28 June 2010 by Tristan Gooley
Another very enjoyable Beginner’s Guide to Natural Navigation course at West Dean College on Saturday. There were sailors, walkers, a forager and an army officer among the ever-varied student backgrounds. My thanks to all for coming.
Last night, shortly after 10.30, I took this photograph of the moon rising above the woods and emerging from behind thin clouds. It looks very much like a full moon, but is actually one day after full, a waning moon. It does highlight the difficulty of judging the phase of the moon accurately.
From an aesthetic perspective there is no need to be able to judge the moon’s phase, but if you are trying to use the ‘phase method’ of finding direction from the moon then it is vital. I go into a lot of detail of this method in the book, because it is very satisfying but no less challenging. In…
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Tags: army officer, beginner's courses, forager, full moon, lunar navigation, moon's phases, natural navigation, phase method, sailors, sun, sunset, walkers |
11 December 2009 by Tristan Gooley
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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Tags: mist, navigation course, pilots, rgs, royal geographical society, sailors, walkers |
11 March 2009 by Tristan Gooley
What sort of person comes on your courses?
All sorts! Those who enjoy fresh air and have an open mind. So far there have been artists, soldiers, writers, walkers, Navy officers, drainage engineers, lawyers, physicists, ecologists, accountants, marketing people, IT people, financiers, an RAF Navigator, fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, farmers, pilots, actors, sailors, builders, midwives… No astronauts yet, but it’s still early days.
Tags: courses, pilots, sailors, walkers |
