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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Full marks to Radio 4′s Today programme for allowing even a few minutes’ discussion of the role of technology in our appreciation and understanding of nature.

Mike Saunders, Kew Garden’s Digital head, and I exchanged ideas and perspectives yesterday in a glancing and enjoyable way.  ‘Today’ is prime radio real estate and they could not have been expected to indulge us for much longer.

Of course there were many points that I would have like to have made, but could not, the effect being a rather truncated view, which appears to many to be fairly blunt. No wonder I was accused by a few of being a Luddite! My fascination and interest in technology might surprise them, but that’s not important.

If I’d had the opportunity, the point I would have loved to have shoe-horned into yesterday’s discussion was that I believe the best of both worlds is achieved…

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The title of this post is not, for once at least, a reference to my style of blog-writing, but to the BBC Radio 4 program hosted by Clare Balding.

On Wednesday night I joined Clare and the Ramblings team for a walk on the South Downs Way; we headed west from Amberley, finishing at the Bignor Hill car park. We were treated to stars, planets and a full moon. I’ll let you know when it is airing, but should be sometime in June.

I felt hugely privileged and honoured throughout the walk, as early on Clare revealed that she has been embarking on walks for the Ramblings series for nearly 10 years, but this was the first ever night walk.

Did you know that in the UK a full moon rises close to southeast in summer and nearer to northeast in winter? (If you find viewing the full moon…

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Welcome Radio 4 listeners! You have found your way to the home of natural navigation on the Internet. (A podcast of my walk with Evan Davies for the Today programme can be found here. The short article that I wrote to go with the interview and the video that accompanied the broadcast can be found here.)

The book reviews are starting to come in:

‘In a sat-nav dominated world, where GPS and a host of other acronyms designed to get us from A to B have overtaken paper maps, it is refreshing to meet someone who understands technology, but prefers to find his way by practising the rare and ancient art of using nature’s signposts, from puddle patterns to shadow lenghths… I’m hooked. Back at the beech, I make a mental note of emerging bluebell patches, forming an internal map that I’ll use to find my way…

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I went for a walk with Matt Baker and the ‘Open Country’ team from Radio 4 a few weeks ago. It was broadcast a couple of days ago but you can still listen to the programme, ‘Sussex Visions‘, using BBC iPlayer. We chat about flowers and the Tuareg and one or two other things.