I took some photos of the results of my moon shadow stick, together with a perfect north-south line, which I will be using on my Beginner’s Guide to Natural Navigation courses. Yes, that is a bit of a tease, but those who come on the courses part with £105 and I make sure that it includes plenty of exclusive material, not least dozens of images that cannot be seen anywhere else.

As compensation, I have posted these photos that I also took yesterday, of snow clinging in long thin strips to the southeast side of the tall beech trees.

My sources tell me that the first is a Magpie Inkcap (Coprinopsis picaceus) and the second is Green Elf Cup/Wood cup/Stain (Chlorociboria aeruginascens).

My thanks, in no particular order, to: Nick Weston, Brian and Ross Gardner.

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A thousand apologies for that title.

Seriously now, are there any fungi experts out there?

Yesterday I came across these two rather fun specimens during a family walk in our local woods. Thought one was a Panther cap, but looks a bit too ‘pointy’ for that. The blue one is beautiful, but not one I can even guess at. I’m assuming it is a fungus, but could be a lichen at a stretch I suppose?

If anyone knows someone in the know please could you waft these images under their expert noses. Much obliged. Credit will be given. My email address is here.

On a different subject, my thanks to James Garrett for booking a private course for 15 people on Saturday afternoon and to all those who came. We set off from Ditchling Beacon on top of the South Downs and after some exploration and investigation of an area rich in natural clues, we were able to wrap the day up with Jupiter, then Capella, Arcturus, Deneb, the Plough, Polaris, Cassiopeia. Way to finish. I was so glad to have an excuse to be on top of the Downs. Thanks!

Among the off-piste topics that we discussed there was talk of whether we sleep better aligned North-South than we do East-West and also the idea that the expression, ‘follow your nose’ may have some science behind it: humans have iron oxide in their sinuses which may account for some experiments that have shown a magnetic sense of direction in humans.

Lest I forget, I will be giving a series of talks to launch my book in March. The date and venue for my talk at the Oxford Literary Festival has been confirmed:

Wednesday 24/3 12:00, further details and tickets available here.

Hope to see you there!

Yesterday I gave my Beginner’s Guide to Natural Navigation course for another wonderfully diverse gang. A smattering of walkers, pilots and sailors, but among them a filmmaker, mum, banker, psychiatrist, gardener, construction engineer and designer.

The RGS is always a fun place to spend the day, but it had an unusual and slightly surreal feel to it yesterday as there was a conference going on for professional helicopter medics. The Hall was filled with people demonstrating amazing bits of equipment for patching people up. It all looked and sounded very high tech. Balloons inflating as expensive looking displays showed graphs and lines going up and down. Even a machine that quietly went ‘ping’.

Twenty-one of us headed out on a glorious circuit from the ‘Sussex Ox’ pub in Milton Street, near Eastbourne. We headed up Wilmington Hill and stopped along the way to look very briefly into the use of the sun, wind, clouds, land, sea, trees and buildings. One of the great things about natural navigation is that it never gets between a walker and the outdoor experience,  it never detracts from fantastic views or great dollops of sunshine, but helps us to connect with them in a new way.

Ideal for those who like their walking to come with a sense of reflection or an insight into nature.

Hi Tristan,

I very much enjoyed the Natural Navigation course last week and am certainly much more aware of the position of the sun every day than I was before.

As I was walking the dog this morning  it came to mind that but for an awareness of natural navigation by my father I might not be here!  My father was in POW camp in Italy during the war and was being moved by train into Germany towards the end of the war. The prisoners were transferred from one train to another and my father and two others managed to hide under the train where they stayed until it was dark.  They then walked back to England finding their way back by using the stars as of course they could only travel at night.  They hid in ditches during the day or were taken in by German farmers who fed them and gave them food for the journey.  If he hadn’t had any such knowledge he probably would not have survived.

Thought you might be interested.

All the best,

Tessa Milne-Day

This chalk line in this picture shows the shadow tips joined over a period of a few hours on the morning of the 21st September. The line comes very close to a straight line, but even on the equinox it is never a perfectly straight line – unless you happen to be standing on the equator when the sun would rise due east, pass directly overhead and then set due west.

Someone mentioned that tennis courts have to be aligned a certain way to be LTA approved and so I thought I’d try to investigate this interesting notion. Google Earth shows the courts at Wimbledon to be aligned close to North/South, but with a definite northwest/southeast component. If anyone knows more about this then answers on a postcard – if you live in the nineteenth century – or email if you don’t, please.

The film is about Mau Pialug, one of a very small number of Pacific Islanders still skilled in using traditional Pacific navigation methods. He explains his use of the stars and swell and demonstrates the methods using rocks on the beach, before embarking on an epic voyage without using instruments.

Mau Pialug went on to play an important role in the founding of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, a non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving the traditional navigation methods.