The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

It has been quite a restless few days.

Last Saturday I spent the morning in London as a guest on BBC Radio 4′s Excess Baggage. In the evening  I led a group on a night walk. The conditions were perfect. We watched as blue turned to orange. Then as the orange faded to dark blue and black we were treated as Arcturus, Deneb, Altair, Vega, Capella and others began to appear. Lurking luminously between the silhouetted branches of a two hawthorns there was a bright white light in the east. It refused to move or twinkle. It wasn’t an aircraft or a star, it was Jupiter rising to rule the sky. We looked at five different methods for finding the North Star.

Thank you to all 400 who came to a Night of Adventure in Bristol on Monday. Great cause, great audience, fun night. If this night comes to…

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I have just been watching a beautiful full moon rising above the trees in the east. It was shrouded in layers of cirrostratus for a few minutes, but then rose above them.

In winter full moons rise north of east, in summer they rise south of east. They rise further from east the nearer we get to the solstices. The full moon always behaves in the opposite way to the sun, in time and direction, as it is opposite the sun in its cycle.

The sun has reached its northernmost bus stop, it has put on the handbrake for a second and has now, already, begun its journey back south.

At this time of year the sun lights up the countryside in early morning and late evening in a way that is unique. The light pours in from low in the northeastern and northwestern sky. This picture could not be taken at any other time, as the morning light is filtered through gaps in the woods to the northeast of where I live. It lights up strips and leaves the rest of the fields in shade.

A belated thanks to everyone who came to my talks and walks at the North Kent Walking Festival and the Travel Bookshop last week.

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.