The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

Thank you to everyone who came to the course at the Royal Geographical Society on Friday. Also to those who came to the talk and walk on Saturday and to Rohan for organising and sponsoring the event.

I have just returned from a wonderful two days in the desert in Oman, where I have been teaching a group of Outward Bound Oman instructors some techniques for them to pass on to their students. In the picture above we are marking out the shadows from a stick in the sand.

We also looked at the clues in the dunes, the trees and smaller plants, the weather, the stars, moon and planets and many other things which I will be revisiting here on the blog when the desert dust falls off my rucksack and settles a bit.

One of the many highlights of the short trip was a chance…

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A subject that I have blogged about in the past is one I return to today. I am increasingly delighted at the diversity of background interests of those who also take an interest in natural navigation.

I regularly give talks to specialist groups, only last Monday night I found myself at the Sandhurst Social Club, speaking to the knowledgeable and very likeable Yateley Offshore Sailing Club. Such specialized gatherings have a mutual interest that draws them together and so variety quite naturally gives way to experience in one area.

On the Beginner’s Guide courses that I run, however, there is no such need for a unifying interest and the backgrounds of those who come is a never-ending source of joy for me. On Friday’s course at the Royal Geographical Society, there was a mountain-marathon runner, an astrologer, a Duke of Edinburgh leader, an amateur astronomer, a nautical circumnavigator and,  not…

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Nearly all navigation is an attempt to join landmarks together. Even those on boats crossing oceans are probably hoping to find a landmark they recognise as the final part of their journey.

The word, ‘landmark’, simply means something that makes a location recognisable. It is deliberately vague as it can apply to anything, a landmark may be extraordinary – the statue of Christ the Redeemer towering over Rio de Janeiro’s from Corcovado mountain. Or it may be mundane – a red postbox at the edge of a village.

The more confident you can be that you have both successfully identified a landmark and that you know exactly where that landmark is, the more confident you can be that you know where you are.

A landmark does not need to be grand, it does not even need to be recognised by others, just so long as it is recognised by you.…

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Another very enjoyable Beginner’s Guide to Natural Navigation course at the Royal Geographical Society yesterday. The diversity of interests and experiences never fails to amaze me; from desert wanderers to cruise ship sailors and even a sailor from a tall ship in the Pacific. Wonderful!

It was a beautiful full moon last night and I got to experiment with a new lens that I have bought. Still a long way to go until I take a photo of the moon that I am happy with, but always learning which is satisfying.

The phase of the moon appears the same all over the world, but the orientation changes depending on your latitude. In other words, a full moon will be full all over the world, but its features may appear upside down from the opposite hemisphere. When high in the sky, crescent moons will appear closer to ‘vertical’ at higher…

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I was at the Royal Geographical Society for the Travellers’ Tales Festival yesterday, to give a talk about my book. Less than a fortnight until it hits the shops!

I arrived early to listen to some of the other speakers, including the National Geographic photographer, Frans Lanting. The speakers’ notes are very explicit about not running over your alotted time, but Frans was on a serious roll. That guy is not short of slides. It was enjoyable but as it shot past it’s slot, and then on some, enjoyable though it was I had to nip out. I’d inspected the schedule for the day and had a plan of sorts; listen to this talk, pop out for a bit to meet a friend, return for my talk at 3.30 etc.

In the nicest possible way it all went wrong. Outrageous name-dropping time…

In the speakers’ waiting room (called…

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Another enjoyable Beginner’s Guide to Natural Navigation course at the RGS yesterday. In attendance: a patent attorney, paraglider pilot, academic, film maker, doctor, retiree, vet, town planner and optical assistant to name a few.

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!

A thick cold damp mist is bogged in over the South Downs this morning. I haven’t been out much this week as I seem to have been zooming up and down the A roads to the Royal Geographical Society and back. On Monday night it was the last president, Prof Sir Gordon Conway’s farewell lecture followed by a black tie dinner with the new President, Michael Palin CBE. Good food for mind and body and, as always at the RGS, great company and stories round the tables.

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…

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This morning I gave a talk to 30 pupils in Year 1 at my son’s school. Much scarier than talking to 500 people at the Royal Geographical Society!

I’ve just published a couple of articles I have written and which are exclusive to this site. The first is about whether we have a ‘sixth sense‘ that helps us navigate. The second is about whether men and women have different navigation abilities.

An engaging group for the Beginner’s Guide to Natural Navigation course at the Royal Geographical Society yesterday. Diverse in age and interests as always. When we were discussing the difference in the sun’s behaviour between the solstices and equinox it felt more poignant that we are so close to the autumnal equinox itself. We looked at a model of the Earth orbiting the sun, then shifted our attention to shadows. A couple of days ago I took advantage of the sunshine to practice what I preach.

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…

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A fun and full day for the Beginner’s Guide course at the RGS yesterday. I had been worried about the heat, but nobody seemed to mind – natural navigators are a hardy and positive-framed bunch as a whole!