The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

After selling out in under 48 hours on Amazon and elsewhere, the book has been reprinted and is now available again at most shops – online or off. Thank you to all who have bought the book so far; after the thousands of hours that have gone into the research, writing, editing, illustrations, production and launch, it is wonderful to know that it is being read. Thanks for the nice feedback too, a recent favourite:

“I recently bought a copy of your book and loved it – quite remarkable! My brother has stolen it from me yesterday – he’s a Qantas Pilot so I’m guessing it’s somewhere over the Pacific at the moment.”

A couple of days ago Sir Ranulph Fiennes – no stranger to fresh air projects! – described the The Natural Navigator as:

“The perfect book for getting you started on your own adventure.”

It is perhaps time for a minor celebration and what…

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I took this picture looking south over Halnaker Hill, the windmill can just be seen poking out at the top. On my outdoor courses I sometimes stop early on and ask people to give me as many clues to direction as possible. Quite often this leads to much frenzied studying of lichens and branches and lots of good ideas. More often than not I find myself having to point out a big one. ‘What’s the biggest clue you can see?’ Some might say the shape of the land, but very few spot the coast itself. If visibility is poor I resist the urge to borrow from a Mr Basil Fawlty and say, ‘It’s there between the land and sky.’

The two pictures above show two sides of the same bridleway signpost on the South Downs Way. The arrows both point east and there is a clue to this in the photos. It is not in the lichen growth, which unusually is quite similar on both sides, but in the colour of the arrows themselves. The blue of the south-facing (but east-pointing!) arrow has been bleached more by the sun. The three main weathering clues are sun, wind and rain. The first will usually be greatest on the southern side, but wind and rain will usually leave their marks more prominently on the southwestern side.

Two nights ago the strong winds brought an ivy-ravaged sycamore down into our garden, destroying two fences and killing an apple sapling in the process. I spent a few minutes looking over it this morning and found it to be a haven for lichens, there were at least five different types thriving and probably dozens making less of a splash. It was a rare opportunity to see the tops of the trees as they are, without having to scale them. Lichens are very sensitive to air quality so perhaps being thirty feet up was enough to keep them above the heavier pollutants.

This just in…

Tristan

Many thanks for a fantastic day yesterday.

I learnt so much and was stimulated also by the opportunity to apply what I did know to a new “problem solving” challenge! I checked out the moon last night and located Polaris and was quite comfortable that it was NOT directly above my head as I always imagined it might be! (I do need to re-set the weathervane and I think I’ll use Polaris to do this!)

The principles you taught will add another layer to my enjoyment and connection with the great outdoors. So rather than just walking through it and looking at the views I’ll be able to read more off it. Natural Navigation is a key to unlocking a fascinating text in the Earth’s rich library.

Thanks again for a very inspiring day – just off to check the lichen and moss on the trees in the garden!

Richard W (Cambridge)

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This morning was filled with a breezy walk up to Halnaker Windmill. The sun was out for most of the way up the hill, but the sky also had a generous share of cumulus clouds.

Natural navigation is a mixture of art and science and this can be felt very strongly when the sun disappears behind the clouds. Science allows us to understand the direction that the sun will be and there is an art to reading the cloud edges to reveal the direction of the sun, even when we cannot see it.

The low trees on the exposed hilltop had been groomed by the prevailing southwesterly winds. There were green, grey and gold lichens layering the various sides of the brick.

This isn’t about the Force, although I did read recently that a lot of Scottish policemen have put ‘Jedi’ down as their religion on their work forms.

More days than not I spot an example of the sun influencing nature in a way that is new to me in some way. In general terms it is fairly old news that a place that receives no direct sunlight will appear different in some way. It is in the detail that the novelty is to be found. The more obvious signs might be that it has different plants growing and an abundance of mosses and lichens.

The more fascinating signs are subtler, created by factors that are minute but combine to create an effect. The first picture shows how broadbrush nature can be. Despite looking in one direction towards a single hillside, as many as six different bands of colour are visible.

The second picture…

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Chichester Cross is a slightly mysterious stone construction at the heart of my home town. It has been around for five hundred years or more and has endured its share of sun, wind and rain in that time. The two larger pictures show the effect of just 6 years of exposure.

The elements do not come at it from uniform or random directions though and so it feels the effects in different ways on each side. This leads to different erosion patterns and weathering marks. It also means that lichens find different sides more or less appealing. The smaller pictures show the edges of the eight flying buttresses. No two are the same.

There are three words that you are unlikely to see together in the same sentence ever again. What is my excuse here? There is a well-known relationship between sunshine and moss or lichen growth, but there are subtler, more interesting ones as well. I have lost count of the number of people who have confidently told me that moss only grows on the north side of trees and buildings. I have dealt with that partial myth elsewhere, but here I want to explore a rarely-noted trend.

In England and large parts of northern Europe mosses and lichens will often grow on the south side of trees and buildings, but they will nearly always display differences to nearby brethren growing on the north side. The crucial thing to remember is that we are dealing with trends and patterns when observing nature, avoiding rules wherever possible. The navigator who tries to live by…

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