dropped down over the trees. The net result was that the muddy bubbles were being corralled into the lee half, where they were also being pushed gently from one side. It set up a gentle, but constant gyre of bubbles in only one half of the puddle. In a very roundabout way, that has some similarities with other lee methods, the dirty bubbles in this puddle are trying to point in the direction…

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It must take some dedication and effort from the spider to spin their webs, so it is no surprise that they have worked out ways of not wasting this effort. This is a picture I took of a web in the northeast lee of a gatepost.

On outdoor courses one of the ways that I try to keep participant’s senses sharp is by telling them that I expect them to spot something that I have not, even if we are walking a route that I know well.

This photo from the Pathfinder course on Saturday shows a phenomenon that I am very familiar with, but an example that my trainee, Guy, spotted before me.

There are a lot of great wayfinding methods that revolve around deducing prevailing wind direction. It is always worth looking for lee build-up. It works in most parts of the world, and doesn’t matter whether we are looking for snow, sand or leaves. In this case last year’s dead and discarded corn leaves and husks lie in the lee of the westerly winds that had been dominating for the past…

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