The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

I’ve just found out that the May 2009 BBC Countryfile episode where I took Jules Hudson for a taste of natural navigation in the South Downs has been uploaded to YouTube.

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…

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My wife and I spent nearly all the weekend on the water, which will be a rare treat until our boys are a bit older. There was lots of sun, plenty of mist and fog and not very much wind. It would have been nice to have done more sailing and less motoring, but we were ecstatic just to be out there.

In my last entry I talked about dawn and dusk colours, these two dawn pictures show the shift in colour quite nicely. There was only one minute between the two shots. Interestingly it appears to have reddened, which is not what we’d usually expect to see – ah, nature, that slippery friend!

Natural navigators will have spotted already the windswept nature of the trees on the shoreline, confirming that we are indeed looking southeast.

The Natural Navigator’s day often starts with a quick check that the sun is rising roughly where it should be – blog readers will be the first to know if it doesn’t! As this picture shows it is not always a chore and the time that our youngest is getting up each morning certainly helps make sure I’m ready.

This will be the last week this year when the sun rises north of east and its change as it heads south each morning (and evening) is at its fastest at this time of year.