The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

I thought you might enjoy this picture I took a week ago of lichen and moss growing on a disused fountain in a garden in the south of France. Nature doesn’t make compasses much easier to read, but just in case you’re experiencing a moment of doubt: the photo is taken looking from the south side of the fountain looking towards the north.

Churches are well worth a minute of navigational inquiry. The church itself is likely to show a preference for an east-west alignment, with the altar at the eastern end. But the fact that they are often old buildings that have been left exposed to the elements for long periods, without incessant redecorating or even cleaning, yields other interesting clues in the form of lichens, algae and mosses.

Gravestones tend also to be aligned east-west also, so that the dead are ready when ‘the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised’. Any exposed stone that faces east or west will receive a mixture of sunlight and shade. Consequently they typically display a mixture of lichen types, as in the gravestone in this photo, in the graveyard of St Giles church in the quiet West Sussex village of Graffham.

On this gravestone there are a preponderance of gold and…

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The Gooley family spent Sunday afternoon mucking about at Stonehenge and then heating baked beans and pasta on the VW campervan stove. A modern, but not very, ceremony that paid homage to some ancient rituals.

I was perhaps the only tourist walking around the perimeter who was taking note of the varying moss and lichen growth as I worked my way round the stones from the north side through west, south, east and back. It wasn’t the subtle shifts in colour that held my thoughts though.

There is surprisingly little that is properly understood about Stonehenge, but some solid deductions are possible. The alignment of the stones confirms a true understanding of solstices by its architects. It is tempting to think that solstices were a widely understood phenomenon even in ancient times and not give this aspect much more thought, but that would be to do a disservice to…

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